Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  Ellis hesitated, wondering what he should say.

  “Would you like to head a museum project for Earth? A monument to your great people?

  Was that his mission, Ellis wondered? He shook his head.

  “I am a doctor, sir. A psychiatrist. Perhaps I could help in that respect.”

  “But you don’t know our people,” the old leader said concernedly. “It would take you a lifetime to learn the nature of our tensions and problems. To learn them in sufficient intimacy to enable you to practice.”

  “True,” Ellis said. “But our races are alike. Our civilizations have taken like courses. Since I represent a more advanced psychological tradition, my methods might be of help to your doctors—”

  “Of course, Dr. Ellis. I must not make the mistake of underestimating a species that has crossed the stars.” The old leader smiled ruefully. “I myself will introduce you to the head of one of our hospitals.” The leader stood up.

  “If you will come with me.”

  Ellis followed, with his heart pounding. His mission must have something to do with psychiatry. Why else send a psychiatrist?

  But he still didn’t know what he was supposed to do.

  And, to make it worse, he could remember practically none of his psychiatric background.

  “I think that takes care of all the testing apparatus,” the doctor said, looking at Ellis from behind steel-rimmed glasses. He was young, moonfaced, and eager to learn from the older civilization of Earth.

  “Can you suggest any improvements?” he asked.

  “I’ll have to look over the setup more closely,” Ellis said, following the doctor down a long, pale-blue corridor. The testing apparatus had struck a complete blank.

  “I don’t have to tell you how eager I am for this opportunity,” the doctor said. “I have no doubt that you Terrans were able to discover many of the secrets of the mind.”

  “Oh, yes,” Ellis said.

  “Down this way we have the wards,” the doctor said. “Would you care to see them?”

  “Fine.” Ellis followed the doctor, biting his lip angrily. His memory was still gone. He had no more psychiatric knowledge than a poorly informed layman. Unless something happened soon, he would be forced to admit his amnesia.

  “In this room,” the doctor said, “we have several quiet cases.” Ellis followed him in, and looked at the dull, lifeless faces-of three patients.

  “Catatonic,” the doctor said, pointing to the first man. “I don’t suppose you have a cure for that?” He smiled good-naturedly.

  Ellis didn’t answer. Another memory had popped into his mind. It was just a few lines of conversation.

  “But is it ethical?” he had asked. In a room like this, on Earth.

  “Of course,” someone has answered. “We won’t tamper with the normals. But the idiots, the criminally insane—the psychotics who could never use their minds anyhow—it isn’t as though we were robbing them of anything. It’s a mercy, really—”

  Just that much. He didn’t know to whom he had been talking. Another doctor, probably. They had been discussing some new method of dealing with defectives. A new cure? It seemed possible. A drastic one, from the content.

  “Have you found a cure for it?” the moon-faced doctor asked again.

  “Yes. Yes, we have,” Ellis said, taking his nerve in both hands. The doctor stepped back and stared.

  “But you couldn’t! You can’t repair a brain where there’s organic damage—deterioration, or lack of development—” He checked himself.

  “But listen to me, telling you. Go ahead, doctor.”

  Ellis looked at the man in the first bed. “Get me some assistants, doctor.” The doctor hesitated, then hurried out of the room.

  Ellis bent over the catatonic and looked at his face. He wasn’t sure of what he was doing, but he reached out and touched the man’s forehead with his finger.

  Something in Ellis’ mind clicked.

  The catatonic collapsed.

  Ellis waited, but nothing seemed to be happening. He walked over to the second patient and repeated the operation.

  That one collapsed also, and the one after him.

  The doctor came back, with two wide-eyed helpers. “What’s happening here?” he asked. “What have you done?”

  “I don’t know if our methods will work on your people,” Ellis bluffed. “Please leave me alone—completely alone for a little while. The concentration necessary—” He turned back to the patients.

  The doctor started to say something, changed his mind and left quietly, taking the assistants with him.

