Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Stop it!” Collins shouted.

  The under-butler moved clumsily into the Utilizer’s path. The machine dodged him gracefully and sprinted towards the main door.

  Collins pushed a switch and the door slammed shut.

  The Utilizer gathered momentum and went right through it. Once in the open, it tripped over a garden hose, regained its balance and headed towards the open countryside.

  Collins raced after it. If he could just get a little closer . . .

  The Utilizer suddenly leaped into the air. It hung there for a long moment, then fell to the ground. Collins sprang at the button.

  The Utilizer rolled out of his way, took a short run and leaped again. For a moment, it hung twenty feet above his head—drifted a few feet straight up, stopped twisted wildly and fell.

  Collins was afraid that, on a third jump, it would keep going up. When it drifted unwillingly back to the ground, he was ready. He feinted, then stabbed at the button. The Utilizer couldn’t duck fast enough.

  “Animation Control!” Collins roared triumphantly.

  There was a small explosion, and the Utilizer settled down docilely. There was no hint of animation left in it.

  Collins wiped his forehead and sat on the machine. Closer and closer. He’d better do some big wishing now, while he still had the chance. In rapid succession, he asked for five million dollars, three functioning oil wells, a motion-picture studio, perfect health, twenty-five more dancing girls, immortality, a sports car and a herd of pedigreed cattle. He thought he heard someone snicker. He looked around. No one was there. When he turned back, the Utilizer had vanished.

  He just stared. And, in another moment, he vanished.

  WHEN he opened his eyes, Collins found himself standing in front of a desk. On the other side was the large, red-faced man who had originally tried to break into his room. The man didn’t appear angry. Rather, he appeared resigned, even melancholy.

  Collins stood for a moment in silence, sorry that the whole thing was over. The owner and the A’s had finally caught him. But it had been glorious while it lasted.

  “Well,” Collins said directly, “you’ve got your machine back. Now, what else do you want?”

  “My machine?” the red-faced man said, looking up incredulously. “It’s not my machine, sir. Not at all.”

  Collins stared at him. “Don’t try to kid me, mister. You A-ratings want to protect your monopoly, don’t you?”

  The red-faced man put down his paper. “Mr. Collins,” he said stiffly, “my name is Flign. I am an agent for the Citizens Protective Union, a non-profit organisation, whose aim is to protect individuals such as yourself from errors of judgement.”

  “You mean you’re not one of the A’s?”

  “You are labouring under a misapprehension, sir,” Flign said with quiet dignity. “The A-rating does not represent a social group, as you seem to believe. It is merely a credit rating.”

  “A what?” Collins asked slowly.

  “A credit rating.” Flign glanced at his watch. “We haven’t much time, so I’ll make this as brief as possible. Ours is a decentralised age, Mr. Collins. Our businesses, industries and services are scattered through an appreciable portion of space and time. The utilization corporation is an essential link. It provides for the transfer of goods and services from point to point. Do you understand?”

  Collins nodded.

  “Credit is, of course, an automatic privilege. But, eventually, everything must be paid for.”

  Collins didn’t like the sound of that. Pay? This place wasn’t as civilised as he had thought. No one had mentioned paying. Why did they bring it up now?

  “Why didn’t someone stop me?” he asked desperately. “They must have known I didn’t have a proper rating.”

  Flign shook his head. “The credit ratings are suggestions, not laws. In a civilised world, an individual has the right to his own decisions. I’m very sorry, sir.” He glanced at his watch again and handed Collins the paper he had been reading. “Would you just glance at this bill and tell me whether it’s in order?”

  Collins took the paper and read:

  One Palace, with Accessories . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cr. 45,000,000

  Services of Maxima Olph Movers . . . . . . . . . . 111,000

  122 Dancing Girls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122,000,000

  Perfect Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 888,234,031

  He scanned the rest of the list quickly. The total came to slightly better than eighteen billion Credits.

  “Wait a minute!” Collins shouted. “I can’t be held to this! The Utilizer just dropped into my room by accident!”

  “That’s the very fact I’m going to bring to their attention,” Flign said. “Who knows? Perhaps they will be reasonable. It does no harm to try.”

