Sam Jones returned and said to Ben, “It’s all right. All finished. Trivial alterations. Maybe they could have gone along for the rest of their lives on wigs and pads—but we don’t tell them that, do we? And anyway now they won’t worry. Healy Jones, the older man, for instance. Very bright fellow, but it seems he was working as a snathehandler’s apprentice. Afraid to take the master’s test, afraid to change his line of work—might be noticed and questioned.” He heaved a tremendous sigh and poured himself a tremendous slug of the green fluid. Ben Jones gave Ross a cynical wink and shrug.
“Look at my hand!” the surgeon exploded. It was shaking. He gulped the Jones Juice and poured himself another. “Nothing physical,” he said. “Neurosis. The subconscious coldly counting up my crimes and coldly imposing and executing sentence. I’m a surgeon, so my hand trembles.” He drank. “Jones is not mocked,” he said broodingly. “Jones is not mocked. Think those three are going to be happy? Think they’re going to be folded in Jones’s bosom just because they’re Joneses externally now? No. Watch them five years, ten years. Maybe they’ll sentence themselves to be hateful, vitriol-tempered lice and wonder why nobody loves them. Maybe they’ll sentence themselves to penal servitude and wonder why everybody pushes them around, why they haven’t the guts to hit back—Jones is not mocked,” he told the jug of green liquid, ignoring the others, and drank again.
Ben Jones said softly to them, “Come on,” and led them into an adjoining room furnished with sleeping pads. He said apologetically, “The doctor’s nerves are shot tonight. Trouble is, he’s too Jonesfearing. Me, I can take it or leave it alone.” His laugh had a little too much bravado in it. “There’s a little bit of non Jones in the best of us, I always say—but not to the doctor. And not when he’s hitting the Jones Juice.” He shrugged cynically and said, “What the hell? L-sub-T equals L-sub-zero e to the minus T-over-two-N.”
Ross had him by his shirt frill. “Say that again!”
Ben Jones shoved him away. “What’s the matter with you, boy?”
“I’m sorry. Would you please repeat that formula? What you said?” he hastily amended when the word “formula” obviously failed to register.
Ben Jones repeated the formula wonderingly.
“What does it mean?” Ross demanded. “I’ve been chasing the damned thing across the Galaxy.” He hastily filled Ben Jones in on its previous appearances.
“Well,” Ben Jones said, “it means what it says, of course. I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” He studied their faces and added uncertainly, “Isn’t it?”
“What does it mean to you, Ben?” Ross asked softly. “Why, what it means to anybody, pal. Right’s right, wrong’s wrong, Jones is in his Heaven, conform or else—it means morality, man. What else could it mean?”
Ross then proceeded to make an unmannerly nuisance of himself. He grilled their involuntary host mercilessly, shrugging aside all attempted diversions of the talk into what they were going to do with the three visitors. He ignored protestations that Ben was no Jonesologist, Jones knew, and drilled in. By the time Ben Jones exploded, stamped out, and locked them in for the night, he had elicited the following:
Everybody knew the formula; they were taught it at their mother’s knee. It was recited antiphonally before and after Jones Meetings. Ben knew it was right, of course, and some day he was going to get right with Jones and live up to it, but not just yet, because if he didn’t make money in the prosthesis racket somebody else would. The formula was everywhere: on the lintels of public buildings, hanging in classrooms, and on the bedroom walls of the most Jones-fearing old ladies where they could see its comforting message last thing at night and first thing in the morning.
From a book? Well yes, he guessed so; sure it was in the Book of Joneses, but who could say whether that was where it started. Most people thought it was just Handed Down. Way back during the war—what war? The War of the Joneses, of course! Anyway, in the war the last of the holdouts against the formula had been destroyed. No, he didn’t know anything about the war. No, not his grandfather’s time or his grandfather’s grandfather’s time. Long ago, that war was. Maybe there were records in the old museum in Earth. The city, of course, not some damn planet he never heard of!
