Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  IV.

  Our camp was sprawled untidily over several acres of rocky ground just at the beginning of the green valley of Xanadu. The rock was some kind of limestone, colored dirty white with bits of mica sparkling in it, and here and there red splotches that somebody told me were from iron deposits. Just beyond that was the lovely valley itself, nestled between two bald mountain ranges. Xanadu was a lusher green than I remembered from home, as if all the life and vitality of this planet were concentrated into this single small valley. It was a place of low rolling hills, and a small river ran down the middle of it.

  The officers’ quarters had been built first, and then the officers’ mess, so I heard. The Fleet has an ancient and unashamed tradition of privilege for higher ranks. Communications came next. There was a small relay station on Klaxon, but what was used mainly were the big radio rigs on the cruiser, Skua.

  Immediately after disembarkation we were assigned to our new quarters. I had a large combination bedroom/sitting room with a small kitchen. My picture window had a view out over the green valley.

  One of the problems the Fleet had to deal with was the sense of constriction that Fleet personnel get after long weeks and months of keeping station in space. Because of this, in the interest of simple mental hygiene, the Fleet tried to make its base accommodations spacious and inviting. It cost very little more for them to build large than to build small.

  The furniture was quite nice, too, Danish Modern, one of the most pleasing of the old designs, and there were copies of famous paintings on the walls. Unfortunately, all of the furniture in all of the living units was identical. Still, it was the first place I had entirely to myself, and I liked it right away.

  The Fleet had even tried to do something about the usual mess hall arrangements. We could eat in any one of five different restaurants on the base. Each had a different decor. There was Joe’s Hawaiian Village and Eddie Lee’s China Town and, my favorite, Harriet’s Cafe, which looked just like a place I had known back home.

  Of course, they all served the same food. The Fleet hasn’t gotten quite far enough to think of supplying different cuisines.

  Earthmovers and bulldozers had already moved into the valley of Xanadu. The first group of structures had already gone up. They needed only glass for the windows to be ready for occupancy.

  It happened that the very first night of our arrival marked the beginning of the troubles that were to plague the Klaxon base.

  Work proceeded, but it didn’t go well. There were many accidents. Stresses must have been miscalculated, because sections kept collapsing. Some areas, which surveyed as solid granite, turned out to have soggy parts where the rock was hollowed away.

  V.

  Two weeks later, the first section of buildings was ready to be opened for everyone’s use. They looked a great deal like office buildings—four hundred feet high, built out of concrete and aluminum. Just before the dedication ceremony, Commander Hansen, the chief engineer, inspected the foundations. He found what looked like a slight subsidence. The buildings seemed to have settled down a bit on one side.

  Hansen frowned. They had done thorough tests on the load-bearing capacities of the substrata. This shouldn’t be happening.

  Hansen went down to the lower basement. At the bottommost level he found that one of the main girders had pushed right through an unsuspected sinkhole in the concrete-reinforced earth. The stresses of the building were distributed unequally.

  Hansen stared at it. It was impossible, but itüad happened. Now the whole damn structure was in danger of collapse.

  He ran to the emergency phone. He could hear strange creaking sounds, the building starting to settle.

  “Get me the Admiral at once!” he told the yeoman who answered. “Emergency!”

  Esplendadore was just coming out of his shower. His dress uniform was carefully laid out on the bed. In twenty minutes he had to make a speech, dedicating the building and thanking everyone for their efforts. Why did they have to bother him with details? Still, it was part of his legend that he was always available for emergencies. He dried himself and picked up the phone.

  “Sir. Hansen here. Something’s wrong with the building structure.”

  “Hansen, what are you talking about?”

  “One of the girders has collapsed. The whole structure is starting to collapse. You must get all of the people away from the area!”

  Esplendadore had a thousand questions, but there was no time to ask them. He hit the general alarm. Everybody would drop whatever they were doing and assemble as quickly as they could at the spaceship. It was the fastest way of getting them away from the new structure.

  Down below in the subceilar, Hansen had seen enough. He ran for the elevator. There were loud crashes all around him. Heavy girders began to let go. He just made it to the elevator and started up.

  The elevator was barely under way when there was a dazzling flash of light as a girder snapped and carried away the electrical cables with it.

  Hansen opened the trap door in the ceiling of the elevator. Through the dim stand-by lighting in the elevator shaft, he could see the iron stanchions set into the walls for emergencies. The engineer started climbing toward the surface.

  Above, on the ground level, the crowds had been rapidly evacuating the area of the new buildings. But those at the back of the crowd felt the ground tremble under them, saw the foremost building bend gracefully as though it were bowing to the distant mountains, heard the shriek of tortured metal as the whole thing collapsed.

  Hansen, down below, felt the elevator shaft start to buckle. He pulled himself to the surface and scrambled out a second later, just before internal pressures closed the elevator shaft like a well-squeezed toothpaste tube. It had been a close thing.

  VI.