  Collins felt the room sway. Flign’s face began to melt before him.

  “Time’s up,” Flign said. “Good luck.”

  Collins closed his eyes.

  WHEN he opened them again, he was standing on a bleak plain, facing a range of stubby mountains. A cold wind lashed his face and the sky was the colour of steel.

  A raggedly dressed man was standing beside him. “Here,” the man said and handed Collins a pick.

  “What’s this?”

  “This is a pick,” the man said patiently. “And over there is a quarry, where you and I and a number of others will cut marble.”

  “Marble?”

  “Sure. There’s always some idiot who wants a palace,” the man said with a wry grin. “You can call me Jang. We’ll be together for some time.”

  Collins blinked stupidly. “How long?”

  “You work it out,” Jang said. “The rate is fifty credits a month until your debt is paid off.”

  The pick dropped from Collins’s hand. They couldn’t do this to him! The Utilization Corporation must realise its mistake by now! They had been at fault, letting the machine slip into the past. Didn’t they realise that?

  “It’s all a mistake!” Collins said.

  “No mistake,” Jang said. “They’re very short of labour. Have to go recruiting all over for it. Come on. After the first thousand years you won’t mind it.”

  Collins started to follow Jang towards the quarry. He stopped.

  “The first thousand years? I won’t live that long!”

  “Sure you will,” Jang assured him. “You got immortality, didn’t you?”

  Yes, he had. He had wished for it, just before they took back the machine. Or had they taken back the machine after he wished for it?

  Collins remembered something. Strange, but he didn’t remember seeing immortality on the bill Flign had shown him.

  “How much did they charge me for immortality?” he asked.

  Jang looked at him and laughed. “Don’t be naïve, pal. You should have it figured out by now.”

  He led Collins towards the quarry. “Naturally, they give that away for nothing.”

  THE HUNGRY

  The Hungry was the darndest thing. It could fool the grownups, who didn’t believe it existed. But not a baby who lived in the fabulous world of childhood.

  THE spoon didn’t like it.

  The spoon didn’t like it one bit, having The Hungry in it. But spoons can’t do anything.

  “Come on, darling, one more spoonful,” Mommy said, bending over him in his highchair and smelling nice and warm.

  Mommy didn’t know that The Hungry was in the spoon. Daddy didn’t know either, although it was all his fault. Only Fluffy the cat knew, and she didn’t care.

  “Oh, darling, eat the lovely plum pudding. You like plum pudding. Come on, baby—” Resolutely he turned his head and screwed his mouth tight. He liked plum pudding; but now that The Hungry was in the, spoon, he couldn’t eat. The Hungry would try to hurt him. He knew it would.

  “Well, if that’s all, that’s all,” Mommy said. She straightened up from his highchair and wiped his mouth. Then she picked up t
he jar of plum pudding in one hand, and the spoon in the other. Mommy was very tall and light, although not as tall as Daddy. Daddy wasn’t as light as Mommy, though. That’s why Mommy was his favorite.

  “Jim—would you—”

  “No!” Daddy said in an almost-angry voice. He was sitting at his desk, and there were all sorts of papers in front of him.

  “You haven’t even heard what I was going to ask you,” Mommy said in her low voice, the voice she used when Daddy talked like that.

  The Hungry heard. It grinned, in the spoon, and pushed.

  “Oh, darn!” Mommy bent down to pick up the spoon. “Plum pudding on the rug. It comes out, doesn’t it?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Daddy muttered, bending over his papers. It was all Daddy’s fault. If he hadn’t gotten angry at Mommy this morning, The Hungry wouldn’t have come. But he did, and The Hungry did. The Hungry always came when someone was angry at someone. That was how it ate.

  The Hungry bothered the people downstairs a lot, because they were always shouting at each other. Daddy and Mommy laughed at the people downstairs. But it wasn’t funny! Not with The Hungry there!

  Mommy carried the spoon into the kitchen, but it was safe now. The Hungry had left it, and was flying slowly around the living room, looking for something to go into. It swirled around a lamp, making it flicker, and he watched it with wide-open, unblinking eyes. Then he began to whimper.

