Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by J F Bone

  T’shonke cackled. “You know Mars, eh, Earthman?”

  I cackled back at him. “I do—a little,” I said, “enough to know that Martians can’t be trusted with uncopyrighted works of art, literature, or music. You’re the biggest cultural thieves in the system.”

  “Not too much of an honor, considering the other inhabitants,” T’shonke said easily.

  “If you come to the ship,” I said, “we can arrange an audition—a limited one—enough to give you an idea.”

  “That is acceptable,” T’shonke agreed. “If I am convinced that the work of art is as great as you say, I will agree.”

  Martinelli shrugged. “But how will he know?” he asked me.

  “I’d trust him,” I said. “Mars has been a tremendous customer for classical music. I learned to appreciate it here. I had a month’s layover between trips, and used to visit town pretty often. One of the Algun priests took a liking to me and educated my ears to appreciate great music. You can trust the musical judgment of a priest or most acolytes as much as you can trust anyone’s. T’shonke’Il give you an honest answer.”

  IT TOOK only half of the first movement to do it. I kept watching T’shonke and gave Martinelli the high sign as soon as the Martian was softened up.

  “May I hear the rest?” T’shonke’s voice was pleading. “It is the most magnificent music I have ever heard.”

  “You can hear it all—with the temple bells—the Corens—the hegemon—everything—once it’s played in full and the copyright established,” I said.

  T’shonke’s head drooped. “You are a cruel man, Captain Lundfors. You give one a sip of ecstasy and then hide the amphora.

  I could hate you if I did not know that you are right. There is no sense in jeopardizing such a valuable property. And so you are answered. I will help you. I could do no less—and though my ears may hang on Algun’s holy altar, I will still help you. It will be recompense enough to know that I have done something for the greatest music I have ever heard.”

  “The priesthood should be some reward,” Martinelli said.

  “It is—but it alone is not enough to justify the risk,” T’shonke said. “I’m doing this for the music—the sixth delight—not for the honor and power of the priesthood.”

  I had never seen a Martian so moved. It amazed me. I had always thought of them as coldly intellectual and thoroughly sensual, but not emotional. Perhaps it took something as superlative as Raposnikov’s music to move them and any lesser thing was not enough. Whatever it was, T’shonke was our Martian as much as though he had thumb-printed an oath of service.

  It was no effort to install the tiny transmitter-receiver units and within half an hour T’shonke was connected to us by electronic bonds that worked perfectly well inside the temple and out. We tested the hookup thoroughly for nearly a week, under every conceivable situation. It worked perfectly, and finally, satisfied, Martinelli passed the word to T’shonke that everything was ready. We hadn’t seen the Martian since that one night when we had recruited him but that wasn’t necessary. Since we were in electronic contact personal visits were needless—and they would have done nothing to help matters. Acolytes who apply for examination for the priesthood are watched closely and suspiciously. T’shonke, we hoped, because of his long service, was not suspect enough to warrant being tailed prior to our meeting. Now, however, he was watched night and day.

  We had already moved our recording equipment into an empty apartment opposite Temple Square and the Solar Union technicians were on watch day and night for the first sound of the bells.

  And while we waited T’shonke entered the inner sanctum of the temple to take his examination. I passed the word and our whole complex linkage between T’shonke and the Solar Union Library in K’vasteh was alerted. We waited eagerly as the minutes dragged into hours. But there wasn’t a sound over the hookup. Not once did T’shonke press the activator button. Night fell, and day brightened without a single call for help.

  And then the bells rang out!

  A thunderous chorus pealing through the thin Martian air. From the two hundred ton monster in the lower course to the tiny silver klingers in the uppermost tower, the great bell concourse rang out with a tone and brilliance unknown to the thick air of earth. And then, with a final shimmer of sound that slowly sank to silence, it stopped.

  The cessation was so abrupt, so unexpected, that a thrill of fear shot through me. I had never heard the bells cease so abruptly before. There was something final about it, as though a period had been placed behind an interlude. Worried, I called the sound crew.

  “We’ve got it. They’re all on tape,” Vance said. “But all hell’s popping down below us in the temple square!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Seems like a lynching party. Migod! They’re tearing some poor native limb from limb!” Vance gasped.

