Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Let’s try this one,” Parke said. Edsel, who had been on the verge of testing an interesting-looking three-barreled rifle, stopped.

  “I’m busy,” he said.

  “Stop playing with those toys. Let’s have a look at some real stuff.”

  Parke was standing near a squat black machine on wheels. Together they tugged it outside. Parke watched while Edsel moved the controls. A faint hum started, deep in the machine. Then a blue haze formed around it. The haze spread as Edsel manipulated the controls, until it surrounded the two men.

  “Try a blaster on it,” Parke said. Edsel picked up one of the explosive pistols and fired. The charge was absorbed by the haze. Quickly he tested three others. They couldn’t pierce the blue glow.

  “I believe,” Parke said softly, “this will stop an atomic bomb. This is a force-field.”

  Edsel turned it off and they went back inside. It was growing dark in the cave as the sun neared the horizon.

  “You know,” Edsel said, “You’re a pretty good guy, Parke. You’re O.K.”

  “Thanks,” Parke said, looking over the mass of weapons.

  “You don’t mind my cutting down Faxon, do you? He was going straight to the government.”

  “On the contrary. I approve.”

  “Swell. I figure you must be O.K. You could have killed me when I was killing Faxon.” Edsel didn’t add that it was what he would have done.

  Parke shrugged his shoulders.

  “How would you like to work on this kingdom deal with me?” Edsel asked, grinning. “I think we could swing it. Get ourselves a nice place, plenty of girls, lots of laughs. What do you think?”

  “Sure,” Parke said. “Count me in.” Edsel slapped him on the shoulder, and they went through the ranks of weapons.

  “All these are pretty obvious,” Parke said, as they reached the end of the room. “Variations on the others.”

  At the end of the room was a door. There were letters in Martian script engraved on it.

  “What’s that stuff say?” Edsel asked.

  “Something about ‘final weapons,’ ” Parke told him, squinting at the delicate tracery. “A warning to stay out.” He opened the door. Both men started to step inside, then recoiled suddenly.

  Inside was a chamber, fully three times the size of the room they had just left. And filling the great room, as far as they could see, were soldiers. Gorgeously dressed, fully armed, the soldiers were motionless, statue-like.

  They were not alive.

  There was a table by the door, and on it were three things. First there was a sphere about the size of a man’s fist, with a calibrated dial set in it. Beside that was a shining helmet. And next was a small, black box with Martian script on it.

  “Is it a burial place?” Edsel whispered, looking with awe at the strong unearthly faces of the Martian soldiery. Parke, behind him, didn’t answer.

  Edsel walked to the table and picked up the sphere. Carefully he turned the dial a single notch.

  “What do you think it’s supposed to do?” He asked Parke.

  “Do you think—” Both men gasped, and moved back.

  The lines of fighting men had moved. Men in ranks swayed, then came back to attention. But they no longer held the rigid posture of death. The ancient fighting men were alive.

  One of them, in an amazing uniform of purple and silver, came forward and bowed to Edsel.

  “Sir, your troops are ready.” Edsel was too amazed to speak.

  “How can you live after thousands of years?” Parke asked. “Are you Martians?”

  “We are the servants of the Martians,” the soldier said. Parke noticed that the soldier’s lips hadn’t moved. The man was telepathic. “Sir, we are Synthetics.”

  “Whom do you obey?” Parke asked.

  “The Activator, sir.” The Synthetic was speaking directly to Edsel, looking at the sphere in his hand. “We require no food or sleep, sir. Our only desire is to serve you, and to fight.” The soldiers in the ranks nodded approvingly.

  “Lead us into battle, sir!”

  “I sure will!” Edsel said, finally regaining his senses. “I’ll show you boys some fighting, you can bank on that!”

  The soldiers cheered him, solemnly, three times. Edsel grinned, looking at Parke.

  “What do the rest of these numbers do?” Edsel asked. But the soldier was silent. The question was evidently beyond his built-in knowledge.

