by Anthology
“Mars is not for us. We cannot live here normally; our scientific researches have proved fruitless; and we maintain an inert, bored garrison only because our planetary ego cannot face facts and surrender the symbol of our conquest of space. These other men can live here, perhaps fruitfully, to the glory of God and eventually to the good of our own world as well, as two suitably populated planets come to know each other. You were right; I cannot curse men.”
“Gentlemen!”
Deftly Acosta reached down and switched off the telecom. “You agree, Mule?”
“I . . . I . . . I guess I drive back now, Chaim?”
“Of course not. Do you think I want to face Fassbander now? You drive on. At once. Up to the top of the rise. Or haven’t you yet remembered the rest of the story of Balaam? He didn’t stop at refusing to curse his fellow children of God. Not Balaam.
“He blessed them.”
Mule Malloy had remembered that. He had remembered more, too. The phonograph needle had coursed through the grooves of Bible study on up to the thirty-first chapter of Numbers with its brief epilog to the story of Balaam:
So Moses ordered a muster of men sufficient to wreak the Lord’s vengeance on the Madianites . . . All the menfolk they killed, the chiefs of the tribe . . . Balaam, too, the son of Beor, they put to the sword.
He looked at the tense face of Chaim Acosta, where exultation and resignation blended as they must in a man who knows at last the pattern of his life, and realized that Chaim’s memory, too, went as far as the thirty-first chapter.
And there isn’t a word in the Bible as to what became of the ass, thought Mule Malloy, and started the bleep up the rise.
H.L. GOLD
9
MAN OF PARTS
H.L. Gold, a dominating figure in modern science fiction, is editor of Galaxy, one of the finest as well as most widely circulated magazines in this publishing field. In his long and successful career he has developed many of the so-called “name” writers of science fiction and has been an important factor in what has been a long but triumphant struggle for positive writing and publishing in this widely growing market. In his own creative writing, Gold has evidenced the same keen talents for story and character development— he is one of the most capable writers of science fiction now being published.
In the past, Gold, as writer, has left space travel to others, preferring to concentrate largely on the intensely personal type of “problem” story, but here we are fortunate in being able to present him in an entirely new departure. Here the cosmic, which until now he has eliminated from his writing because of his concentration on the difficulties of individuals, becomes an essential part of his fabric.
Certainly his protagonist here has a serious personal problem (you’ll soon be sympathizing with him), but in presenting this problem Gold has created an astonishing new world amongst the stars. And he peoples this new planet with a fantastically wonderful race of very reasonable—well, beings, creatures—call them what you will, though Gold calls them Dorfellows. They have cultural patterns, personal habits, and metabolic processes the like of which have never before been presented, as far as we can determine.
This absolute originality of both character and scene is typical of H.L. Gold, and for readers, writers, and editors of science fiction, we think “Man of Parts,” chosen for our closing cadence, should strike a note of both virtuosity and challenge.
9
MAN OF PARTS
THERE WASN’T A TRACE OF AMNESIA OR CONFUSION WHEN Major Hugh Savold, of the Fourth Earth Expedition against Vega, opened his eyes in the hospital. He knew exactly who he was, where he was, and how he had gotten there.
His name was Gam Nex Biad.
He was a native of the planet named Dorfel.
He had been killed in a mining accident far underground.
The answers were preposterous and they terrified Major Savold. Had he gone insane? He must have, for his arms were pinned tight in a restraining sheet. And his mouth was full of bits of rock.
Savold screamed and wrenched around on the flat, comfortable boulder on which he had been nibbling. He spat out the rock fragments that tasted—nutritious.
Shaking, Savold recoiled from something even more frightful than the wrong name, wrong birthplace, wrong accident, and shockingly wrong food.
A living awl was watching him solicitiously. It was as tall as himself, had a pointed spiral drill for a head, three knee-action arms ending in horn spades, two below them with numerous sensitive cilia, a row of socketed bulbs down its front, and it stood on a nervously bouncing bedspring of a leg.
Savold was revolted and tense with panic. He had never in his life seen a creature like this.
It was Surgeon Trink, whom he had known since infancy.
“Do not be distressed,” glowed the surgeon’s kindly lights. “You are everything you think you are.”
“But that’s impossible! I’m an Earthman and my name is Major Hugh Savold!”
“Of course.”
“Then I can’t be Gam Nex Biad, a native of Dorfel!”
“But you are.”
“I’m not!” shouted Savold. “I was in a one-man space scout. I sneaked past the Vegan cordon and dropped the spore-bomb, the only one that ever got through. The Vegans burned my fuel and engine sections full of holes. I escaped, but I couldn’t make it back to Earth. I found a planet that was pockmarked worse than our moon. I was afraid it had no atmosphere, but it did. I crash-landed.” He shuddered. “It was more of a crash than a landing.”
Surgeon Trink brightened joyfully, “Excellent! There seems to be no impairment of memory at all.”
“No?” Savold yelled in terror. Then how is it I remember being killed in a mining accident? I was drilling through good hard mineral ore, spinning at a fine rate, my head soothingly warm as it gouged into the tasty rock, my spades pushing back the crushed ore, and I crashed right out into a fault . . .”