After Ben Jones slammed out and the room darkened Helena and Bernie exchanged comforting words from adjoining sleeping pads, to Ross’s intense displeasure. They fell asleep and at last he fell asleep still churning over the problem.
When he woke he found that evidently the doctor, Sam Jones, had stumbled in during the night and passed out on the pad next to him. The white frill was stiff and green with dried Jones Juice. Helena and Bernie still slept. He tried the door.
It was locked, but there was a tantalizing hum of voices beyond it. He put his ear to the cold steel. The fruits of his eavesdropping were scanty but alarming.
“—cut ‘em down mumble found someplace mumble.”
“—mumble never killed yet mumble prosthesis racket.”
“—Jones’s sake, it’s their lives or mumble mumble time to get scared mumble Peepeece are you?”
And then apparently the speakers moved out of range. Ross was cold with sweat, and there was an abnormal hollow in the pit of his stomach that breakfast would never fill.
He spun around as a Jones voice croaked painfully: “Hear anything good, stranger?”
The surgeon, looking very dilapidated, was sitting up and regarding him through bloodshot eyes. “They’re talking about killing us,” he said shortly.
“They are not really intelligent,” Sam Jones said wearily. “They were just bright enough to entangle me to the point where I had to work for them—and to keep me copiously supplied with that green stuff I haven’t the intelligence to use in moderation.”
Ross said, “How’d you like to break away from this?” Sam Jones mutely extended his hand. It trembled like a leaf. He said, “For his own inscrutable reason, Jones grants me steadiness of hand during an operation designed to frustrate his grand design. He then overwhelms me with a titanic thirst for oblivion to my shame.”
“There’s no design,” Ross said. “Or if there is, luckily this planet is a trifling part of it. I have never heard of such arrogant pip-squeakery in my life. You flyspecks in your shabby corner of the Galaxy think your own fouled-up mess is the pattern of universal life. You’re wrong! I’ve seen life elsewhere and I know it isn’t.”
The doctor passed his trembling hand over his eyes. “Jones is not mocked,” he croaked. “L-sub-T equals L-sub-zero e to the minus T-over-two-N. You can’t fight that, stranger. You can’t fight that.”
Ross realized he was silently crying behind his covering hand.
He said, much more gently, “It’s nothing you have to fight. It’s something you have to understand.” He told Sam Jones of his two previous encounters with the formula. The doctor looked lip, his eyes full of wonder. Ross said, “How would you like to be free, doctor? Free of your shaking hands, free of your guilt, free of these killers? How would you like to know the truth?”
The doctor said faintly, “If I dared—”
Ross pressed, “The museum in Earth city. Get me records, facts, anything about the War of the Joneses. If there’s any meaning to the formula it’ll have to lie in that. It seems there was a battle about its interpretation and we know who won. Let’s find out what the other side said. Get me in there.” He was thinking of the disgraceful war of fanaticism that had marred his own planet’s history. The doctor’s weak Jones jaw was firming up, though his eyes were still haunted. “Stall your killer friends, doctor,” Ross urged. “Tell them you can use us for experiments that’ll cut the cost of the operations. That ought to bring them around. And get me the facts!”
“To be free,” the doctor said wistfully. He said after a pause, “I’ll try. But—” And rapped a code series on the steel door.
• • • • Eleven
The doctor said with weak belligerence, “Who do you think I am? Jones? I had to leave your f
riends behind. I had enough trouble getting those hoods to let me take you along. After all, I’m not a miracle-worker.”
Ross said sullenly, “Okay, okay.” He glowered out of the car window and spat out a tendril of red hair that had come loose from the fringe surrounding his mouth. The trouble with a false beard was that it itched, worse than the real article, worse than any torment Ross had ever known. But at least Ross, externally and at extreme range, was enough of a Jones to pass a casual glance.
And what would Helena and Bernie be thinking now? He hadn’t had a chance to whisper to them; they’d been just waking when the doctor dragged him out. Ross put that problem out of his mind; there were problems enough right on hand.
