Store of Infinity

by Robert Sheckley

  The foreman sighed and lighted a cigarette. “Stack just liked using that whip too much. Lots of the boys do, but Stack had no sense of moderation. His Chipetzis ganged up again and he had to kill about a dozen of them. But he lost a hand in the fight. His whip hand. I think a Chipetzi chewed it off.

  “I put him to work in the drying sheds but he got into another fight and killed four Ais. That was too much. Those workers cost money, and we can’t have some hotheaded idiot killing them off every time he gets sore. I gave Stack his pay and told him to get the hell out.”

  “Did he say where he was going?” Crompton asked.

  “He said that we didn’t realize that the Ais had to be wiped out to make room for Terrans. Said he was going to join the Vigilantes. They’re a sort of roving army that keeps the unpacified tribes in check.”

  Crompton thanked the foreman and asked the location of the Vigilantes’ headquarters.

  “Right now they’re encamped on the left bank of the Rainmaker River,” Haaris said. “They’re trying to make terms with the Seriid. You want to find Stack pretty bad, huh?”

  “He’s my brother,” Crompton said, with a faint sinking sensation in his stomach.

  The foreman looked at him steadily. “Well,” he said after a while, “kin’s kin. But your brother’s about the worst example of a human being I’ve seen, and I’ve seen some. Better leave him alone.”

  “I have to find him,” Crompton said.

  Haaris shrugged fatalistically. “It’s a long trek to Rainmaker River. I can sell you pack mules and provisions, and I’ll rent you a native kid for a guide. You’ll be going through pacified territory, so you should reach the Vigilantes all right. I think the territory’s still pacified.”

  That night, Loomis urged Crompton to abandon the search. Stack was obviously a thief and murderer. What was the sense of taking him into the combination?

  Crompton felt that the case wasn’t as simple as that. For one thing, the stories about Stack might have been exaggerated. But even if they were true, it simply meant that Stack was another stereotype, an inadequate and monolithic personality extended past all normal bounds, as were Crompton and Loomis. Within the combination, in fusion, Stack would be modified. He would supply the necessary measure of aggression, the toughness and survival fitness that both Crompton and Loomis lacked.

  Loomis didn’t think so, but agreed to suspend judgement until they actually met their missing component.

  In the morning Crompton purchased equipment and mules at an exorbitant price, and the following day he set out at dawn, led by a Chipetzi youngster named Rekki.

  Crompton followed the guide through virgin forest into the Thompson mountains, up razorback ridges, across cloud-covered peaks into narrow granite passes where the wind screamed like the tormented dead; then down, into the dense and steamy jungle on the other side. Loomis, appalled by the hardships of the march, retreated into a corner of himself and emerged only in the evenings when the campfire was lit and the hammock slung. Crompton, with set jaw and bloodshot eyes, stumbled through the burning days, bearing the full sensory impact of the journey and wondering how long his strength would last.

  On the eighteenth day they reached the banks of a shallow muddy stream. This, Rekki said, was the Rainmaker River. Two miles further on they found the Vigilante camp.

  The Vigilante commander, Colonel Prentice, was a tall, spare, gray-eyed man who showed the marks of a recent wasting fever. He remembered Stack very well.

  “Yes, he was with us for a while. I was uncertain about accepting him. His reputation, for one thing. And a one-handed man…But he’d trained his left hand to fire a gun better than most do with their right, and he had a bronze fitting over his right stump. Made it himself, and it was grooved to hold a machete. No lack of guts, I’ll tell you that. He was with us almost two years. Then I cashiered him.”

  “Why?” Crompton asked.

  The commander sighed unhappily. “Contrary to popular belief, we Vigilantes are not a freebooting army of conquest. We are not here to decimate and destroy the natives. We are not here to annex new territories upon the slightest pretext. We are here to enforce treaties entered into in good faith by Ais and settlers, to prevent raiding by Ais and Terrans alike, and, in general, to keep the peace. Stack had difficulty getting that through his thick skull.”

  Some expression must have passed across Crompton’s face, for the commander nodded sympathetically.