  Esplendadore had been a great fighting admiral in his day, but that day was some years past. Now he was a very good desk chair admiral. A lot of the dash and fire of his youth had just faded away with the passage of years. As his hair grew grayer, his decisions became more tempered. Ever since his great victory at Achilles’ Star, Esplendadore’s career had been in a decline. It was a slow decline to be sure, so slow as to be almost imperceptible, but it led downward all the same. His most recent postings over the last several years had been to quiet sectors with no possibility of combat. He had complained about this.

  “Take a rest,” the top brass had told him. But he suspected that what they meant was, “Let somebody else have a chance.” He had seen his career and his life slipping away into dignified decay. Desperately he had pulled strings, used all the influence he still possessed. He had to get out of this rear-echelon status they had posted him to. He was a fighting admiral, not a glorified supply clerk.

  After intrigues worthy of the courts of Byzantium, Esplendadore had managed to get appointed to this new Klaxon expedition which had been dreamed up in the high councils of the. Alliance . . . probably after someone had smoked some rather potent stuff. Esplendadore had his doubts about the soundness of the scheme. It all depended on keeping knowledge of the Klaxon base from the Khalia so that a single giant blow could be attempted against them, a blow that would fall as though from nowhere and be utterly devastating.

  Well, it was a pretty dream, of course. Civilians were very good at dreaming up these plans that involved violent changes of fortune through subterfuge and required the utilization of very little in the way of vital means and material. Sneaky and secret, that was a politician’s idea of warfare. But how likely was it that the Khalia would not learn about this through their numerous turncoat spies? How long did he have to prepare everything and launch his attack? A month? Six months? It was impossible to say exactly how much time he had. Obviously, the best likelihood of carrying out the plan unknown to the Khalia was to build the base and launch the attack as quickly as possible.

  That was exactly what Esplendadore was determined to do. Strike one blow for mankind—one great, and perhaps last, blow for himself.

&n
bsp; VII.

  The next day I went to work at Fleet Victuallers Division of the Supply Wing. I learned how complicated are the procedures needed to feed nearly seven thousand civilian workers, and an unknown number of Fleet personnel—I would judge them to be at least five thousand in number, counting a few hundred Space Marines whom we saw but rarely, for they had their own camp several miles from us. In all, at least ten thousand or so people who needed three good meals a day with some variety, even though we lived on a planet which, before our arrival, bore none of the grains or cereals that humans live upon.

  On the morning of my first work assignment, I went out into the Valley, following the well-marked path that led to the agriculture area. This was some hundreds of yards into the Valley itself, and what it consisted of were long, low glass-topped buildings, greenhouses, such as we have back home. There was a small, central power-booster plant. Inside, the hydroponics and the soil experiments were well underway. The person in charge was Dr. John Edwardson, an older man (and married), and he showed me around.

  It was interesting to learn that in this single small agricultural area nearly twenty percent of our food was being grown. Of course, our main food supply was still the fast-frozen, freeze-dried products. Some of these foods had been stored in depots in space for a very long time. It seems that science has made it possible for us to store food that will keep almost forever. There still seems something wrong in eating a steak that has been frozen over a hundred years. But, of course, there are some people who say it takes that long to properly tenderize the grade of beefsteak that the Fleet buys.

  I was very pleased to see so many species from Old Earth doing so well here in this, for them, exotic environment. Dr. Edwardson told me that you could never tell how an Earth plant would do once it was transplanted to alien soil. Some did well, others not. He showed me how vigorously the turnips and the Brussels sprouts were growing. I must admit that I rather wrinkled my nose at this accomplishment.

  “What about the native species on this planet?” I asked him. “Is there room here for both them and the Earth plants?”

  “Well,” Dr. Edwardson told me, “that depends upon whether two of them are fighting for room in the same ecological niche. But of course, warfare is the way of nature. All plant species are constantly engaged in a slow-motion battle with all other species.”

  It was nice to see these Earth plants, which are the same plants we have successfully raised on Trinitus. I knew from my schoolbooks that the Fleet cruisers all carry biological packs filled with the most useful species of plants from Earth. The doctor confirmed that this was true, and said, with kind of a laugh, that we were performing a kind of a warfare with our Terran plants against all of the other plant life of the universe. It was a little creepy to think of it that way. The doctor called it a form of manifest biological destiny. He said it was only logical that we human beings and our plants should ultimately be stamped out, or become standard everywhere in the galaxy. And, after that, in all the galaxies, and, after that, the entire universe which contains them.

  I told him that didn’t sound very nice of us. It made us seem predatory.

  As the days passed, I became fascinated with the struggles of our plants against the alien plants of the planet Klaxon. The doctor and his assistants gave the plants a little help of course. The seedlings were planted in partially cleared ground. But he didn’t try to spare them from every menace.

  “These plants have to survive on their own,” he told me. “We won’t be around here all the time to spread pesticides for them.”

  My own work had to do mainly with writing out little tags and hanging them on the little plants, and then making entries in the computer noting that I had done so.

  I realized that I was part of something vast and wonderful, of course: the extension of the food supply of the Alliance planets. But somehow my own role in it was not very dramatic. I began to think again about Dr. Bantry and his Department of Alien Psychology.