  I didn’t need the letter that came half an hour later by messenger to tell me what had happened. “Honored Sir”, it began. “I failed. The first time I tried the communicator and saw the High Priest smile I knew I was discovered. And when I could not contact you, I knew, as neither you nor I did before, that Algun is truly Infinite Wisdom and His priests know about fourth order radiation. They took me from the place of examination, cut my ears from my head, nailed them to the holy altar—and drove me from the temple. I am disgraced and maimed as no living Martian should be. The sixth and seventh delights are barred to me who enjoyed them more than all the rest. I have no will to live, yet ere I die, I will perform one act for memory of the ultimate in music. I still have a set of keys to the temple. I know the stations of the guard. And for once the bells of Algun will ring for something greater than either priest or festival.—Farewell.” The letter was unsigned, but I didn’t need the signature.

  “What happened?” Martinelli asked.

  Wordlessly I handed him the letter. He looked at it, puzzled. “I can’t read Martian,” he said.

  I told him what T’shonke had done.

  His reaction didn’t surprise me. He looked sick. He loathed violence. “So we have the bells,” he said in a dull voice. “Fine, now let’s get going. We have only five months left.”

  “Four and a half,” I corrected.

  WE WERE standing on the shadow rim of Mercury. Behind us was darkness and bitter cold, and the lifeboard which had brought us here. Ahead was the blazing corona of the sun and temperatures hot enough to melt lead. The sunward side of Mercury was an inferno, with soft crusts of semi-solid magma, spouting volcanoes and a ghastly brimstone atmosphere that corroded metal and ate through rubber and plastic as though the refractory substances were so much paper. It was no world for human beings, yet humans lived and worked here, extracting the heavy metals from the sizzling surface of the Sunward side and processing them for the use of the Solar Union’s expanding economy. There were native lifeforms, the dominant one a grisly armored creature roughly resembling a lobster in size and shape. They were primarily vegetarian, and offered no trouble except for their numbers and the fact that they tended to congregate around Earth settlements or lumber painfully after exploring parties. Since they were neither good to look upon nor to eat, men tolerated them as another unpleasant fact of existence on Mercury and tried their best to ignore them. There were about twenty of them following us, appearing abruptly from holes in the rugged surface, waving their long-jointed antennae solemnly as they scuttled over the rocky soil. Before us the flaming glory of the corona leaped and flickered above the knife black edge of the escarpment which separated us from the shimmering hell of the sunward zone.

  In many areas the transition from darkness to light was not nearly so abrupt, but we had selected this one because of the relative protection the escarpment offered. Ahead of us Vance and his crew were pushing on toward the rimrock with the little remote controlled track layers that carried the sound equipment. In some respects this was an unnecessary journey since the sounds could be perfectly simulated by boiling a pot of thick gelat
in over a low flame. But the contract specified actual sounds and so we had come to Mercury at the risk of life and limb to complete the next to last part of our mission.

  Martinelli’s Voice came to me over my headset mixed with the roar and crackle of the solar wind as streams of electrons hurtled outward from the sun toward the farthest reaches of space. The static was inconceivable to anyone who hasn’t experienced it, and here on the edge of the sunny side communication was virtually non-existent. Through the snap, crackle, pop and hiss, I managed to decipher Martinelli’s words.

  “Think,” he said, “have gone—enough—up here and get out as——as possible. This place——on my nerves——.”

  “Me too,” I said, and then repeated it a couple of times to make sure he got it. “Vance’ll take the records—and then we’ll blow.”

  “Good!”

  Conversation was exhausting so we gave it up by mutual consent and watched the sound crew up ahead. They approached the edge gingerly and sent the equipment carriers ahead on their control lines. Electronic communication was hopeless up there. The track layers disappeared over the crest, guided by Vance and the four men of the crew crouched behind the rimrock with their recording instruments.

  Time passed until Vance finally gave us the high sign and began to reel the tractors in. Two of the men, Tayler and O’Banion, packed up their equipment and moved back down the hill toward us while Vance and the fourth, a man named Stanley, his first and last name incidentally, brought the carriers back. The two recording techs were halfway down to us when the Merc-quake struck.