  “Oh, Lord,” Daddy sighed, looking up from all his papers. “Can’t we have a little quiet—even on a Sunday morning?”

  “I wonder if he wants another bottle?” Mommy asked herself. But The Hungry had tasted Daddy’s anger, and it made him even stronger. He darted across the room, and jumped into Daddy’s pen.

  Seeing that, he began to shake his highchair and cry in earnest.

  “Damn it!” Daddy shouted, and threw down his pen. “A blot. How in hell am I supposed to concentrate with all this racket?”

  The Hungry had made Daddy blame it on him, when it was really The Hungry’s fault all along. The Hungry was very clever.

  “He’s only eleven months old,” Mommy said in a voice that The Hungry tasted and liked. “I’m sorry his manners don’t suit you.”

  That was the first time Mommy had been angry ail morning. She hadn’t said anything when Daddy complained about the burnt muffins, even though it hadn’t been her fault. The Hungry had made the toaster get hot too soon. And she hadn’t gotten cross when Daddy accused her of hiding his cigarettes, when it was The Hungry that had pushed them behind the bureau. And when Daddy had been feeling cross because The Hungry was fluttering in front of his newspaper, making it hard to read, and he had told Mommy she wasn’t staying within her budget, she hadn’t even answered back.

  But she was a little angry now.

  Daddy was starting to feel sorry for the way he was acting, but The Hungry hurried over and blew his papers off the desk, making believe he was a breeze from the window.

  “Everything’s going wrong this morning,” Daddy said.

  “He’ll be quiet now,” Mommy said, and lifted him up, up, up, and put him on the living room rug.

  Daddy picked up his papers, wiped his pen and lighted a cigarette. He got it started, even though The Hungry was trying to blow out the match, and went back to work. But he wasn’t feeling nice.

  The Hungry knew it, too. The last time The Hungry had come in Mommy had burned her hand on the stove, and The Hungry had eaten the hurt for hours. He had eaten Daddy’s sad feeling also. But he was very hungry now, and he wanted to eat even more.

  The Hungry jumped into his rubber duck, thinking he wouldn’t know. But he knew, and crawled away from it as fast as he could. Fluffy was also on the rug, and she just watched. Fluffy was no friend. She could see The Hungry, but she never paid any attention.

  The Hungry jumped into Hansel, nearer him, and he started to cry again.

  “Oh, no,” Daddy said, and he clenched his hands tightly together.

  “This just isn’t one of his good days,” Mommy said, not looking at Daddy.

  “He never seems to have good days when I’m around,” Daddy said, which was just what The Hungry wanted him to say.

  “It’s not that—” Mommy said.

  “The hell it isn’t,” Daddy said. “Shut him up!”

  He was crying very loud now, because The Hungry was standing just in front of him, spinning. Mommy picked him up and rocked him.

  “There, there,” she said.

  “There, there, baby. There’s nothing there. It’s all right.”

  But it wasn’t! Because he couldn’t stop crying now, and Daddy was just as angry as he could be. Quickly The Hungry whirled over and rolled Daddy’s cigarette off the ashtray.

  “Your cigarette!” Mommy called, and Daddy picked it up. But The Hungry had been blowing on it, and there was a little hole in the rug.

  “Can’t you even put a cigarette down?” Mommy asked, in her low, cold, very-angry voice.

  “Don’t criticize me,” Daddy said, in his low, cold, very-angry voice.

  He started to scream as loud as he could, because suddenly he saw what The Hungry was planning.

  “We haven’t had that rug three months,” Mommy said.

  “Will you shut him up!” Daddy shouted desperately and suddenly.

  Mommy put him on her shoulder and walked him up and down, but he couldn’t stop, he just couldn’t, because The Hungry was eating all Daddy’s anger and planning a big hurt, even worse than the time he hurt Mommy.

  “God, I can’t stand this place,” Daddy shouted. “I can’t stand that screaming, drooling child!”

  “Then why don’t you get out?” Mommy shouted back. She didn’t mean it, of course; Daddy didn’t either. But they weren’t listening to what they were saying.