“Soft shale,” the surgeon explained, dimming with sympathy. “You were spinning too fast to sense the difference in density ahead of you. It was an unfortunate accident. We were all very sad.”
“And I was killed,” said Savold, horrified. “Twice!”
“Oh, no. Only once. You were badly damaged when your machine crashed, but you were not killed. We were able to repair you.”
Savold felt fear swarm through him, driving his ghastly thoughts into a quaking corner. He looked down at his body, knowing he couldn’t see it, that it was wrapped tightly in a long sheet. He had never seen material like this.
He recognized it instantly as asbestos cloth.
There was a row of holes down the front. Savold screamed in horror. The socketed bulbs lit up in a deafening glare.
“Please don’t be afraid!” The surgeon bounced over concernedly, broke open a large mica capsule, and splashed its contents on Savold’s head and face. “I know it’s a shock, but there’s no cause for alarm. You’re not in danger, I assure you.”
Savold found himself quieting down, his panic diminishing. No, it wasn’t the surgeon’s gentle, reassuring glow that was responsible. It was the liquid he was covered with. A sedative of some sort, it eased the constriction of his brain, relaxed his facial muscles, dribbled comfortingly into his mouth. Half of him recognized the heavy odor and the other half identified the taste.
It was lubricating oil.
As a lubricant, it soothed him. But it was also a coolant, for it cooled off his fright and disgust and let him think again.
“Better?” asked Surgeon Trink hopefully.
“Yes, I’m calmer now,” Savold said, and noted first that his voice sounded quieter, and second that it wasn’t his voice—he was communicating by glows and blinks of his row of bulbs, which, as he talked, gave off a cold light like that of fireflies. “I think I can figure it out. I’m Major Hugh Savold. I crashed and was injured. You gave me the body of a . . .” he thought about the name and realized that he didn’t know it, yet he found it immediately, “. .
. a Dorfellow, didn’t you?”
“Not the whole body,” the surgeon replied, glimmering with confidence again as his bedside manner returned. “Just the parts that were in need of replacement.”
Savold was revolted, but the sedative effect of the lubricating oil kept his feelings under control. He tried to nod in understanding. He couldn’t. Either he had an unbelievably stiff neck . . . or no neck whatever.
“Something like our bone, limb, and organ banks,” he said. “How much of me is Gam Nex Biad?”
“Quite a lot, I’m afraid.” The surgeon listed the parts, which came through to Savold as if he were listening to a simultaneous translation: from Surgeon Trink to Gam Nex Biad to him. They were all equivalents, of course, but they amounted to a large portion of his brain, skull, chest, internal and reproductive organs, mid-section, and legs.
“Then what’s left of me?” Savold cried in dismay.
“Why, part of your brain—a very considerable part, I’m proud to say. Oh, and your arms. Some things weren’t badly injured, but it seemed better to make substitutions. The digestive and circulatory system, for instance. Yours were adapted to foods and fluids that aren’t available on Dorfel. Now you can get your sustenance directly from the minerals and metals of the planet, just as we do. If I hadn’t, your life would have been saved, but you would have starved to death.”
“Let me up,” said Savold in alarm. “I want to see what I look like.”
The surgeon looked worried again. He used another capsule of oil on Savold before removing the sheet.
Savold stared down at himself and felt revulsion trying to rise. But there was nowhere for it to go and it couldn’t have gotten past the oil if there had been. He swayed sickly on his bedspring leg, petrified at the sight of himself.
He looked quite handsome, he had to admit—Gam Nex Biad had always been considered one of the most crashing bores on Dorfel, capable of taking an enormous leap on his magnificently wiry leg, landing exactly on the point of his head with a swift spin that would bury him out of sight within instants in even the hardest rock. His knee-action arms were splendidly flinty; he knew they had been repaired with some other miner’s remains, and they could whirl him through a self-drilled tunnel with wonderful speed, while the spade hands could shovel back ore as fast as he could dig it out. He was as good as new . . . except for the disgustingly soft, purposeless arms.
The knowledge of function and custom was there, and the reaction to the human arms, and they made explanation unnecessary, just as understanding of the firefly language had been there without his awareness. But the emotions were Savold’s and they drove him to say fiercely, “You didn’t have to change me altogether. You could have just saved my life so I could fix my ship and get back . . .” He paused abruptly and would have gasped if he had been able to. “Good Lord! Earth Command doesn’t even know I got the bomb through! If they act fast, they can land without a bit of opposition!” He spread all his arms—the two human ones, the three with knee-action and spades, the two with the sensitive cilia—and stared at them. “And I have a girl back on Earth . . .”
Surgeon Trink glowed sympathetically and flashed with pride. “Your mission seems important somehow, though its meaning escaped me. However, we have repaired your machine . . .”
“You have?” Savold interrupted eagerly.
“Indeed, yes. It should work better than before.” The surgeon flickered modestly. “We do have some engineering skill, you know.”