  The ground beneath our feet shifted and rolled as we fought to keep our balance. The two techs were knocked off their feet and came rolling down the slope together with dust, rocks and boulders. The Mercurians following us scuttled back towards level ground, their antennae waving wildly. I had the odd impression that they were communicating with each other, that their intelligence was greater than we thought—and then the whole scene dissolved into a kaleidoscope of chaos. I had the confused impression of a hundred things happening at once, that a giant rift had appeared in the wall of the escarpment into which tumbled the doll-like figures of Vance M’bonga and Stanley followed by the child’s-toy shapes of the track layers. I was frightened beyond any fear I had ever experienced in my life.

  I wanted to run—I was running, stumbling, staggering, staying erect by some miracle, leaping across cracks crisscrossing the tortured crust, dodging giant boulders and fumaroles that leaped hell hot and hissing from the torn earth. I was helpless and alone—more so than I had ever been in my life. The awesome power of the quake stunned and confused me—and it was nearly a minute before my reason took control and shook my fight or flight mechanism into some sort of sanity. Shivering with reaction and adrenalin I turned to face the direction from which I had come.

  Behind me was shambles!

  The quake had distorted the whole area, and through the dust and steam, landing across the rise to the cleft in the escarpment the intolerable glow of Sol’s corona cut with brilliant light. Our lifeboat was miraculously intact.

  Vance and Stanley were gone, but sprawled grotesquely on the torn and steaming rock were the two green-suited bodies of the sound crew, and bending over them was the yellow-suited figure of Martinelli.

  “Hang on!” I yapped into my communicator. “I’m coming.”

  “Hurry!” Martinelli’s voice came back over a roar of static. “Tayler’s in bad shape!”

  I CAME back almost as swiftly as I left. Tayler was still breathing, but he didn’t look too good. A two-inch gash was ripped through the belly of his suit and there was red blood visible on the green armor, Martinelli was futiley trying to hold the gap closed with his armored hands and making a poor job of it. I tore open my emergency kit, pushed him aside, slapped a wet patch on the tear, turned Tayler’s oxygen to full, flushed the suit, and turned to O’Banion. He was apparently all right—paralyzed with fear but otherwise unharmed. Martinelli was supporting him with one arm while the other cradled two flat canisters of sound tape that he had picked up from beside the men.

  “You get it all on tape?” he asked as he shook O’Banion’s shoulder. He wasn’t gentle about it but he produced results. The man’s eyes focussed.

  “Not the earthquake,” he said.

  “Merc-quake,” I corrected absently as I arranged his companion to a more comfortable position. Tayler was breathing easier now but his face was contorted with pain. Mercury’s corrosive atmosphere had cooked a large patch of his chest and shoulder, and he was suffering the indescribable agony of_ first degree burns.

  “I don’t give a damn about the earthquake,” Martinelli snapped. “Did you get those sounds of Mercury’s boiling surface?”

  O’Banion nodded. “They’re in those cans,” he said indicating the two canisters Martinelli held. “Vance sent us back with them. Said he thought they’d be safer—say—where is Vance?—and Stanley?”

  “Gone,” Martinelli said. “They fell into that crack in the escarpment.” He gestured upward at the lance of light flashing through the torn rimrock.

  “Oh God!—poor Vance.”

  “We’ll have to get out of here,” I said to Martinelli. “I’ll carry Tayler and you take care of O’Banion.”

  “Why?” Martinelli asked.

  “Because he needs help,” I said. “And because I said so.”

  Olaf Martinelli looked at me with something like contempt in his brown eyes. “I don’t need you to give me orders. After that fancy bit of running—”

  “Sure—I was scared.” I said. “I panicked—and I’m ashamed of it—but I’m still captain.”

  “Very well—captain.” He made the title sound like obscenity.

  I winced. It did me no good to reflect that I had come back. I shouldn’t have run in the first place. A captain should never run—but the quake had done something to me that I hadn’t realized was possible. It had made me afraid. All I wanted now was to get back into the familiar surroundings of the “Queen” and nurse my injured psyche.