  Sweating, Ellis examined the pulse of the first man. It was still beating. He straightened and started to pace the room.

  He had a power of some sort. He could knock a psychotic flat on his back. Fine. Nerves—connections. He wished he could remember how many nerve connections there were in the human brain. Some fantastic number; Ten to the twenty-fifth to the tenth? No, that didn’t seem right. But a fantastic number.

  What did it matter? It mattered, he was certain.

  The first man groaned and sat up. Ellis walked over to him. The man felt his head, and groaned again.

  His own personal shock-therapy, Ellis thought. Perhaps Earth had discovered the answer to insanity. As a last gift to the universe, they had sent him out, to heal—

  “How do you feel?” he asked the patient.

  “Not bad,” the man answered—in English!

  “What did you say?” Ellis gasped. He wondered if there had been a thought-transfer of some sort. Had he given the man his own grasp of English? Let’s see, if you reshunted the load from the damaged nerves to unused ones—

  “I feel fine, Doc. Good work. We weren’t sure if that haywire and cardboard ship would hold together, but as I told you, it was the best we could do under the—”

  “Who are you?”

  The man climbed out of bed and looked around.

  “Are the natives gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Haines, Representative of Earth. What’s the matter with you, Ellis?”

  The other men were reviving now.

  “And they—”

  “Dr. Clitell.”

  “Fred Anderson.”

  The man who called himself Haines looked over his body carefully. “You might have found a better host for me, Ellis. For old time’s sake. But no matter. What’s the matter, man?” Ellis explained about his amnesia. “Didn’t you get the note?”

  Ellis told them everything.

  “We’ll get your memory back, don’t worry,” Haines said. “It feels good to have a body again. Hold it.” The door opened and the young doctor peered in. He saw the patients and let out a shout.

  “You did it! You are able—”

  “Please, doctor,” Ellis snapped. “No sudden noises. I must ask not to be disturbed for at least-another hour.”

  “Of course,” the doctor said respectfully, withdrew his face and closed the door.

  “How was it possible?” Ellis asked, looking at the three men. “I don’t understand—”

  “The great discovery,” Haines said. “Surely you remember that? You worked on it. No? Explain, Anderson.” The third man walked over slowly. Ellis noticed that the vacuous faces were beginning to tighten already, shaped by the minds in back of them.

  “Don’t you remember, Ellis, the research on personality factors?”

  Ellis shook his head.

  “You were looking for the lowest common denominator of human-life-and-personality. The source, if you wish. The research actually started almost a hundred years ago, after Orgell found that personality was independent of body, although influenced and modified by it. Remember now?”

  “No. Go on.”

  “To keep it simple, you—and about thirty others—found that the lowest indivisible unit of personality was an independent nonmaterial substance. You named it the M molecule. It is a complex mental pattern.”

  “Mental?”

&n
bsp; “Nonmaterial, then,” Anderson said. “It can be transferred from host to host.”

  “Sounds like possession,” Ellis said.

  Anderson, noticing a mirror in a corner of the room, walked over to examine his new face. He shuddered when he saw it, and wiped saliva from its lips.

  “The old myths of spirit-possession aren’t so far off,” Dr. Clitell said. He was the only one wearing his body with any sort of ease. “Some people have always been able to separate their minds from their bodies. Astral projection, and that sort of thing. It wasn’t until recently that the personality was localized and an invariant separation-resynthesis procedure adopted.”

  “Does that mean you’re immortal?” Ellis asked.

  “Oh, no!” Anderson said, walking over. He grimaced, trying to check his host’s unconscious drool. “The personality has a definite life span.

  It’s somewhat longer than the body’s, of course, but still definitely within limits.” He succeeded in stopping the flow. “However, it can be stored dormant almost indefinitely.”

