The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  Well, pretty soon now, if he wanted, he’d be able to buy himself the world’s fanciest harem. He imagined them—brunettes, blondes, and redheads, all in a sort of lush Turkish-bath setting, with Hughie drooling with envy outside the door. Boy, would that show him!

  He had seen right away that Dr. Birdmouse’s friends were worth money. They were worth so much money that even the spaceboat could carry enough of them to make him a fortune. Usually it wasn’t worthwhile exhibiting extraterrestrials; they were too different. A couple of monkeys out of a zoo could steal their audience away any time. Besides, they required special atmospheres and temperatures, to say nothing of menus. But Dr. Birdmouse’s friends were all oxygen breathers, and each of them looked so almost familiar that you could stare at it for hours just trying to figure it out. Then you’d finally conclude, as Vandercook had at first, that every one was a species all by itself.

  Vandercook knew that if you take a tall glass, pour in a jigger of brandy and one of tequila, and then fill it up with champagne, you get something unique. It may remind you of what has gone into it, but it has new and special characteristics all its own, and they are decidedly functional. Dr. Birdmouse was like that. At first glance, he reminded Vandercook of the pouring together of a rather large bird, perhaps of the pheasant variety, and a very large mouse—not a forced crossing, not an unnatural linking of hostile genes, but a subtle blending which itself modified the ingredients. Dr. Birdmouse was not mouse plus bird. He rose above that. He had neither feathers nor fur, but he had their resultant, a soft covering which, beneath its gray surface, showed the bright patterns of his ancestral plumage. He had wings which folded discreetly so as not to mar his mousely appearance after he landed. He had a little, dark nose-beak which wiggled, hands fore and aft, and a parasol-fan at the end of his tail which he used as a stabilizer. He was Dr. Birdmouse, and nobody else. And in this single respect, of their utter uniqueness, all his friends were just like him.

  As soon as he could, Vandercook had asked why this was. “Where is the rest of each species?” he asked. “Why is it I’ve seen only one of a kind?”

  “Species? The rest?” Dr. Birdmouse looked startled.

  “Sure,” Vandercook said, “all the critters who’re just like each other, all the bears or tigers or horses or owls, all the—well, all the birdmice.”

  “You mean—” Dr. Birdmouse suddenly became very excited. “—you mean that you still have species on Earth?”

  “Why, naturally,” Vandercook answered.

  “Gracious me! And—and they aren’t interfertile?’

  A great light burst on Vandercook. Taken a bit by surprise, he glanced quickly around at Dr. Birdmouse’s friends, and gaped, and shook his head mutely.

  “Dear me, dear me!” Dr. Birdmouse fluttered and swished, and jumped up and down on his thirmling. Then he calmed down a little, and patted Vandercook’s knee. “You poor, poor creatures,” he murmured. “How dull for you, dear boy.”

  After that, Dr. Birdmouse asked a great many questions; and Vandercook told him as much as he thought he could safely impart about reproduction on Earth, being very careful, of course, to avoid hurting his feelings.

  When he had finished, Dr. Birdmouse did his best to console him. “You must try not to mind very much,” he said gently, “because someday I’m sure you’ll be civilized too. We were primitives once, before sweet Mr. Gibbon went into business. We had all kinds of species, reproducing themselves for no reason at all.”

  Vandercook asked him who sweet Mr. Gibbon had been, and Dr. Birdmouse immediately gestured at one of his friends, who handed over a heavy brown pouch he was carrying. From it, Dr. Birdmouse removed a fine three-dimensional likeness, cased in plastic, of what appeared to be a soberly spectacled, portly, striped age with a vividly purple behind.

  “Gibbon’s as close as your language can come to his name,” Dr. Birdmouse declared. “He accomplished all sorts of wonderful things, but the most marvelous of all were his medicines. The first one was called Mr. Gibbon’s Mental Invigorator, and he sold it in the dearest little square blue bottles, and the other gibbons bought it all up, and they gave it to everyone else to see what would happen. What happened, of course, was that pretty soon the gibbons weren’t the only intelligent, civilized species any more, because all the rest were as clever as they were. The lions and tigers and things stopped killing and eating their new little friends, and became civil engineers, and violinists, and insurance adjusters, and took Ph.D’s in the most interesting subjects. Everyone was so happy, dear boy.”