He cautiously felt his red wig to see if it was on straight. The doctor didn’t seem to look away from his driving, but he said: “Leave it alone. That’s the first thing the Peepeece look for, somebody who obviously isn’t sure if his hair is still on or not. It won’t come off.”
“Umph,” said Ross. The road was getting worse, it seemed; they had passed no houses for several miles now. They rounded a rutted turn, and ahead was a sign.
STOP!
RESTRICTED AREA AHEAD
WARNING: THIS ROAD IS MINED
NO TRAFFIC ALLOWED! DETOUR
Trespassers beyond this point will be shot without further notice.
Decree #404-5
People’s Commissariat of Culture and Solidarity.
The doctor spat contemptuously out the window and roared past. Ross said, “Hey!”
“Oh, relax,” said the doctor. “That’s just the Cultureniks. Nobody pays any attention to them:
Ross swallowed and sat as lightly as possible on the green leather cushion of the car. By the time they had gone a quarter of a mile, he began to feel a little reassured that the doctor knew what he was talking about. Then the doctor swerved sharply to miss a rusted hulk and almost skidded off the road. He swore and manhandled the wheel until they were back on the straightway.
White lipped, Ross asked, “What was that?”
“Car,” grunted the doctor. “Hit a mine. Silly fools!”
Ross squawked, “But you said—”
“Shut up,” the doctor ordered tensely. “That was weeks ago; they haven’t had a chance to lay new mines since then.” Pause. “I hope.”
The car roared on. Ross closed his eyes, limply abandoning himself to what was in store. But if it was bad to see what was going on, the roaring, swerving, jolting race was ten times worse with his eyes closed. He opened them again in time to see another sign flash past, gone before he could read it. “What was that?” he demanded.
“What’s the difference?” the doctor grunted. “Want to go back?”
“Well, no—” Ross thought for a moment. “Do we have to go this fast, though?”
“If we want to get there. Crossed a Peepeece radar screen ten miles back; they’ll be chasing us by now.”
“Oh, I see,” Ross said weakly. “Look, Doc, tell me one thing—why do they make this place so hard to get to?”
“Tabu area,” the doctor said shortly. “Not allowed.”
“Why not allowed?”
“Because it’s not allowed. Don’t want people poking through the old records.”
“Why not just put the old records in a safe place—or burn the damn things up?”
“Because they didn’t, that’s why. Shut up! Expect me to tell you why the Peepeece do anything? They don’t know themselves. It isn’t Jonesly to destroy, I guess.”
Ross shut up. He leaned against the window, letting the air rush over his head. They were moving through forest, purplish squatty trees with long, rustling leaves. The sky overhead was crisp and cool looking; it was still early morning.
Ross exhaled a long breath. Back on Halsey’s Planet he would be getting up about now, rising out of a soft, warm bed, taking his leisurely time about breakfast, climbing into a comfortable car to make his way to the spaceport where he was safe, respected, and at home . . . Damn Haarland!
At least, Ross thought, some sort of a pattern was beginning to shape up. The planets were going out of communication each for its own reason; but wasn’t there a basic reason-for-the-reasons that was the same in each case? Wasn’t there some overall design—some explanation that covered all the facts, pointed to a way out?
He sat up straight as they approached a string of little signs. He scanned them worriedly as they rolled past.
“Workers, Peasants, Joneses all—”
“By these presents know ye—”
“If you don’t stop in spite of all—”
“THIS to hell will blow ye!”
“Duck!” the doctor yelled, crouching down in the seat and guiding the careening car with one hand. Ross, startled, followed his example, but not before he saw that ‘THIS’ was an automatic, radar-actuated rapid-fire gun mounted a few yards past the last sign. There was a stuttering roar from the gun and a splatter of metal against the armored sides of the car. The doctor sat up again as soon as the burst had hit; evidently only one was to be feared. “Yah, yah,” he jeered at the absent builders of the gun. “Lousy fifty-millimeters can’t punch their way through a tin can!”
Ross, gasping, got up just in time to see the last sign in the series:
“By order of People’s Democratic Council
of Arts & Sciences, Small Arms Division.”
