Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Where is he?” Miles shouted.

  White curtains flapped at the open window. Miles stared out into the darkness. Nisher had escaped. His mind inflamed by his brief vision of the future, he was sure to be preaching his message of love up and down the country. He could be anywhere, Miles thought. How on earth can I find him? How can I join him?

  THE LAST DAYS OF (PARALLEL?) EARTH

  When the end of the world was announced, Rachel and I decided not to break up after all. “What would be the sense?” she asked me. “We will have no time to form other relationships.” I nodded, but I was not convinced. I was worried about what would happen if the world did not end, if the great event were delayed, postponed, held over indefinitely. There might have been a miscalculation concerning the effect of the Z-field, the scientists might have been wrong about the meaning of the Saperstein Conjunction, and there we would be, Rachel and I, with our eternal complaints, and our children with their eternal complaints, bound together by apocalyptic conjunction stronger than our marriage vows, for eternity or until Armageddon, whichever came first. I put this to Rachel in what I hoped was a nice way, and she said to me, “Don’t worry, if the world does not end on schedule as predicted by eminent scientists, you will return to your dismal furnished apartment and I will stay here with the children and my lover.”

  That was reassuring, and of course, I didn’t want to spend the end of the world by myself in the dismal furnished apartment I shared with the Japanese girl and her English boyfriend and no television. There would be nothing to do there but listen to the Japanese girl talk to her friends on the telephone and eat in the Chinese restaurant, which had promised to stay open throughout the end of the world or as long as physically possible, since the owner did not believe in making changes hastily.

  Rachel said, “I don’t want to face anything like this straight,” so she brought out her entire stash, the Thai sticks, the speckled brown cocaine, the acid in the form of tiny red stars, the gnarled mushrooms from God knows where, the red Lebanese and the green Moroccan, yes, and the last few treasured Quaaludes, and a few Mogadon for good measure. She said, “Let’s pool our mind-blowing resources and go out before we come down.”

  Other people had made their own preparations. The airlines were running end-of-the-world specials to Ultima Thule, Valparaiso, Kuala Lumpur: kinky trips for demising people. The networks were making a lot of the event, of course. Some of our favorite programs were cut, replaced by End of the World Specials. We tuned into “The Last Talkathon” on CBS: “Well, it sure looks like the kite is going up at last. I have a guest here, Professor Mandrax from UCLA, who is going to explain to us just how the big snuff is going to come about.”

  Whatever channel you turned to, there were physicists, mathematicians, biologists, chemists, linguistic philosophers, and commentators to try to explain what they were explaining. Professor Johnson, the eminent cosmologist, said, “Well, of course, it’s not exactly a cosmological event, except metaphorically, in its effect upon us. We humans, in our parochial way, consider these things to be very important. But I can assure you that in the scale of magnitude I work on, this event is of no significance, is banal, in fact; our little O-type sun entering the Z-field just at the time of the Saperstein Conjunction, with the ensuing disarrangement of local conditions. I am imprecise on purpose, of course, since Indeterminacy renders exactitude a nineteenth-century hangup. But Professor Weaver of the Philosophy Department might have more to say about that.”

  “Well, yes,” Professor Weaver said, “ ‘end of the world’ is a somewhat loose expression. What we are faced with is a viewpoint problem. We could say that, from some other point of observation, if such exists, this ending is the end of nothing at all. Just one moment of pain, my dear, and then eternal life, to quote the poet.”

  On another channel we heard that the army was issuing turkey dinners to all our servicemen in Germany. There had been some talk of flying them home, but we decided to keep them in position in case it was not the end of the world after all, but instead some devious communistic scheme of the sort we know the Russians are capable of, with their twisted sense of humor and their implacable will to give everyone a hard time. And we heard that the Chinese hadn’t even announced the fact, or so-called fact, to their population at large, except obliquely, in the form of posters no larger than postage stamps, signed by “A Concerned Neighbor from Neighborhood C.”