  For a moment, Vandercook toyed with the notion of getting a few hundred gallons of the Mental Invigorator, and giving it to the lions and tigers and things back on Earth, and, with their aid, taking over as dictator. Then he recalled that, on Eetwee, it had succeeded only in converting them all into pacifists, and he rather reluctantly went back to his more modest original plan.

  “But they weren’t half as happy as they were later on,’ Dr. Birdmouse continued, “because it was then that Mr. Gibbons’s Genetic Catalyst came on the market. It was flavored with licorice, and was ever so tasty, and it came in cute little square green bottles with a picture of dear Mr. Gibbon on the labels, so naturally everyone bought it. But the best thing about it was that it made all the species interfertile right then and there.”

  “All?” interrupted Vandercook, still slightly incredulous.

  “All but the fishes, dear boy—and they wouldn’t have been any fun. It works on the genes and the chromosomes and things so that they sort of alter each other, and adapt, and only the loveliest characteristics show up, and everything works simply beautifully no matter how different we are. Nowadays, of course, the species are completely mixed up, but still every new person who’s born has what we call dominants—two of them, like bird/mouse, for example—and these keep us reminded of the bad, bad old days. It’s all so artistic! Here on Eetwee, dear boy, the last thing we’d do would be to separate the sheep from the goats. And it’s here—” Dr. Birdmouse giggled and winked. “—that the lion really lies down with the lamb. Yes, indeed.”

  Vandercook began to see the full implications of Mr. Gibbon’s design for living. Even he was appalled. “But that isn’t possible!” he exclaimed. “I mean—after all—just the mechanical problems—”

  Dr. Birdmouse assured him that there had been no problems at all. “Mr. Gibbon’s Mental Invigorator made us all very clever,” he said simply; and then, before Vandercook could pursue the subject, he dropped it with the promise that they’d go into details later. “But first, dear boy—” He beckoned to three of his friends, who came up, walking and slithering and hopping, and seated themselves. “—I want you to meet our young Mr. Snakepig—such a sweet, sensitive person! He was shown in the National Academy, where he won a first prize. And this is Dr. Leopardsheep, who arranged him, and dear Miss Moosevulture—isn’t she splendid? A remarkable specimen—who helped make the arrangement. She’s Mrs. Leopardsheep now—”

  Young Mr. Snakepig coiled his tail in embarrassment; Dr. Leopardsheep looked stolidly proud, and his consort quite monstrously coy. And Vandercook, looking at the arrangement, saw that, while snake/pig were clearly the dominants, it was possible to detect echoes and overtones of leopard/sheep here and moose/vulture there. He realized, too, that the art of genetic arrangement on Eetwee was like flower arrangement in Japan, only more so. He therefore politely remarked that Mr. Snakepig was a real masterpiece, that the geniuses who had conceived him deserved everyone’s compliments, and that he was delighted to meet them.

  Dr. Birdmouse repeated all this in translation, and his listeners were obviously pleased. The arrangement squirmed. The geniuses snickered and shuffled their feet. Then they all started talking at once.

  “They’re simply charmed, dear boy.” Dr. Birdmouse declared, “and they’re sure you’ve made all sorts of delightful arrangements back on y
our own little planet, and they want you to tell them just how you did it, and how many prizes they won.”

  Most of Vandercook’s brief affairs had been business transactions with well-heeled admirers who—he shuddered whenever he thought of it—invariably tried either to marry him or adopt him. Even when he had stayed around long enough to find out, there had never been any little arrangements. However, he slyly decided not to mention this to his listeners, and laid claim to some dozens of offspring. These, he boasted, had won all sorts of prizes, and it was on the tip of his tongue to declare that several of them had become eagle scouts, but he decided that the term might too easily be misinterpreted. All his children, he said, were handsome, healthy and normal. At this, Miss Moosevulture wanted to know what normal might mean; and, when Dr. Birdmouse informed her, she asked him to convey her sincerest condolences to their unfortunate visitor.