He said wildly, “They can’t even write a poem properly. Did you notice the first and third line rhyme-words?”
Surprisingly, the doctor glanced at him and laughed with a note of respect. He took a hand off the wheel to pat Ross on the shoulder. “You’ll make a Jones yet, my boy,” he promised. “Don’t worry about these things. I told you this place was restricted. This stuff isn’t worth bothering about.”
Ross found that he was able to smile. There was a point, he realized with astonishment, where courage came easily; it was the only thing left. He sat up straighter and breathed the air more deeply. Then it happened.
They rounded another curve; the doctor slammed on the brakes. Suspended overhead across the road was a single big sign:
THAT’S ALL JONES!
—People’s Police
The car bucked, slewed around, and skidded. The wheels locked, but not in time to keep it from sliding into the pit, road wide and four feet deep, that was dug in front of them.
Ross heard the axles crack and the tires blow; but the springing of the car was equal to the challenge. He was jarred clear in the air and tumbled to the floor in a heap; but no bones were broken.
Painfully he pushed the door open and crawled out. The doctor limped after and the two of them stood on the edge of the pit, looking at the ruin of their car.
“That one,” said the doctor, “was worth bothering about.” He motioned Ross to silence and cocked an ear. Was there a distant roaring sound, like another car following on the road they had traveled? Ross wasn’t sure; but the doctor’s expression convinced him. “Peepeece,” he said briefly. “From here on it’s on foot. They won’t follow beyond here; but let’s get out of sight. They’ll by-Jones shoot beyond here if they see us!”
Ross stared unbelievingly. “This is Earth?” he asked.
The doctor fanned himself and blew. “That’s it,” he said, looking around curiously. “Heard a lot about it, but I’ve never been here before,” he explained. “Funny-looking, isn’t t? He nudged Ross, indicating a shattered concrete structure beside them on the road.
“Notice that toll booth?” he whispered slyly. “Eight sides!”
Ross said wearily, “Yes, mighty funny! Look, Doc, why don’t you sort of wander around by yourself for a while? That big thing up ahead is the museum you were talking about, isn’t it?”
The doctor squinted. His eyes were unnaturally bright, and his breathing was fast, but he was making an attempt to seem casual in the presence of these manifold obscenities of design. He licked his lips. “Round pillars,” he marveled. “Why, yes, I think th
at’s the museum. You go on up there, like you say. I’ll, uh, sort of see what there is to see. Jones, yes!” He staggered off, staring from ribald curbing to scatological wall in an orgy of prurience.
Ross sighed and walked through the deserted, weed-grown streets to the stone building that bore on its cracked lintel the one surviving word, “Earth”. This was all wrong, he was almost certain; Earth had to be a planet, not a city. But still . . . The museum had to have the answers.
On its moldering double doors was a large lead seal. He read: “Surplus Information Repository. Access denied to unauthorized personnel.” But the seal had been forced by somebody; one of the doors swung free, creaking.
Ross invoked the forcer of the door. If he could do it . . . He went in and stumbled over a skeleton, presumably that of the last entrant. The skull had been crushed by a falling beam. There was some sort of mechanism involved—a trigger, a spring, a release hook. All had rusted badly, and the spring had lost its tension over the years. A century? Two? Five? Ross prayed that any similar mantraps had likewise rusted solid, and cautiously inched through the dismal hall of the place, ready for a backward leap at the first whisper of a concealed mechanism in action.
It was unnecessary. The place was—dead.
Exploring room after room, he realized slowly that he was stripping off history in successive layers. The first had been the booby-trapped road, lackadaisically planned to ensure that mere inquisitiveness would be discouraged. There had been no real denial of access, for there was almost no possibility that anybody would care to visit the place.
Next, the seal and the mantraps. An earlier period. Somebody had once said: “This episode is closed. This history is determined. We have all reached agreement. Only a dangerous or frivolous meddler would seek to rake over these dead ashes.”
And then, prying into the museum, Ross found the era during which agreement had been reached, daring which it still was necessary to insist and demonstrate and cajole.
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