  “It might activate other Synthetics,” Parke said. “There are probably more chambers underground.”

  “Brother!” Edsel shouted. “Will I lead you into battle!” Again the soldiers cheered, three solemn cheers.

  “Put them to sleep and let’s make some plans,” Parke said. Dazed, Edsel turned the switch back. The soldiers froze again into immobility.

  “Come on outside.”

  “Right.”

  “And bring that stuff with you.” Edsel picked up the shining helmet and the black box and followed Parke outside. The sun had almost disappeared now, and there were black shadows over the red land. It was bitterly cold, but neither man noticed.

  “Did you hear what they said, Parke? Did you hear it? They said I was their leader! With men like those—” He laughed at the sky. With those soldiers, those weapons, nothing could stop him. He’d really stock his land—prettiest girls in the world, and would he have a time!

  “I’m a general!” Edsel shouted, and slipped the helmet over his head. “How do I look, Parke? Don’t I look like a—” He stopped. He was hearing a voice in his ears, whispering, muttering. What was it saying?

  “. . . damned idiot, with his little dream of a kingdom. Power like this is for a man of genius, a man who can remake history. Myself!”

  “Who’s talking? That’s you, isn’t it Parke?” Edsel realized, suddenly, that the helmet allowed him to listen in on thoughts. He didn’t have time to consider what a weapon this would be for a ruler.

  Parke shot him neatly through the back with a gun he had been holding all the time.

  “What an idiot,” Parke told himself, slipping the helmet on his head. “A kingdom! All the power in the world, and he dreamed of a little kingdom!”. He glanced back at the cave.

  “With those troops—the force-field—and the weapons—I can take over the world.” He said it coldly, knowing it was a fact. He turned to go back to the cave, to activate the Synthetics, but stopped first to pick up the little black box Edsel had carried.

  Engraved on it, in flowing Martian script, was, “The Last Weapon.”

  I wonder what it could be, Parke asked himself. He had let Edsel live long enough to try out all the others; no use chancing a misfire himself. It was too bad he hadn’t lived long enough to try out this one, too.

  Of course, I really don’t need it, he told himself. He had plenty. But this might make the job a lot easier, a lot safer. Whatever it was, it was bound to be good.

  Well, he told himself, let’s see what the Martians considered their last weapon. He opened the box.

  A vapor drifted out, and Parke threw the box from him, thinking about poison gas.

  The vapor mounted, drifted haphazardly for a while, then began to coalesce. It spread, grew, and took shape.

  In a few seconds, it was complete, hovering over the box. It glimmered white in the dying light, and Parke saw that it was just a tremendous mouth, topped by a pair of unblinking eyes.

  “Ho ho,” the mouth said. “Protoplasm!” It drifted to the body of Edsel. Parke lifted a blaster and took careful aim.

  “Quiet protoplasm,” the thing said, nuzzling Edsel’s body. “I like quiet protoplasm.” It took down the body in a single gulp.

  Parke fired, blasting a ten-foot hole in the ground. The giant mouth drifted out of it, chuckling.

  “It’s been so long,” it said.

  Parke was clenching his nerves in a forged grip. He refused to let himself become panicked. Calmly he activated the force-field, forming a blue sphere around himself.

  Stil
l chuckling, the thing drifted through the blue haze.

  Parke picked up the weapon Edsel had used on Faxon, feeling the well-balanced piece swing up in his hand. He backed to one side of the force-field as the thing approached, and turned on the beam.

  The thing kept coming.

  “Die, die!” Parke screamed, his nerves breaking.

  But the thing came on, grinning broadly.

  “I like quiet protoplasm,” the thing said as its gigantic mouth converged on Parke.

  “But I also like lively protoplasm.”

  It gulped once, then drifted out the other side of the field, looking anxiously around for the millions of units of protoplasm, as there had been in the old days.