  VIII.

  There was a full investigation of the accident to the new buildings. Admiral Esplendadore needed at least a partial answer right away. He needed something upon which he could base further action.

  The initial findings were not too encouraging to a man who was in search of a simple, clear-cut answer. All of the advance planning appeared at first glance to have been sound. The collapse itself was attributed to a land fault triggered off, perhaps, by something minor, but whose existence could not have been detected with present instruments.

  Was such a thing likely to occur again, Esplendadore wanted to know. His scientists could only shrug their shoulders. By all rights, it should not have happened in the first place.

  Considering all this, Esplendadore began to think about the possibilities of sabotage. You wouldn’t think a human being would ever sell out to a weasel-shaped thing with a loud chattering voice and a generally unpleasant disposition. Still, there are men who will do anything for gain, even sell out their own race.

  Treachery has been a part of humankind’s makeup since earliest days and who can tell exactly what pro-survival situation it may encourage? We assume it must have some sort of a survival value, but that’s not how it looked now when the Fleet was extended to its limit.

  The Khalia could be contacted through certain non-Alliance alien planets. They were reasoning beings, at least to the extent that they were able to work together co-operatively, and to make and keep promises. Informers were paid well. The Khalia were able to pay not just in gold and platinum, but they also had access to many of the rare art treasures of the worlds that they had plundered.

  The humans and their allies of the Alliance, the three hundred-odd planets that made up civilizations as we knew it, were allied in their detestation of the Khalia and their determination to resist Khalia incursions. They were much less united when it came to their dealings with each other. In fact, the various planets of the Alliance were a swirling mass of treaties, special groups, alignments, organizations, one against the other, forever seeking local advantage. In this regard, at least, mankind had not gotten over its ancient propensity for aggression and competition.

  There were factions among the Alliance planets which felt that the Fleet itself was a greater danger to their life and liberties than the Khalia. Especially resented was the loss of the right to defend one’s own planet with spaceships. It made sense, of course; it would be a senselessly expensive duplication of effort if each planet, some of them with very small populations indeed, should undertake their own guard. The security of all of the planets depended upon a strong Fleet which could handle any menace.

  This much was obvious and almost everyone agreed. Yet it still went hard to see swaggering armed men on liberty on your home planet when you did not have the right to arm ships. Humans were still caught in a dilemma: that many of them didn’t feel free unless they were able to have their own fleets. But if they did, it rendered peace and security impossible.

  Given the various rivalries among the various planets of the Alliance, Esplendadore knew that it was not impossible that several of the sponsoring planets might want his expedition to fail. There was always the question of council members trying to promote the careers of home town admirals. And this would not be the first time that an Alliance effort had been sabotaged.

  Esplendadore discussed these matters with his security chief. The security chief agreed that there was every possibility that some sort of sabotage was involved. He vowed he would get to the bottom of it.

  The building of the new base did not go well. There seemed to be a rather large number of accidents. Several more smaller buildings collapsed unexpectedly. Everyone was getting nervous.

  Everything was way off schedule. These delays posed an increasing danger upon the entire expedition. It was at this time, also, that Esplendadore began to get more direct evidence that somebody was willfully interfering with things. It seemed that expensive machine tools had been left outside, and their highly polished metal
s were corroding much faster than they should have been.

  IX.

  Lea had the first of her strange “second-sight” dreams. In her dream, she was going to visit her cousin, Iris. In real life, Lea didn’t have a cousin Iris, but in the dream she did. The dream happened in a place that looked very strange indeed, but when she was dreaming it, it seemed exactly as it should be.

  Iris lived in one of the huge apartment buildings near the center of town. This one was called the Emerald Arms and it housed several thousand families.

  Lea felt right at home when she went into Iris’s building. She took the suction tube to the fourteenth floor and then hopped on a roller which carried her over the mile or so of corridor to Iris’s apartment door.

  “I’m very glad to see you,” Iris said, “but you must forgive me if I don’t pay you much attention. I’m on emergency phone duty.”

  Lea noticed now the thin black wires that went into Iris’s head and led to outlets in the wall.

  “Jeepers! Is something up?” Lea said. “Why are you doing emergency stuff?”

  “Why, it’s the war, you silly thing,” Iris said. “You do remember our war, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. We’re being invaded or something, aren’t we?” Lea asked. “Frankly, I haven’t paid much attention to it. I’ve got a lot of big career decisions I have to make this year.”

  “Well, you’d better start paying attention to it,” Iris said. “They’re still advancing, you know.”

  “But I thought that our forces repulsed them at great loss,” Lea said.

  “We halted them temporarily, at the cost of over ten thousand of our lives. But they’ve already begun moving again. Uh-oh . . . hold on, there’s a signal.”

  Bright sparks flashed across one of the wires that went into Iris’s head. Iris whispered to Lea, “It’s from the Southern Salient. There hasn’t been much happening there for a while. I think something big is about to break. Isn’t it exciting?”