  And Rachel couldn’t understand why Edward, her lover, insisted upon staying in his room and working on his novel. “It’s not apropos any longer,” she told him. “There’s not going to be anyone around to publish it or read it.”

  “What has that got to do with it?” Edward asked, and winked at me.

  I understood perfectly, was in fact working like a berserker to finish my own account of the last day, yes, and with great pleasure, for the end of the world presents a writer with the greatest deadline of them all, the ultimate deadline: twelve o’clock midnight tonight and that’s all she wrote, folks. What a challenge! I knew that artists all over the world were responding to it, that an end-of-the-world oeuvre was being created that might be of interest to historians in a world parallel to our own in which this catastrophe did not take place.

  “Well, yes,” Professor Carpenter said, “the concept of parallel universes is, I would say, licit but unprovable, at least in the time we have left. I myself would consider it a wish-fulfillment fantasy, though my good friend Professor Mung, the eminent psychologist, is more competent to speak of that than I.”

  Rachel made her famous turkey dinner that night, with the stuffing and the cranberry sauce and the sweet-potato pie with meringue topping, and she even made her special Chinese spareribs as an extra treat, even though the Chinese refused to believe in the event except in postage-stamp-size posters of oriental foreboding. And everyone in the world began smoking cigarettes again, except for the irreducible few who did not believe in the end of the world and were therefore still scared of lung cancer. And people on their deathbeds struggled to stay alive a little longer, just a little longer, so that when I go, the whole damn thing goes. And some doctors stayed on call, declaring it their ludicrous duty, while others compulsively played golf and tennis and tried to forget about improving their strokes.

  The turkey with four drumsticks and eight wings. Lewd displays on television: since all is over, all is allowed. The compulsive answering of business letters: Dear Joe, take your contract and stick it up your giggie the show is over and I can finally tell you what a crap artist you are, but if there is any mistake about the End I want you to know that this letter is meant as a joke which I’m sure that you as the very special person you are can appreciate.

  All of us were caught between the irreconcilable demands of abandonment and caution. What if we are not to die? Even belief in the end of the world required an act of faith on the part of dishwashers as well as university professors.

  And that last night of creation I gave up cigarettes forever. An absurdity. What difference did it make? I did it because Rachel had always told me that absurdities made a difference, and I had always known that, so I threw away my pack of Marlboros and listened while Professor Mung said, “Wish fulfillment, or its obverse, death-wish fulfillment, cannot licitly be generalized into an objective correlative, to use Eliot’s term. But if we take Jung into our synthesis, and consider this ending as an archetype, not to say Weltanschauung, our understanding increases as our tiempo para gastarlo disappears into the black hole of the past which contains all our hopes and endeavors.”

  The final hour came at last. I carved the turkey and Edward came out of his room long enough to take a plateful of breast and ask for my comments on his final rewrite of his last chapter, and I said, “It still needs work,” and Rachel said, “That’s cruel,” and Edward said, “Yes, I thought it needed something myself,” and went back to his room.

  Outside, the streets were deserted except for the unfortunate few who couldn’t get to a televisio
n set, and we did up most of the remaining drugs and switched wildly between channels. I had brought my typewriter into the kitchen and I was getting it all down, and Rachel talked of the holidays we should have taken, and I thought about the women I should have loved, and at five to twelve Edward came out of his room again and showed me the rewritten last chapter, and I said, “You’ve got it this time,” and he said, “I thought so, is there any more coke left?” And we did up the rest of the drugs and Rachel said to me, “For Chrissakes, can’t you stop typing?” And I said, “I have to get it all down,” and she hugged me, and Edward hugged me, and the three of us hugged the children, whom we had allowed to stay up late because it was the end of the world, and I said, “Rachel, I’m sorry about everything,” and she said, “I’m sorry too,” and Edward said, “I don’t think I did anything wrong, but I’m sorry too.”

  “Sorry about what?” the children asked, but before we had a chance to tell them, before we could even decide what we were sorry about . . .