  THE ODOR OF THOUGHT

  When the first Star Science Fiction Stories was published, we presented in it an early story by a young phenomenon of the science-fiction field named Robert Sheckley. It is a measure both of the fast-moving character of the field and of the leaps-and-bounds development of this one individual author within it to be able to say that now, less than a year later, the name “Sheckley” on a magazine cover is a guarantee that readers will be attracted by his well-established talent for fresh and unusual ideas, and brilliantly incisive writing. As a first-class example of this first-class writer’s work, see——

  Leroy Cleevy’s real trouble started when he was taking Mailship 243 through the uncolonized Seergon Cluster. Before this, he had the usual problems of an interstellar mailman; an old ship, scored tubes, and faulty astrogation. But now, while he was taking line-of-direction readings, he noticed that his ship was growing uncomfortably warm.

  He sighed unhappily, switched on the refrigeration, and contacted the Postmaster at Base. He was at the extreme limit of radio contact, and the Postmaster’s voice floated in on a sea of static.

  “More trouble, Cleevy?” the Postmaster asked, in the ominous voice of a man who writes schedules and believes in them.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Cleevy said brightly. “Aside from the tubes and astrogation and wiring, everything’s fine except for the insulation and refrigeration.”

  “It’s a damned shame,” the Postmaster said, suddenly sympathetic. “I know how you feel.”

  Cleevy switched the refrigeration to FULL, wiped perspiration from his eyes, and decided that the Postmaster onlythought he knew how he felt.

  “Haven’t I asked the government for new ships over and over again?” The Postmaster laughed ruefully. “They seem to feel that I can get the mail through in any old crate.”

  At the moment, Cleevy wasn’t interested in the Postmaster’s troubles. Even with the refrigeration laboring at FULL, the ship was overheating.

  “Hang on a moment,” he said. He went to the rear of the ship, where the heat seemed to be emanating, and found that three of his tanks were filled, not with fuel, but with a bubbling white-hot slag. The fourth tank was rapidly undergoing the same change.

  Cleevy stared for a moment, turned, and sprinted to the radio.

  “No more fuel,” he said. “Catalytic action, I think. I told you we needed new tanks. I’m putting down on the first oxygen planet I can find.”

  He pulled down the Emergency Manual and looked up the Seergon Cluster. There were no colonies in the group, but the oxygen worlds had been charted for future reference. What was on them, aside from oxygen, no one knew. Cleevy expected to find out, if his ship stayed together long enough.

  “I’ll try 3-M-22,” he shouted over the mounting static.

  “Take good care of the mail,” the Postmaster howled back. “I’m sending a ship right out.”

  Cleevy told him what he could do with the mail, all twenty pounds of it. But the Postmaster had signed off by then.

  Cleevy made a good landing on 3-M-22; exceptionally good, taking into consideration the fact that his instruments were too hot to touch, his tubes were warped by heat, and the mail sack strapped to his back hampered his movements. Mailship 243 sailed in like a swan. Twenty feet above the planet’s surface it gave up and dropped like a stone.

  Cleevy held on to consciousness, although he was certain every bone in his body was broken. The sides of the ship were turning a dull red when he stumbled through the escape hatch, the mail sack still firmly strapped to his back. He staggered one hundred yards, eyes closed. Then the ship exploded, and knocked him flat on his face. He stood up, took two more steps, and passed out completely.

  When he recovered consciousness, he was lying on a little hillside, face down in tall grass. He was in a beautiful state of shock. He felt that he was detached from his body, a pure intellect floating in the air. All worries, emotions, fears, remained with his body; he was free.

  He looked around, and saw that a small animal was passing near him. It was about the size of a squirrel, but with dull green fur.

  As it came close, he saw that it had no eyes or ears.

  This didn’t surprise him. On the contrary, it seemed quite fitting. Why in hell should a squirrel have eyes or ears? Squirrels were better off not seeing the pain and torture of the world, not hearing the anguished screams of . . .

  Another animal approached, and this one was the size and shape of a timber wolf, but also colored green. Parallel evolution? It didn’t matter in the total scheme of things, he decided. This one, too, was eyeless and earless. But it had a magnificent set of teeth.