  And Fluffy, on the rug, didn’t do a thing. Over Mommy’s shoulder he could see Fluffy, even while he cried, and Fluffy just lay there and watched The Hungry out of the corner of her eyes, and didn’t care. And that was the saddest part, somehow, after all Daddy had done for Fluffy.

  “I’m going out and get a drink!” Daddy shouted. He put down his pen with a bang and slipped on his jacket and walked to the door and opened it. Mommy walked over very slowly, holding him in her arms.

  “You don’t have to come back, you know,” Mommy said, very quietly. Then The Hungry whizzed gaily around the room and dipped over Fluffy—Fluffy snarled and clawed at it—and it streaked out the front door. Fluffy went back to sleep, but The Hungry swept past Daddy and settled in the third step from the top of the landing. That was the step that Daddy said he was going to fix today, because it was so loose and wobbly. The Hungry wrapped the step around itself, waiting until Daddy stepped on it.

  Why didn’t Fluffy do something? But Fluffy didn’t care, now that The Hungry wasn’t bothering her any longer, even though Daddy always fed her. And Mommy and Daddy couldn’t see The Hungry, curled on the third step, waiting for Daddy to step on it. The Hungry would push him, and make sure he wasn’t holding on. The Hungry would climb on him as he fell, and make sure he hit hard.

  He stopped crying and stared at the third step. The Hungry stared back at him. He stared and stared at The Hungry that wanted to hurt Daddy.

  “He’s stopped crying,” Mommy said.

  In spite of his anger, Daddy looked at him. Daddy loved him, even though he didn’t seem to sometimes. And Daddy was looking at him now.

  “I wonder what he’s looking at,” Mommy said.

  “Kids are like that,” Daddy said, in his sorry voice. Sometimes they just stare at nothing.”

  “Sometimes they cry at nothing, too,” Mommy said in her are-you-really-sorry voice.

  “I suppose they do,” Daddy said in his well-I-was-wrong-voice. He hesitated, then said, “Sorry, Grace.”

  “It does get on your nerves,” Mommy said, and laughed. “Come on in and I’ll fix you some lunch.”

  “O.K.” Daddy smiled, and it was a very nice smile. The Hungry wasn�
�t happy, though. Now that Daddy wasn’t angry any longer, The Hungry couldn’t stay.

  He melted away, and then he was gone.

  “After lunch I’ll fix those steps,” Daddy said. “Now let’s eat.”

  And as soon as Fluffy heard that she got up and rubbed against Daddy’s pants leg, and Daddy bent down and stroked her.

  But she hadn’t helped! Not at all! THE END

  THE ACCOUNTANT

  Few science-fantasy writers have sprung so rapidly into the front rank as Robert Sheckley. It seems to us only yesterday that Sheckley was a promising but unpublished writer whom we were hopefully encouraging; and in fact it is only somewhat over two yecAs ago that he made his first sale. Since then he has appeared regularly in almost every magazine of imaginative fiction, in many anthologies, and in a number of major slicks; and most recently he has received the accolade of the publication of a collection of his short stories (UNTOUCHED BY HUMAN HANDS) by Ballantine. The reasons for this sudden rise you can find exemplified in this story—simple, human, humorous, fantastically logical and completely surprising.

  MR. DEE was seated in the big armchair, his belt loosened, the evening papers strewn around his knees. Peacefully he smoked his pipe, and considered how wonderful the world was. Today he had sold two amulets and a philter; his wife was bustling around the kitchen, preparing a delicious meal; and his pipe was drawing well. With a sigh of contentment, Mr. Dee yawned and stretched. Morton, his nine-year-old son, hurried across the living room, laden down with books.

  “How’d school go today?” Mr. Dee called.

  “O.K.,” the boy said, slowing down, but still moving toward his room.

  “What have you got there?” Mr. Dee asked, gesturing at his son’s tall pile of books.

  “Just some more accounting stuff,” Morton said, not looking at his father. He hurried into his room.

  Mr. Dee shook his head. Somewhere, the lad had picked up the notion that he wanted to be an accountant. An accountant! True, Morton was quick with figures; but he would have to forget this nonsense. Bigger things were in store for him.