  1981

  THE HELPING HAND

  Travis had been fired from his job that morning. Boring and low-paying though it had been, it had given him something to live for. Now he had nothing at all, and in his hand he held the means of cutting short a futile and humiliating existence. The bottle contained pellis annabula, a quick, sure, and painless poison. He had stolen it from his former employer, Carlyle Industrial Chemicals. PA was a catalyst used to fix hydrocarbons. Travis was going to fix himself with it, once and for all.

  His few remaining friends thought Travis was a neurotic attention-seeker because of his previous suicide attempts. Well, he would show them this time, and they’d be sorry. Perhaps even his wife would shed a tear or two.

  The thought of his wife steeled Travis’s resolution. Leota’s love had changed into an indifferent tolerance, and finally into hate—the sharp, domineering, acidic sort against which he was helpless. And the damnable thing was that he still loved her.

  Do it now, he thought. He closed his eyes and raised the bottle. Before he could drink, the bottle was knocked out of his hand. He heard Leota’s sharp voice: “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “It should be obvious,” Travis said.

  She studied his face with interest. Leota was a large, hard-faced woman with a gift for never-ending beastliness. But now her face had softened.

  “You were really going to do it this time, weren’t you?”

  “I’m still going to,” Travis said. “Tomorrow or next week will do as well.”

  “I never believed you had it in you,” she said. “Some of our friends thought you had guts, but I never did. Well, I guess I’ve really put you through hell all these years. But someone had to run things.”

  “You stopped caring for me a long time ago,” Travis said. “Why did you stop me now?”

  Leota didn’t answer immediately. Could she be having a change of heart? Travis had never seen her like this before.

  “I’ve misjudged you,” she said at last. “I always figured you were bluffing, just to annoy me. Remember when you threatened to jump from the window? You leaned out—like this.”

  Leota leaned from the window, her body poised over the street twenty stories below. “Don’t do that!” Travis said sharply.

  She moved back in, smiling. “That’s funny, coming from you. Don’t tell me you still care?”

  “I could,” Travis said. “I know I could—if only you and I—”

  “Perhaps,” Leota said, and Travis felt a flash of hope, though he barely dared acknowledge it. Women were so strange! There she was, smiling. She put her hands firmly on his shoulders, saying, “I couldn’t let you kill yourself. You have no idea how strongly I feel about you.”

  Travis found it impossible to answer. He was moved. His wife’s strong, caring hands on his shoulders had moved him inexpressibly—straight through the open window.

  As his fingers missed the sill and he fell toward the street, Travis heard his wife calling, “I feel enough, darling, to want this done my way.”

  THE MAN WHO LOVED

  Perhaps there was never a man who loved so deeply and so hopelessly as poor Johnny Dix. He was a strange, moody man, rather clumsy and socially inept, but with a good knack for business. It was his misfortune to fall in love with Jane Davies, a reigning beauty of her day, and as clever as she was beautiful. Some say she was heartless; but Jane herself points out that she discouraged Dix from the start, and that the tragic chain of circumstances arising from his passion could not be blamed on her.

  For nearly five years, according to Jane, she had rejected Dix’s offers of marriage. For six months she didn’t see him; finally she agreed to spend one last afternoon with him and then see him no more. She claims she had grown frightened of him—though no one can imagine Jane frightened.

  Dix took her walking on his recently acquired estate. Business had prospered for him, but love had failed. In a mood of heavy gloom and desperation, he proposed a last time—and was rejected as usual.

  Then he went berserk. Jane says she can still remember those big clumsy hands closing around her throat—and all her cleverness and beauty were worthless as unconsciousness closed over her.

  She recovered some hours later and found herself in a cave. A long, heavy chain was around her left ankle, handcuffed in place by a big old-fashioned lock. By dim candlelight, she could see Dix sitting on a nearby rock.

  Jane examined the chain and said, “Unlock this at once.”