  Cleevy watched with only faint interest. What does a pure intellect care for wolves and squirrels, eyeless or otherwise? He observed that the squirrel had frozen, not more than five feet from the wolf. The wolf approached slowly. Then, not three feet away, he seemed to lose the scent. He shook his head and turned a slow circle. When he moved forward again, he wasn’t going in the right direction.

  The blind hunt the blind, Cleevy told himself, and it seemed a deep and eternal truth. As he watched, the squirrel quivered; the wolf whirled, pounced, and devoured it in three gulps.

  What large teeth wolves have, Cleevy thought. Instantly the eyeless wolf whirled and faced him.

  Now he’s going to eat me, Cleevy thought. It amused him to realize that he was the first human to be eaten on this planet.

  The wolf was snarling in his face when Cleevy passed out again.

  It was evening when he recovered. Long shadows had formed over the land, and the sun was low in the sky. Cleevy sat up and flexed his arms and legs experimentally. Nothing was broken.

  He got up on one knee, groggy, but in possession of his senses. What had happened? He remembered the crash as though it were a thousand years ago. The ship had burned, he had walked away and fainted. After that he had met a wolf and a squirrel.

  He climbed unsteadily to his feet and looked around. He must have dreamed that last part. If there had been a wolf, he would have been killed.

  Glancing down at his feet, he saw the squirrel’s green tail, and a little farther away, its head.

  He tried desperately to think. So there had been a wolf, and a hungry one. If he expected to survive until the rescue ship came, he had to find out exactly what had happened, and why.

  Neither animal had eyes or ears. How did they track each other? Smell? If so, why did the wolf have so much trouble finding the squirrel?

  He heard a low growl, and turned. There, not fifty feet away, was something that looked like a panther. A yellow-brown, eyeless, earless panther.

  Damned menagerie, Cleevy thought, and crouched down in the tall grass. This planet was rushing him along too fast. He needed time to think. How did these animals operate? Instead of sight, did they have a sense of location?

  The panther began to move away.

  Cleevy breathed a little easier. Perhaps, if he stayed out of sight, the panther . . .

  As soon as he thought the wordpanther, the beast turned in his direction.

  What have I done, Cleevy asked himself, burrowing deeper into the grass. He can’t smell me or see me or hear me. All I did was decide to stay out of his way . . .

  Head high, the panther began to pace t
oward him.

  That did it. Without eyes or ears, there was only one way the beast could have detected him.

  It had to be telepathic!

  To test this theory, he thought the word panther, identifying it automatically with the animal that was approaching him. The panther roared furiously, and shortened the distance between them.

  In a fraction of a second, Cleevy understood a lot of things. The wolf had been tracking the squirrel by telepathy. The squirrel had frozen—perhaps it had even stopped thinking! The wolf had been thrown off the scent—until the squirrel wasn’t able to keep from thinking any longer.

  In that case, why hadn’t the wolf attacked him while he was unconscious? Perhaps he had stopped thinking—or at least, stopped thinking on a wave length that the wolf could receive. Probably there was more to it than that.

  Right now, his problem was thepanther.

  The beast roared again. It was only thirty feet away, and closing the distance rapidly.

  All he had to do, Cleevy thought, was not to think of—was to think of something else. In that way, perhaps the—well, perhaps it would lose the scent. He started to think about all the girls he had ever known, in painstaking detail.

  The panther stopped and pawed the ground doubtfully.

  Cleevy went on thinking; about girls, and ships, and planets, and girls, and ships, and everything but panthers . . .

  The panther advanced another five feet.

  Damn it, he thought, how do younot think of something? You think furiously about stones and rocks and people and places and things, but your mind always returns to—but you ignore that, and concentrate on your sainted grandmother, your drunken old father, the bruises on your right leg (count them. Eight. Count them again. Still eight.) And now you glance up, casually, seeing, but not really recognizing the—anyhow, it’s still advancing.