  “And what better place,” Haines put in, “for storing a nonmaterial molecule than your own mind? Your nerve connections have been harboring us all along, Ellis. There’s plenty of room there. The number of connections in a human brain have been calculated at ten to the—”

  “I remember that part,” Ellis said. “I’m beginning to understand.” He knew why he had been chosen. A psychiatrist would be needed for this job, to gain admittance to the hosts. He had been especially trained. Of course the Kreldans couldn’t be told yet about the mission or the M molecule. They wouldn’t take kindly to their people—even the defectives—being possessed by Earthmen.

  “Look at this,” Haines said. Fascinated, he was bending his fingers backwards. He had discovered that his host was double-jointed. The other two men were trying out their bodies in the manner of a man testing a horse. They flexed their arms, bunched their muscles, practiced walking.

  “But,” Ellis asked, “how will the race . . . I mean, how about women?”

  “Get more hosts,” Haines told him, still trying out his fingers. “Male and female. You’re going to be the greatest doctor on this planet. Every defective will be brought to you for cure. Of course, we’re all in on the secret. No one’s going to spill before the right time.” He paused and grinned. “Ellis—do you realize what this means? Earth isn’t dead! She’ll live again.”

  Ellis nodded. He was having difficulty identifying the large, bland Haines in the film with the shrillvoiced scarecrow in front of him. It would take time for all of them, he knew, and a good deal of readjustment.

  “We’d better get to work,” Anderson said. “After you have the defectives on this planet serviced, we’ll refuel your ship and send you on.”

  “Where?” Ellis asked. “To another planet?”

  “Of course. There are probably only a few million hosts on this one, since we’re not touching normals.”

  “Only! But how many people have I stored?”

  There was the sound of voices in the hall.

  “You really are a case,” Haines said, amused. “Back into bed, men—I think I hear that doctor. How many? The population of Earth was about four billion. You have all of them.”

  THE END

  ULTIMATUM!

  Grimsche was a dedicated man, Incorruptible, unswerving, implacable. And what they forgot, when they decided that a human machine was needed for this job, was that you can’t turn a Grimsche off, or re-set him for a different kind of job.

  TO: ARA ILDEK

  NAM IV

  SOLONES CLUSTER

  GALAXY X32-A

  SUBJECT: CIVILIZING EXPEDITION TO SOL III

  FROM: MORDESH KDAK

  ORGANIZER

  EXPEDITION 87C6

  GREETINGS:

  Expedition 87C6 has contacted the planet locally designated as Sol III. We landed our ships near the various capitols of the various countries of this planet. As was expected, there was widespread panic and rioting.

  During our descent, we were greeted with attacks of a chemical, molecular and atomic nature. This was expected and, of course, nullified without loss of life. We discovered at once, empirically, that Sol III has command of no energies past the atomic level; therefore we are in no apparent danger.

  The people of Sol III are stage one barbarians, queer, outlandish creatures. They are humans, like ourselves, and have sufficient brain-capacity to learn civilized ways.

  Psychologically, they are a mainstream deviant.

  Their attacks upon us were apparently for the purpose of taking lives, instead of any of the recognized objectives of war. This situation is not unheard-of; nevertheless, it is shocking to behold at first hand.

  Superficial investigation shows us that the Earthmen consider the taking of life as the final answer to all problems. This psychosis is deeply rooted in the history of the planet.

  Our instruction units are trying to explain to them the true nature of what they call war, in a simplified fashion.

  1. That war is essentially a symbolic affair.

  2. That the objectives of war are, (a) capture of symbolic documents, (b) destruction of mechanicals, (c) superimposition of values, from the greater to the lesser.

  To implement this, we are teaching them the principle of Conformity. So far, the Earthmen have shown no comprehension of this law of nature.

  I am pleased to report that we have caused no direct loss of life. Any deaths have been the fault of the Earthmen, rioting among themselves.

  This is being brought under control as rapidly as possible.

  Already the Ultimatum has been delivered to all the capitols on this planet:—That by twelve o’clock noon, local time, all documents of symbolic governing value must be surrendered to the Nam war mechanicals. All armies must be disbanded at once. All governments must, for the time, be turned over to Nam officials.