  Vandercook looked at the three of them, and pictured the customers drawn up in long, profitable lines in front of the box-office. These Eetweeans, he reflected, were smart cookies; there’d have to be a bit of lobotomy to take care of that…

  Then he thanked Miss Moosevulture very courteously, and said that he was only too well aware of how dull life was on Earth, making the same old simple arrangements year after year. He explained that this was inevitable, because Man was superior to all the lower animals—present company excepted, of course. Still, he thought the two cultures could learn a great deal from each other; and that, he said, was why Earth had sent him to Eetwee—to invite an Eetweean cultural mission to return with him for a long, pleasant visit. He suggested that perhaps Dr. Birdmouse, and his three friends, and about eight or ten others would be about right for a starter.

  Dr. Birdmouse seemed to have some difficulty translating his remarks, and the reason became obvious when he had finished. They all burst out laughing. Dr. Birdmouse hopped up and down. Young Mr. Snakepig coiled and squirmed. Dr. Leopardsheep and Miss Moosevulture rocked back and forth on their thirmlings.

  “You dear, foolish, sweet boy!” Dr. Birdmouse gasped, when he had recovered enough to get a few words out. “Imagine us going to Earth! Whatever for? We have so much fun here!”

  Vandercook controlled his impatience as well as he could. He spent a great deal of his time imagining how, in the midst of the ripest young women imaginable, he would be able to sneer, not only at Hughie and all his loud friends, but at his erstwhile patrons, plastered and dyed, ravenous, tearful, and wilted. These daydreams made him feel very masculine.

  The rest of his time was devoted to long conversations with Dr. Birdmouse, and to keeping up with the Eetweean social swim—an expression which he only once had to take literally, when he was invited to dinner by an old Mr. Gullporpoise.

  The conversations annoyed Dr. Birdmouse. He found Vandercook’s descriptions of the life of an ambassador- plenipotentiary-and-envoy-extraordinary simply ridiculous. For the life of him, he said peevishly, he couldn’t see how it left any time for artistic activities. It was completely unnatural.

  And Vandercook answered that the reason it all seemed so strange to his host was that he was a man, not a birdmouse, and hadn’t had the benefit of Mr. Gibbon’s Mental Invigorator—and anyhow time was short, and he had to get home, and wouldn’t Dr. Birdmouse and his friends please do Earth a big favor and agree to come with him?

  Then Dr. Birdmouse would tell him all over again that there simply was no incentive, that they didn’t want to learn about Ezra Pound’s poetry, or nuclear fission, or The Pines of Rome, or even the comic book version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, because none of these, though probably worthy enough in themselves, had any bearings on making little arrangements.

  Always, if Vandercook started to argue, it would be time for a banquet, or a gesture-parade; and Dr. Birdmouse would tell him never to mind, that it would all work out for the best because Eetwee was really the best of all possible worlds.

  What with frustrations like these, Vandercook’s existence began to get pretty wearing. There were five banquets a day in the in-grove, and interminable rituals in the place where the gestures were made, and picnic-snacks in the out-grove between meals. There were visits to nearby cities, and leisurely strolls down their soft, latticed streets where, in the shade-squares, green spiders waved their slow fronds. And then there were tours of the art galleries and museums, which would have been more amusing if Dr. Birdmouse hadn’t insisted on introducing him to all the exhibits, and forcing him, in his role of ambassador, to invent one banal compliment after another.

  Vandercook taxed his ingenuity to the utmost to think up new arguments for a cultural mission, and got nowhere at all. Then, in the hope that the Mental Invigorator might sharpen him up, he began to hint more and more broadly that a shot of it would be welcome. His hints were ignored. Finally, during a party at Dr. Birdmouse’s house, he located it in its little blue bottle on a shelf in the bathroom, right under the wall-tub, and swallowed it at gulp. Next day he found himself able to fix a badly jammed zipper—a problem which had always defeated him in the past—with no trouble at all. Otherwise, it didn’t seem to make any difference, and he felt quite discouraged.

