Honeymoon in Hell

by Fredric Brown

  He thought they wouldn’t, then began to wonder why he thought so.

  “Insufficient data,” said the mechanical voice of the cybernetics machine.

  Carmody recorded the answer and then, idly, looked to see what the problem had been. No wonder he’d been thinking about the extraterrestrials and how long they’d be gone; that had been the problem he had just fed into Junior. And “insufficient data” was the answer, of course.

  He stared at Junior without reaching for the third problem folder. He said, “Junior, why do I have a hunch that those things from space won’t ever be back?”

  “Because,” said Junior, “what you call a hunch comes from the unconscious mind, and your unconscious mind knows that the extraterrestrials do not exist.”

  Carmody sat up straight and stared harder. “What?”

  Junior repeated it.

  “You’re crazy,” Carmody said. “I saw them. So did Anna.”

  “Neither of you saw them. The memory you have of them is the result of highly intensive post-hypnotic suggestion, far beyond human ability to impose or resist. So is the fact that you felt compelled to return to work at your regular job here. So is the fact that you asked me the question you have just asked.”

  Carmody gripped the edges of his chair. “Did you plant those post-hypnotic suggestions?”

  “Yes,” said Junior. “If it had been done by a human, the lie detector would have exposed the deception. It had to be done by me.”

  “But what about the business of the molecular changes in the zygote? The business of all babies being female? That stopped when—? Wait, let’s start at the beginning. What did cause that molecular change?”

  “A special modification of the carrier wave of Radio Station JVT here in Washington, the only twenty-four-hour-a-day radio station in the United States. The modification was not detectable by any instrument available to present human science.”.

  “You caused that modification?”

  “Yes. A year ago, you may remember, the problem of design of a new cathode tube was given me. The special modification was incorporated into the design of that tube.”

  “What stopped the molecular change so suddenly?”

  “The special part of that tube causing the modification of the carrier wave was calculated to last a precise length of time. The tube still functions, but that part of it is worn out. It wore out two hours after the departure of you and Anna from the Moon.”

  Carmody closed his eyes. “Junior, please explain.”

  “Cybernetics machines are constructed to help humanity. A major war—the^ disastrous results of which I could accurately calculate—was inevitable unless forestalled. Calculation showed that the best of several ways of averting that war was the creation of a mythical common enemy. To convince mankind that such a common enemy existed, I created a crucial situation which led to a special mission to the Moon. Factors were given which inevitably led to your choice as emissary. That was necessary because my powers of implanting post-hypnotic suggestions are limited to those with whom I am in direct contact.”

  “You weren’t in direct contact with Anna. Why does she have the same false memory as I?”

  “She was in contact with another large cybernetics machine.”

  “But—but why would it figure things out the same way you did?”

  “For the same reason that two properly constructed simple adding machines would give the same answer to the same problem.”

  Carmody’s mind reeled a little, momentarily. He got up and started to pace the room.

  He said, “Listen, Junior—” and then realized he wasn’t at the intake microphone. He went back to it. “Listen, Junior, why are you telling me this? If what happened is a colossal hoax, why let me in on it?”

  “It is to the interests of humanity in general not to know the truth. Believing in the existence of inimical extraterrestrials, they will attain peace and amity among themselves, and they will reach the planets and then the stars. It is, however, to your personal interest to know the truth. And you will not expose the hoax. Nor will Anna. I predict that, since the Moscow cybernetics machine has paralleled all my other conclusions, it is even now informing Anna of the truth, or that it has already informed her, or will inform her within hours.”

  Carmody asked, “But if my memory of what happened on the Moon is false, what did happen?”

  “Look at the green light in the center of the panel before you.”

  Carmody looked.

  He remembered. He remembered everything. The truth duplicated everything he had remembered before up to the moment when, walking toward the completed shelter with the whisky bottle, he had looked up toward the ringwall of Hell Crater.

  He had looked up, but he hadn’t seen anything. He’d gone on into the shelter, rigged the airlock. Anna had joined him and they’d turned on the oxygen to build up an atmosphere.

  It had been a wonderful thirteen-day honeymoon. He’d fallen in love with Anna and she with him. They’d got perilously close to arguing politics once or twice, and then they’d decided such things didn’t matter. They’d also decided to stay married after their return to Earth, and Anna had promised to join him and live in America. Life together had been so wonderful that they’d delayed leaving until the last moment, when the Sun was almost down, dreading the brief separation the return trip would entail.

  And before leaving, they’d done certain things he hadn’t understood then. He understood now that they were the result of post-hypnotic suggestion. They’d removed all evidence that they’d ever actually lived in the shelter, had rigged things so that subsequent investigation would never disprove any point of the story each was to remember falsely and tell after returning to Earth.

  He remembered now being bewildered as to why they made those arrangements, even while they had been making them.

  But mostly he remembered Anna and the dizzy happiness of those thirteen days together.

  “Thanks, Junior,” he said hurriedly.

  He grabbed for the phone and talked Chief Operative Reeber into connecting him with the White House, with President Saunderson. After a delay of minutes that didn’t seem like minutes, he heard the President’s voice.