  “You know what he’s like, eh? Then you can imagine what happened. I didn’t want to lose him. He was a tough and able soldier, skilled in forest and mountain lore, perfectly at home in the jungle. The Border Patrol is thinly spread, and we need every man we can get. Stack was valuable. I told the sergeants to keep him in line and allow no brutalizing of the natives. For a while it worked. Stack was trying hard. He was learning our rules, our code, our way of doing things. His record was unimpeachable. Then came the Shadow Peak incident, which I suppose you’ve heard about.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t,” Crompton said.

  “Really? I thought everyone on Venus had. Well, the situation was this. Stack’s patrol had rounded up nearly a hundred Ais of an outlaw tribe that had been causing us some trouble. They were being conducted to the special reservation at Shadow Peak. On the march there was a little trouble, a scuffle. One of the Ais had a knife, and he slashed Stack across the right wrist.

  “I suppose losing one hand made him especially sensitive to the possible loss of another. The wound was superficial, but Stack berserked. He killed the native with a riot gun, then turned it on the rest of them. A lieutenant had to bludgeon him into unconsciousness before he could be stopped. The damage to Terran-Ais relations was immeasurable. I couldn’t have a man like that in my outfit. He needs a psychiatrist. I cashiered him.”

  “Where is he now?” Crompton asked.

  “Just what is your interest in the man?” the commander asked bluntly.

  “He’s my half-brother.”

  “I see. Well, I heard that Stack drifted to Port New Haarlem, and worked for a while on the docks. He teamed up with a chap named Barton Finch. Both were jailed for drunk and disorderly conduct, got out and drifted back to the White Cloud frontier. Now he and Finch own a little trading store up near Blood Delta.”

  Crompton rubbed his forehead wearily and said, “How do I get there?”

  “By canoe,” the commander said. “You go down the Rainmaker River to where it forks. The left-hand stream is Blood River. It’s navigable all the way to Blood Delta. But I would not advise the trip.

  “For one thing, it’s extremely hazardous. For another, it would be useless. There’s nothing you can do for Stack. He’s a bred-in-the-bone killer. He’s better off alone in a frontier town where he can’t do much damage.”

  “I must go to him,” Crompton said, his throat suddenly dry.

  “There’s no law against it,” the commander said, with the air of a man who has done his duty.

  Crompton found that Blood Delta was man’s furthest frontier on Venus. It lay in the midst of hostile Grel and Tengtzi tribesmen, with whom a precarious peace was maintained, and an incessant guerilla war was ignored. There was great wealth to be gained in the Delta country. The natives brought in fist-sized diamonds and rubies, sacks of the rarest spices, and an occasional flute or carving from the lost city of Alteirne. They traded these things for guns and ammunition, which they used enthusiastically on the traders and on each other. There was wealth to be found in the Delta, and sudden death, and slow, painful, lingering death as well. The Blood River, which wound slowly into the heart of the Delta country, had its own special hazards, which usually took a fifty percent toll of travellers upon it.

  Crompton resolutely shut his mind to all common sense. His component, Stack, lay just ahead of him. The end was in sight, and Crompton was determined to reach it. So he bought a canoe and hired four native paddlers, purchased supplies, guns, ammunition, and arranged for a dawn departure.

 
; But the night before he planned to go, Loomis revolted.

  They were in a small tent which the commander had put aside for Crompton’s use. By a smoking kerosene lamp Crompton was stuffing cartridges into a bandolier, his attention fixed on the immediate task and unwilling to look elsewhere.

  Loomis said, “Now listen to me. I’ve recognized you as the dominant personality. I’ve made no attempt to take over the body. I’ve been in good spirits, and I’ve kept you in good spirits while we tramped halfway around Venus. Isn’t that true?”

  “Yes it is,” Crompton said, reluctantly putting down the bandolier.

  “I’ve done the best I could, but this is too much. I want Reintegration, but not with a homicidal maniac. Don’t talk to me about monolithic personalities. Stack’s homicidal, and I want nothing to do with him.”

  “He’s a part of us,” Crompton said.

  “So what? Listen to yourself, Crompton! You’re supposed to be the component most in touch with reality. And you’re completely obsessed, planning on sending us into sure death on that river.”