  Once this is accomplished, we will be able to go ahead with the subtler means of civilizing this savage race.

  Just between us, Ara—not for the record—this planet depresses me. It has such a history of murder, rape, pillage. The oceans are blood, the rivers blood, the very soil is saturated with blood. I wish I were anywhere else. The Earthmen are plotting against us, I know. Even though they are harmless, their armies disbanded, the hatred in the air is almost palpable.

  But the work of civilization must go on.

  In Peace,

  Mordesh Kdak, Organizer

  l

  FROM THE window they could hear the mob, gathered around the steps of the Capitol. A single deep murmur filled the air, as though the mob were growling with one voice. There were occasional bursts of gunfire.

  “Is it twelve o’clock yet?” Kyoto asked.

  Colonel Culver glanced at his handsome Swiss watch. “No. Fourteen minutes to.”

  “Ah,” Kyoto said, as though the time were a very significant factor in his calculations. He turned away from the window and looked up at Culver. “Where is your man, Grimsche?”

  “He’ll be here any moment,” Culver said. He walked to a table and began to leaf through a pamphlet the Nam Invaders had distributed.

  “He ought to be here now,” Kyoto said softly, a little embarrassed at having to say it. The colonel nodded. Kyoto began to feel very self-conscious. He didn’t understand Americans, any more than he understood the Nam, How could the colonel be so calm, when a Nam robot was about to march into the Capitol and take the American Constitution? Kyoto began to wish he had stayed in Japan, with his own people. But quickly he reminded himself that the important thing was to stop the Nam, wherever they could be stopped. Only America had a weapon that surpassed atomic power; therefore America had to have the cooperation of everyone, against the common enemy. If his scientific knowledge could help, as the colonel had said it could . . .

  The mob was growing noisier. Colonel Culver was still reading the pamphlet, swinging one foot against the leg of his chair. Kyoto began to pace up and
down, running his fingers nervously through his hair. He hoped his wife had obeyed his telegram without delay, and gone to Honshu. Tokyo would be dangerous, with the Nam invading the Imperial Palace; she and the children would be safe in Honshu, with his father.

  “Very interesting,” Culver murmured.

  “What?” Kyoto asked quickly.

  “Their theory of Conformity.” Culver’s face was animated now. “Listen to this. ‘When two forces meet, the lesser will transform itself to resemble the greater. Force, in this instance, refers to fundamental truth, or conformity to the real world, both physical and ideal.’ What do you make of that?”

  “Metaphysics,” Kyoto said. “What do we care for their rationalizations?”

  “Stop pacing, man!” Culver cried humorously. “Of course we care. A knowledge of one’s enemy is a fundamental rule of war. Consider this: A fundamental taboo of the Nam is the taking of any human life whatsoever. What do you make of that?”

  Kyoto shrugged his shoulders. Under different circumstances, he would have been very interested. But now the armies of the world were disbanded, their equipment smashed; now everything depended on one incomplete weapon, one man.

  “This Grimsche, is he trustworthy?” Kyoto asked.

  “Absolutely.” Culver opened a drawer and began to take out tins of imported tobacco. Beside them he put a blackened clay pipe. “Grimsche served under me; I’d trust that big, gloomy man with my life.”

  “An army man?” Kyoto asked doubtfully.

  “A master sergeant.”

  “I see,” Kyoto said. He began to pace again. Somehow, he had thought that the war against the Nam would be carried on by the scientists, now that the military had proved ineffectual. He understood scientists. But to put so much responsibility on a sergeant . . .

  Culver must have felt his thought. “Don’t worry about Grimsche. He’s unswervable, unswayable, incorruptible; he’s a machine. Give Grimsche a job and he’ll do it—though the world were dust around his feet, and the human race only a memory.” He smiled apologetically for his rhetoric.