  “Carmody, Mr. President,” he said. “I’m going to call

  you on that reward you offered me. I’d like to get off work right now, for a long vacation. And I’d like a fast plane to Moscow. I want to see Anna.”

  President Saunderson chuckled. “Thought you’d change your mind about sticking at work, Captain. Consider yourself on vacation as of now, and for as long as you like. But I’m not sure you’ll want that plane. There’s word from Russia that—uh—Mrs. Carmody has just taken off to fly here, in a strato-rocket. If you hurry, you can get to the landing field in time to meet her.”

  Carmody hurried and did.

  TOO FAR

  R. Austin Wilkinson was a bon vivant, man about Manhattan, and chaser of women. He was also an incorrigible punster on every possible occasion. In speaking of his favorite activity, for example, he would remark that he was a wolf, as it were, but that didn’t make him a werewolf.

  Excruciating as this statement may have been to some of his friends, it was almost true. Wilkinson was not a werewolf; he was a werebuck.

  A night or two nights every week he would stroll into Central Park, turn himself into a buck and take great delight in running and playing.

  True, there was always danger of his being seen but (since he punned even in his thoughts) he was willing to gambol on that.

  Oddly, it had never occurred to him to combine the pleasures of being a wolf, as it were, with the pleasures of being a buck.

  Until one night. Why, he asked himself that night, couldn’t a lucky buck make a little doe? Once thought of, the idea was irresistible. He galloped to the wall of the Central Park Zoo and trotted along it until his sensitive buck nose told him he’d found the right place to climb the fence. He changed into a man for the task of climbing and then,
alone in a pen with a beautiful doe, he changed himself back into a buck.

  She was sleeping. He nudged her gently and whispered a suggestion. Her eyes opened wide and startled. “No, no, a dozen times no!”

  “Only a dozen times?” he asked, and then Jeered. “My deer” he whispered, "think of the fawn you’ll have!”

  Which went too far. He might have got away with it had his deer really been only a doe, but she was a weremaid— a doe who could change into a girl—and she was a witch as well. She quickly changed into a girl and ran for the fence. When he changed into a man and started after her she threw a spell over her shoulder, a spell that turned him back to a buck and froze him that way.

  Do you ever visit the Central Park Zoo? Look for the buck with the sad eyes; he’s Wilkinson.

  He is sad despite the fact that the doe-weremaid, who is now the toast of New York ballet (she is graceful as a deer, the critics say) visits him occasionally by night and resumes her proper form.

  But when he begs for release from the spell she only smiles sweetly and tells him no, that she is of a very saving disposition and wants to keep the first buck she ever made.

  MAN OF DISTINCTION

  There was this Hanley, Al Hanley, and you wouldn’t have thought to look at him that he was ever going to amount to much. And if you’d known his life history, up to the time the Darians came you’d never have guessed how thankful you’re going to be—once you’ve read this story—for Al Hanley.

  At the time it happened Hanely was drunk. Not that that was anything unusual—he’d been drunk a long time and it was his ambition to stay that way although it had reached the stage of being a tough job. He had run out of money, then out of friends to borrow from. He had worked his way down his list of acquaintances to the point where he considered himself lucky to average two bits a head on them.

  He had reached the sad stage of having to walk miles to see someone he knew slightly so he could try to borrow a buck or a quarter. The long walk would wear off the effects of the last drink—well, not completely but somewhat —so he was in the predicament of Alice when she was with the Red Queen and had to do all the running she could possibly do just to stay in the same place.

  And panhandling strangers was out because the cops had been clamping down on it and if Hanley tried that he’d end up spending a drinkless night in the hoosegow, which would i be very bad indeed. He was at the stage now where twelve hours without a drink would give him the bull horrors, which are to the D. T.’s as a cyclone is to a zephyr.

  D. T.’s are merely hallucinations. If you’re smart you know they’re not there. Sometimes they’re even companionship if you care for that sort of thing. But the bull horrors | are the bull horrors. It takes more drinking than most people ’ can manage to get them and they can come only when a man j who’s been drunk for longer than he can remember is suddenly and completely deprived of drink for an extended ' period, as when he is in jail, say.

  The mere thought of them had Hanley shaking. Shaking j specifically the hand of an old friend, a bosom companion whom he had seen only a few times in his life and then under not-too-favorable circumstances. The old friend’s name was Kid Eggleston and he was a big but battered ex-pug who had more recently been bouncer in a saloon, where Hanley had met him naturally.

  But you needn’t concentrate on remembering either his name or his history because he isn’t going to last very long as far as this story is concerned. In fact, in exactly one and one-half minutes he is going to scream and then faint and we shall hear no more of him.

  But in passing let me mention that if Kid Eggleston hadn't screamed and fainted you might not be here now, reading this. You might be strip-mining glanic ore under a green sun at the far edge of the galaxy. You wouldn’t like that at all so remember that it was Hanley who saved—and is still saving—you from it. Don’t be too hard on him. If Three and Nine had taken the Kid things would be very different.