  But there was something else to do first. “You two get going,” I said to Martinelli and O’Banion. “I’ll be along later.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Up there.” I gestured at the rimrock. “Mercury’s gravity is lighter than Earth’s. The fall may not have killed Vance and Stanley.”

  “What about Tayler? I can’t carry him,” Martinelli said.

  “You won’t have to. On second thought he may be safer here. Get back to the boat and try to contact the “Queen”. Have them send out a rescue party.”

  “But you’re the only one who can pilot the lifeboat.”

  “Who said anything about piloting the boat,” I snapped. “You can work the communicator as well as I can.”

  “But we don’t dare stay here.”

  “We can dare anything until I find out whether Vance and Stanley are alive or not.” I turned my back on the protesting Martinelli and moved up the slope toward the crack in the rimrock.

  There is no point in recounting the difficulty of the climb, or the difficulty of the descent into the crack. I did it somehow and found the mangled body of Stanley quickly enough—but Vance was nowhere in sight. With frantic speed I checked the shattered rock, looking for something—anything—that would give me an indication of Vance’s fate. I was about ready to give up when I saw a tiny spot of fluorescent orange gleaming from beneath a pile of rocks and debris. I clawed the covering away—and found Vance alive but unconscious. A rock had smashed his air intake, and in a few more moments he would be dead. I ripped my hoses loose and forced them into the helmet nozzle and gave him a stiff jolt of oxygen. Working as rapidly as I dared, I bent the crumpled intake back into an approximation of normal, connected his airlines and dug him out of the debris.

  He was horribly battered, but he would continue to live if he were gotten to medical attention quickly. Gently I lifted him, my big space-trained muscles easily supporting him under M
ercury’s low gravity, and picked my way back to where I had left Tayler. He was still there, but so was the “Queen’s” second lifeboat. I was never so happy to see anyone as I was to see Egon Bernstein, and judging from the grin on his ugly face the feeling was mutual.

  “Bernie,” I said, “thank God you came!”

  “Do you think I’d trust anyone else?” he replied.

  I didn’t say anything for a moment. Just stood and enjoyed the feeling of mutual trust and friendship that flowed between us. We’d been bucketing around the Solar System together for quite a few years and words weren’t necessary.

  “Get those two to the Mercury Station hospital,” I said. “I’ll take Martinelli back to the ship.”

  “How about Stanley?”

  I shook my head. “He isn’t very pretty. We can take care of him later.”

  Bernie nodded. “Well—there’s worse places to die than on Mercury.” He didn’t say where and frankly I doubted if he knew a worse place, but he was a perennial optimist.

  WE BLASTED off without Vance and Tayler. They would recover—modern medicine being what it was—but it would be weeks before either of them was fit to travel. We went back for Stanley, but the Mercurians had been there first—and I learned why they followed us around. Sooner or later, they hoped, I suppose, that something would happen to us. You see, they saw something in us that was important. Our skeletons were virtual treasure troves of calcium and phosphorous. And so they had salvaged Stanley. There was nothing left of him but meat. Every bone had been dissected from his body by the sharp chelae of the natives. The stories were right. Mercurians weren’t carnivorous, but like all organic life, they needed minerals—particularly light minerals, and these weren’t too common on the sunworld. We buried what was left of Stanley and erected a stone cairn over the spot.

  Venus City was the same as ever—a dome town anchored near the north polar cap of the cloudy planet. Looking around me at the steaming swampland environment, I wondered how the old-time planetographers had ever come to the conclusion that Venus was lifeless. The formaldehyde and carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere probably fooled them as did the thermal layer a hundred kilometers up. But the ground level was just about like the old-time writers had predicted, hot, humid, and swampy. Venus was going through another Carboniferous period. Plants and animals of huge size covered the surface everywhere except the equator where it was too hot even for their adaptability. On Venus a high degree of specialization and relatively quick geologic changes probably explained why there was no intelligent life. The eras, periods, and epochs followed swiftly upon each other’s heels and the geologic climatic and environmental changes were incredibly brief when compared to the other habitable worlds of the solar system. An epoch lasting scarcely a million years is insufficient time in which to develop intelligence, particularly when a million years on Venus were only two-thirds as long in duration as a similar period on Earth.