  He became irritable and impatient, and began to look haggard; and Dr. Birdmouse made it much worse by worrying about him. He took to fluttering sympathetically over his shoulder, regarding him oddly, and saying, “Are you well, dear boy? Are you sure you’re perfectly happy? There aren’t any bad little troubles you’d like to tell me about?”

  For a while, getting desperate, Vandercook considered delivering an ultimatum: send the mission or be attacked by a space fleet with the most modern weapons. Something, however—perhaps Mr. Gibbon’s Mental Invigorator—made him suspect that they would not be impressed. He settled instead on an ultimatum of a less violent nature.

  “I’ll be leaving this Tuesday,” he casually told Dr. Birdmouse. “I hope that by then some of you decide to come with me. But whether you do or you don’t, it’s my turn to throw a party for you—just you, and President Bearpossum and his family, and a few intimate friends, Mr. Snakepig and his mother and father, you know. It’ll be on my boat a few hours before I take off, and I’ll serve mushrooms and artichoke hearts, and champagne, and those nice chocolate creams.”

  Naturally, he said nothing whatever about locking them into the hold and then pumping in a good, strong anesthetic; but Dr. Birdmouse went into a tizzy nevertheless. “Dear, dear boy!” he said shrilly. “You can’t really mean that—not before we’ve even made up our minds. You’ve been such a problem; we’ve been thinking you over, and talking about you. And we do want to do the right thing, dear boy. We want to be sure you’re happy. So please won’t you wait a few days? I want you to have a long, cozy chat with Miss Cowturtle first. She’s as sweet as can be, and she understands all these problems—”

  After fifteen minutes of this, Vandercook agreed to have the chat with Miss Cowturtle, and said he’d defer his departure until Thursday evening. Beyond that he wouldn’t give in.

  “You’ve changed, dear boy,” Dr. Birdmouse said sadly. “I don’t suppose anyone gave you just a wee droppie of Mental Invigorator, did they? Darling Miss Moosevulture or someone like that?”

  Vandercook chuckled, and told him about the episode in his bathroom, and apologized, and said he guessed he’d just been a bit thirsty.

  And Dr. Birdmouse flicked the perspiration from his sharp little tongue, and said, “Goodness gracious! Imagine drinking that up all at once. And you didn’t dissolve! I’m so relieved, dear boy.”

  For a few minutes, Vandercook felt decidedly shaken; apparently the unsupervised use of Mr. Gibbon’s elixir had its perils. Then he manfully put such worries behind him, and concentrated on the carrying out of his plan. For the time being, this consisted of humoring the Eetweeans, and of keeping them as unsuspecting as possible.

  He had a long, very dull chat with Miss Cowtu
rtle. Dr. Birdmouse had taught her some English, and she asked Vandercook a great many questions in a dim, mooing voice, about his career, and if he felt really adjusted, and why Earth sent ambassadors out kiting around when they could have been much more useful making arrangements at home. He replied very cleverly, repeating his story with only slight variations; and he didn’t allow himself to show any annoyance at Miss Cowturtle’s unpleasant habit of retracting her horns and pulling her head back into her shell whenever she had to take notes. Whenever she did it, he simply thought of the starlets and models, and how jealous Hughie would be.

  After that, he diplomatically accepted the President’s invitation to spend his remaining few days with the Bearpossums in the Executive Mansion. He walked into the city with Dr. Birdmouse and young Mr. Snakepig. Though it lay even further from the groves than the spaceboat, the red carpets were spread every inch of the way, and even more Eetweeans were making gestures than usual. The four days that followed seemed endless. Sometimes he would corner the president, or one of the ministers, or Dr. Birdmouse himself, and ask whether they had reached a decision; and they always said they were ever so sorry, but they hadn’t had time, and there was a banquet just starting next door, and wouldn’t he like to come over?