  “We’ll get through all right,” Crompton said, with no conviction.

  “Will we?” Loomis asked. “Have you listened to the stories about Blood River? And even if we do make it, what will we find at the Delta? A homicidal maniac! He’ll shatter us, Crompton!”

  Crompton was unable to find an adequate answer. As their search had progressed he had grown more and more horrified at the unfolding personality of Stack, and more and more obsessed with the need to find him. Loomis had never lived with the driving need for Reintegration; he had come in because of external problems, not internal needs. But Crompton had been compelled all his life by the passion for humanness, completion, transcendence. Without Stack, fusion was impossible. With him there was a chance, no matter how small.

  “We’re going on,” Crompton said.

  “Alistair, please! You and I get along all right. We can do fine without Stack. Let’s go back to Mars or Earth.”

  Crompton shook his head. Already he could feel the deep and irreconcilable rifts occurring between him and Loomis. He could sense the time when those rifts would extend to all areas, and, without Reintegration, they would have to go their separate ways—in one body.

  Which would be madness.

  “You won’t go back?” Loomis asked.

  “No.”

  “Then I’m taking over!”

  Loomis’ personality surged in a surprise attack and seized partial control of the body’s motor functions. Crompton was stunned for a moment. Then, as he felt control slipping away from him, he grimly closed with Loomis, and the battle was begun.

  It was a silent war, fought by the light of a smoking kerosene lamp that grew gradually dimmer toward dawn. The battleground was the Crompton mind. The prize was the Crompton body, which lay shivering on a canvas cot, perspiration pouring from its forehead, eyes staring blankly at the light, a nerve in its forehead twitching steadily.

  Crompton was the dominant personality; but he was weakened by conflict and guilt, and hampered by his own scruples. Loomis, weaker but single-minded, certain of his course, totally committed to the struggle, managed to hold the vital motor functions and block the flow of antidols.

  For hours the two personalities were locked in combat, while the feverish Crompton body moaned and writhed on the cot. At last, in the gray hours of the morning, Loomis began to gain ground. Crompton gathered himself for a final effort, but couldn’t bring himself to make it. The Crompton body was already dangerously overheated by the fight; a little more, and neither personality would have a corpus to inhabit.

  Loomis, with no scruples to hold him back, continued to press forward, seized vital synapses and took over all motor functions.

  By sunrise, Loomis had won a total victory.

  Shakily, Loomis got to his feet. He touched the stubble on his chin, rubbed his numbed fingertips, and looked around. It was his body now. For the first time since Mars he was seeing and feeling directly, instead of having all sensory information filtered and relayed to him through the Crompton personality. It felt good to breathe the stagnant air, to feel cloth against his body, to be hungry, to be alive! He had emerged from a gray shadow world into a land of brilliant colors. Wonderful! He wanted to keep it just like this.

  Poor Crompton…

  “Don’t worry, old man,” Loomis said. “You know, I’m doing this for your good also.”

  There was no answer from Crompton.

  “We’ll go back to Mars,” Loomis said. “Back to Elderberg. Things will work out.”

  Crompton did not, or could not, answer. Loomis became mildly alarmed.

  “Are you there, Crompton? Are you all right?”

  No answer.

  Loomis frowned, then hurried outside to the commander’s tent.

  “I’ve changed my mind about finding Dan Stack,” Loomis told the commander. “He really sounds too far gone.”

  “I think you’ve made a wise decision,” the commander said.

  “So I should like to return to Mars immediately.”

  The commander nodded. “All spaceships leave from Port New Haarlem, where you came in.”

  “How do I get back there?”