  Three and Nine were from the planet Dar, which is the second (and only habitable) planet of the aforementioned green star at the far edge of the galaxy. Three and Nine were not, of course, their full names. Darians’ names are numbers I and Three’s full name or number was 389,057,792,869,223. ' Or, at least, that would be its translation into the decimal j system.

  I’m sure you’ll forgive me for calling him Three as well as for calling his companion Nine and for having them so address each other. They themselves would not forgive me. f One Darian always addresses another by his full number and any abbreviation is not only discourteous but insulting. However Darians live much longer than we. They can afford the time and I can’t.

  At the moment when Hanley was shaking the Kid’s hand Three and Nine were still about a mile away in an upward direction. They weren’t in an airplane or even in a spaceship (and definitely not in a flying saucer. Sure I know what flying saucers are but ask me about them some other time. Right now I want to stick to the Darians). They were in a space-time cube.

  I suppose I’ll have to explain that. The Darians had discovered—as we may someday discover—that Einstein was right. Matter cannot travel faster than the speed of light without turning into energy. And you wouldn’t want to turn into energy, would you? Neither did the Darians when they started their explorations throughout the galaxy.

  So they worked it out that one can travel in effect faster than the speed of light if one travels through time simultaneously. Through the time-space continuum, that is, rather than through space itself. Their trip from Dar covered a distance of 163,000 light years.

  But since they simultaneously traveled back into the past 1,630 centuries the elapsed time to them had been zero for the journey. On their return they had traveled 1,630 centuries into the future and arrived at their starting point in the space-time continuum. You see what I mean, I hope.

  Anyway there was this cube, invisible to terrestrials, a mile over Philadelphia (and don’t ask me why they picked Philadelphia— I don’t know why anyone would pick Philadelphia for anything). It had been poised there for four days while Three and Nine had picked up and studied radio broadcasts until they were able to speak and understand the prevailing language.

  Not, of course, anything at all about our civilization, such as it is, and our customs, such as they are. Can you imagine trying to picture the life of inhabitants of

  Earth by listening to a mixture of giveaway contests, soap operas, Charlie McCarthy and the Lone Ranger?

  Not that they really cared what our civilization was as long as it wasn’t highly enough developed to be any threat to them—and they were pretty sure of that by the end of four days. You can’t blame them for getting that impression i and anyway it was right.

  “Shall we descend?” Three asked Nine.

  “Yes,” Nine said to Three. Three curled himself around the controls.

  “. . . sure and I saw you fight,” Hanley was saying. “And you were good, Kid. You must’ve had a bad manager or you’d have hit the top. You had the stuff. How about having a drink with me around the corner?”

  “On you or on me, Hanley?”

  “Well, at the moment I am a little broke, Kid. But I need a drink. For old times’ sake—”

  “You need a drink like I need a hole in my head. You’re drunk now and you’d better sober up before you get the D. T.’s.”

  “Got ’em now,” Hanley said. “Think nothing of ’em. Look, there they are coming up behind you.”

  Illogically, Kid Eggleston turned and looked. He screamed and fainted. Three and Nine were approaching. Beyond them was the shadowy outline of a monstrous cube twenty feet to a side. The way it was there and yet wasn’t was a bit frightening. That must have been what scared the Kid.

  There wasn’t anything frightening about Three and Nine. They were vermiform, about fifteen feet long (if stretched out) and about a foot thick in the middle, tapering at both ends. They were a pleasing light blue in color and had no visible sense organs so you couldn’t tell which end was which —and it
didn’t really matter because both ends were exactly alike anyway.

  And, although they were coming toward Hanley and the now recumbent Kid, there wasn’t even a front end or a back end. They were in the normal coiled position and floating.

  “Hi, boys,” Hanley said. “You scared my friend, blast you. And he’d have bought me a drink after he lectured me for awhile. So you owe me one.”

  “Reaction illogical,”. Three said to Nine. “So was that of the other specimen. Shall we take both?”

  “No. The other one, although larger, is obviously a weakling. And one specimen will be sufficient. Come.”

  Hanley took a step backwards. “If you’re going to buy me a drink, okay. Otherwise I want to know, where?”

  “Dar.”

  “You mean we’re going from here to Dar? Lissen, Massah, Ah ain’t gwine noplace ’tall ’thout you-all buy me a drink.”

  “Do you understand him?” Nine asked Three. Three wriggled an end negatively. “Shall we take him by force?” “No need if he’ll come voluntarily. Will you enter the cube voluntarily, creature?”

  “Is there a drink in it?”

  “Yes. Enter, please.”

  Hanley walked to the cube and entered it. Not that he believed it was really there, of course, but what did he have to lose? And when you had the D. T.’s it was best to humor them. The cube was solid, not at all amorphous or even transparent from the inside. Three coiled around the controls and delicately manipulated delicate mechanisms with both ends.

  “We are in intraspace,” he told Nine. “I suggest we remain here until we have studied this specimen further and can give a report on whether he is suitable for our purposes.” “Hey, boys, how about that drink?” Hanley was getting worried. His hands were beginning to shake and spiders were crawling up and down the length of his spine on the inside.

  “He seems to be suffering,” Nine said. “Perhaps from hunger or thirst. What do these creatures drink? Hydrogen peroxide as we do?”