The Gam Nex Biad of Savold did know. There were the underground ore smelters and the oil refineries and the giant metal awls that drilled out rock food for the manufacturing centers, where miners alone could not keep up with the demand, and the communicators that sent their signals clear around the planet through the substrata of rock, and more, much more. This, insisted Gam Nex Biad proudly, was a civilization, and Major Hugh Savold, sharing his knowledge, had to admit that it certainly was.
“I can take right off, then?” Savold flared excitedly.
“There is a problem first,” glowed the surgeon in some doubt. “You mention a ‘girl’ on this place you call ‘Earth.’ I gather it is a person of the opposite sex.”
“As opposite as anybody can get. Or was,” Savold added moodily. “But we have limb and organ banks back on Earth. The doctors there can do a repair job. It’s a damned big one, I know, but they can handle it. I’m not so sure I like carrying Gam Nex Biad around with me for life, though. Maybe they can take him and . .
“Please,” Surgeon Trink cut in with anxious blinkings. “There is a matter to be settled. When you refer to the ‘girl,’ you do not specify that she is your mate. You have not been selected for each other yet?”
“Selected?” repeated Savold blankly, but Gam Nex Biad supplied the answer—the equivalent of marriage, the mates chosen by experts on genetics, the choice being determined by desired transmittable aptitudes. “No, we were just going together. We were not mates, but we intended to be as soon as I got back. That’s the other reason I have to return in a hurry. I appreciate all you’ve done, but I really must . . .”
“Wait,” the surgeon ordered.
He drew an asbestos curtain that covered part of a wall. Savold saw an opening in the rock of the hospital, a hole-door through which bounced half a dozen little Dorfellows and one big one . . . Straight at him. He felt what would have been his heart leap into what would have been his chest if he had had either. But he couldn’t even get angry or shocked or nauseated; the lubricating oil cooled off all his emotions.
The little creatures were all afire with childish joy. The big one sparkled happily.
“Father!” blinked the children.
“Mate!” added Prad Fim Biad in a delighted exclamation point.
“You see,” said the surgeon to Savold, who was shrinking back, “you already have a mate and a family.”
It was only natural that a board of surgeons should have tried to cope with Savold’s violent reaction. He had fought furiously against being saddled with an alien family. Even constant saturation with lubricating oil couldn’t keep that rebellion from boiling over.
On Earth, of course, he would have been given immediate psycho-therapy, but there wasn’t anything of the sort here. Dorfellows were too granitic physically and psychologically to need medical or psychiatric doctors. A job well done and a family well raised—that was the extent of their emotionalism. Savold’s feelings, rage and resentment and a violent desire to escape, were completely beyond their understanding. He discovered that as he angrily watched the glittering debate.
The board quickly determined that Surgeon Trink had been correct in adapting Savold to the Dorfel way of life. Savold objected that the adaptation need not have been so thorough, but he had to admit that, since they couldn’t have kept him fed any other way, Surgeon Trink had done his best in an emergency.
The surgeon was willing to accept blame for having introduced Savold so bluntly to his family, but the board absolved him—none of them had had any experience in dealing with an Earth mentality. A Dorfellow would have accepted the fact, as others with amnesia caused by accident had done. Surgeon Trink had had no reason to think Savold would not have done the same. Savold cleared the surgeon entirely by admitting that the memory was there, but, like all the other memories of Gam Nex Biad’s, had been activated only when the situation came up. The board had no trouble getting Savold to agree that the memory would have returned sooner or later, no matter how Surgeon Trink handled the introduction, and that the reaction would have been just as violent.
“And now,” gleamed the oldest surgeon on the board, “the problem is how to help our new—and restored—brother adjust to life on this world.”
“That isn’t the problem at all!” Savold flared savagely. “I have to get back to Earth and tell them I dropped the bomb and they can land safely. And there’s the girl I mentioned. I want to marry her—become her mate, I mean.”
“You want to become her mate?” the oldest surge
on blinked in bewilderment. “It is your decision?”
“Well, hers, too.”
“You mean you did the selecting yourselves? Nobody chose for you?” Savold attempted to explain, but puzzled glimmers and Gam Nex Biad’s confusion made him state resignedly, “Our customs are different. We choose our own mates.” He thought of adding that marriages were arranged in some parts of the world, but that would only have increased their baffled lack of understanding.
“And how many mates can an individual have?” asked a surgeon.
“Where I come from, one.”
“The individual’s responsibility, then, is to the family he has. Correct?”
“Of course.”
“Well,” said the oldest surgeon, “the situation is perfectly clear. You have a family—Prad Fim Biad and the children.”
“They’re not my family,” Savold objected. “They’re Gam Nex Biad’s and he’s dead.”
“We respect your customs. It is only fair that you respect ours. If you had had a family where you come from, there would have been a question of legality, in view of the fact that you could not care for them simultaneously. But you have none and there is no such question.”
“Customs? Legality?” asked Savold, feeling as lost as they had in trying to comprehend an alien society.
“A rebuilt Dorfellow,” the oldest surgeon said, “is required to assume the obligations of whatever major parts went into his reconstruction. You are almost entirely made up of the remains of Gam Nex Biad, so it is only right that his mate and children should be yours.”
“I won’t do it!” Savold protested. “I demand the right to appeal.”