  “Well, that’s a little difficult,” the commander told him. “I suppose I could loan you a native guide. You’ll have to trek back across the Thompson mountains to Ou-Barkar. I suggest you take the Desset Valley route this time, since the Kmikti Horde is migrating across the central rain-forest, and you can never tell about those devils. You’ll reach Ou-Barkar in the rainy season, so the semis won’t be going through to Depotsville. You might be able to join the salt caravan traveling the short way through Knife Pass, if you get there in time. If you don’t, the trail is relatively easy to follow by compass, if you compensate for the variation zones. Once you’ve reached Depotsville the rains will be in full career. Quite a sight, too. Perhaps you can catch a heli to New St. Denis and another to East Marsh, but I doubt it because of the zicre. Winds like that can mess up aircraft rather badly. So perhaps you could take the paddleboat to East Marsh, then a freighter down the Inland Zee to Port New Haarlem. I believe there are several good hurricane ports along the southern shore, in case the weather grows extreme. I personally prefer to travel by land or air. The final decision of route, of course, rests with you.”

  “Thank you,” Loomis said faintly.

  “Let me know what you decide,” the commander said.

  Loomis thanked him and returned to his tent in a state of nerves. He thought about the trip back across mountains and swamps, through primitive settlements, past migrating hordes. He visualized the complications added by the rains and the zicre. Never had his freewheeling imagination performed any better than it did now, conjuring up the horrors of that trip back.

  It had been hard getting here; it would be much harder returning. And this time, his sensitive and esthetic soul would not be sheltered by the patient, long-suffering Crompton. He would have to bear the full sensory impact of wind, rain, hunger, thirst, exhaustion and fear. He would have to eat the coarse foods and drink the foul water. And he would have to perform the complicated routines of the trail, which Crompton had painfully learned and which he had ignored.

  The total responsibility would be his. He would have to choose the route and make the critical decisions, for Crompton’s life and for his own.

  But could he? He was a man of the cities, a creature of society. His life-problems had been the quirks and twists of people, not the moods and passions of nature. He had avoided the raw and lumpy world of sun and sky, living entirely in mankind’s elaborate burrows and intricate anthills. Separated from the earth by sidewalks, doors, windows and ceilings, he had come to doubt the strength of that gigantic grinding machine of nature about which the older authors wrote so engagingly, and which furnished such excellent conceits for poems and songs. Nature, it had seemed to Loomis, sunbathing on a placid Martian summer day or drowsily listening to the whistle of w
ind against his window on a stormy night, was grossly overrated.

  But now, shatteringly, he had to ride the wheels of the grindstone.

  Loomis thought about it and suddenly pictured his own end. He saw the time when his energies would be exhausted, and he would be lying in some windswept pass or sitting with bowed head in the driving rain of the marshlands. He would try to go on, searching for the strength that is said to lie beyond exhaustion. And he would not find it. A sense of utter futility would pass over him, alone and lost in the immensity of all outdoors. At that point life would seem too much effort, too much strain. He, like many before him, would then admit defeat, give up, lie down, and wait for death…

  Loomis whispered, “Crompton?”

  No answer.

  “Crompton! Can’t you hear me? I’ll put you back in command. Just get us out of this overgrown greenhouse. Get us back to Earth or Mars! Crompton, I don’t want to die!”

  Still no answer.

  “All right, Crompton,” Loomis said in a husky whisper. “You win. Take over! Do anything you want. I surrender, it’s all yours. Just please, takeover!”

  “Thank you,” Crompton said icily, and took over control of the Crompton body.

  In ten minutes he was back in the commander’s tent, saying that he had changed his mind again. The commander nodded wearily, deciding that he would never understand people.

  Soon Crompton was seated in the center of a large dugout canoe, with trade-goods piled around him. The paddlers set up a lusty chant and pushed onto the river. Crompton turned and watched until the Vigilantes’ tents were lost around a bend in the river.

  To Crompton, that trip down the Blood River was like a passage to the beginning of time. The six natives dipped their paddles in silent unison, and the canoe glided like a water-spider over the broad, slow-moving stream. Gigantic ferns hung over the river’s bank, and quivered when the canoe came near, and stretched longingly toward them on long stalks. Then the paddlers would raise the warning shout and the canoe would be steered back to midstream, and the ferns would droop again in the noonday heat. They came to places where the trees had interlaced overhead, forming a dark, leafy tunnel. Then Crompton and the paddlers would crouch under the canvas of the tent, letting the boat drift through on the current, hearing the soft splatter of corrosive sap dropping around them. They would emerge again to the glaring white sky, and the natives would man their paddles.