  “Never,” Dix said. “I’ve planned this for a long time. We are in a cavern beneath my estate. No one will ever find this place. Or you. Or me.”

  Jane looked around and saw that the cavern was stacked high with cases of canned goods, books, lanterns, and medicines. There was a deep pool of clear water nearby; in fact, there was everything one would need for a very long stay. She also saw that Dix was quite insane.

  “There’s enough here for thirty years,” Dix told her. “I planned it all very carefully. You may hate me now, Jane, but that’s all right. I can wait for a year or two. Eventually you’ll love me.”

  Then, with a grand flourish, Dix pulled out another heavy chain. Like Jane’s, it was stapled to the wall of the cave. He locked the iron cuff around his ankle and threw the key into the deep pool of water. Then he sat back, crossed his arms on his chest, and began to wait . . . And whenever Jane tells the story, she points to this as the moment of ultimate horror.

  When asked how she escaped, Jane says it was easy. Dix, his arms crossed on his chest, fell asleep at last; and Jane picked the lock of her handcuff with a hairpin. Then she tiptoed out of the cave.

  “But what about Johnny Dix?” someone always asks. And Jane shrugs.

  “I have no idea,” she says. “I suppose he got out shortly after I did and has been too ashamed to show himself in public. You see, I couldn’t leave him alone and helpless in the cave. Mad as he was, I felt he deserved a chance. So before I left, I put down my hairpin beside him . . .

  “I do hope the clumsy fellow was able to use it,” Jane always adds. “It calls for a rather special knack, you know . . .”

  THE WISH

  Frank Morris was a man with an obsession. Others like him collected mountains of newspapers or miles of string; or they spent a lifetime trying to devise a foolproof betting system, or a sure-fire way of beating the stock market. Frank Morris’s particular obsession was magic.

  He lived all alone in a rented room, and his only company was a cat. His tables and chairs were piled high with ancient books and manuscripts, his walls were covered with sorcerer’s tools, and his closets were stuffed with magical herbs and essences. People left him alone, and Frank liked it that way. He knew that someday he would find the proper spell, and a demon would appear and grant him one glorious wish. At night he dreamed of it; and in the morning he went back to work on his formulas. His black cat lay nearby, her yellow eyes half closed, looking the very soul of magic. And Frank labored on, testing the infinite permutations
of his formulas.

  He had grown so used to failure that success caught him by surprise. A wisp of smoke appeared in the pentagon on the floor. A demon slowly took form; and Frank, who had dreamed so long of this moment, found himself shaking with fear. Somehow, in all those years, he had never decided exactly what he should ask for when a demon did appear.

  The wisp of smoke grew into a huge gray shape. Frank paced up and down, wrung his hands, stroked his cat, gritted his teeth, bit his nails, and desperately tried to think. One wish, and only one wish, that was the rule. But what should he wish for? Wealth? Or was power more valuable? Should immortality be considered? Or would a more modest wish be safer?

  The demon was fully formed now. Its pointed head brushed the ceiling, and its lips were twisted into a devilish leer. “Your wish!” the demon bellowed, in a voice so loud that both Frank and his cat backed away.

  His wish . . . What was it to be? The moments were ticking away; the demon was growing impatient. If he didn’t hurry it might leave, never to return.

  But after twenty years of striving, Frank wanted to make the best possible wish. He thought again of the various advantages offered by power, or wealth, or immortality. Then, just as he was about to decide, he saw that the demon was grinning at him.

  “It’s irregular,” the demon said. “But I think it fulfills the conditions.”

  Frank didn’t know what the demon was talking about. Then a wave of dizziness came over him, and the room went black. When his vision returned, Frank saw that the demon was gone.

  Wasted, he thought. The demon was gone, and everything was as it had been.

  Well, not quite as it had been. For Frank noticed that his ears had grown long, and his nose had grown even longer. He had gray fur instead of skin, and he had a tail. That treacherous demon had changed him into a beast!