Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  There on the airless moonlet, the amusement park games and rides arced high, silhouetted against the sky, lying in the great crater of crushed white stone with hard needle points of stars above. The two men walked through the deserted amusement park trying to devise their next move.

  St.-Fleur said, “This might not have been a good idea, Matthew. We may have overstepped the legitimacy of our quest.”

  “We need to find out whatever we can,” Matthew said. “We should be willing to go anywhere to find out what’s happening on Myryx.”

  “Except going to Myryx itself,” St.-Fleur said.

  “We’ve already discussed that.”

  St.-Fleur adjusted the oxygen flow across his nose and mouth. “It wouldn’t be a good idea to go to Myryx. You agreed to that yourself, Matthew.”

  “Under duress.”

  “No matter; you did agree. We didn’t twist your arm. And it’s only reasonable, Matthew. We don’t know what’s going on on that ambiguous planet. Whenever we send anyone, he fails to stay in touch. Aaron is only the latest.”

  “We could send someone else,” Matthew said stubbornly.

  “I know you’d like the job yourself. But to what end? If you stopped communicating too, we’d just lose another important Council member.”

  “All right,” Matthew grumbled. “But where is he?”

  “Across there,” St.-Fleur said.

  Matthew looked. Across, on the distant side of the amusement park, just up from the fenced-in space where the asteroid miners used to park their vehicles, something was moving. It proceeded parallel to them for a while, then turned and headed directly for them.

  St.-Fleur drew a bell-shaped revolver from his belt, but Matthew put his hand lightly on the older man’s shoulder.

  “Take it easy. It’s Octano, the Samian.”

  The Samian was in his tubular vehicle. A vat of gases was stored at his feet. The colored gases percolated out, flowing across the featureless slablike front of his body. The body, a dark side of meat, seemed to have no animation. All signs of life came from the repeater board in the tubular ship. From the flash and intensity shift of the LEDs, Matthew could tell that the Samian was disturbed.

  They exchanged cautious greetings. Then the Samian said, through his translating machinery, “I’m glad you’ve come. You know I’ve come here to talk to you about Aaron.”

  “I fail to understand,” St.-Fleur said, “why you didn’t present your request through official channels.”

  “This is a little too serious for that. The situation on Myryx has many baffling aspects. I think you should hear me out.”

  “But why have we come here?”

  “You must know how it is,” the Samian said. “The governing board of the Samian Confederacy is not at all sure what the situation on Myryx means. But we can see one thing. Something is happening on Myryx which is having profound effects on the species that have gone there to investigate. The effect is especially profound on the Erthumoi.”

  “Why would the council of the Samian Confederacy object if you told us that?”

  “You know very well,” the Samian said, “that beneath the cloak of good manners and evenhandedness, my race, like all the others, conceals its fears and its competitiveness. We say there’s no interspecies struggle, but that’s just standard piety. Although the galaxy is wide beyond our power to grasp, we still are all trying to be number one in it.”

  St.-Fleur said, “You are unusually frank.”

  “Why not? I do not share this view with my fellows. I want my people, the Samians, to endure, of course. But we are at a disadvantage in the sort of game that is taking place on Myryx.”

  There was some more discussion on these lines. It appeared to Matthew that the Samian was attempting a new approach to the ancient program of competition between species. He could not be sure; this could be a subtle attempt to undermine the Erthumoi somehow. He puzzled it out, there in the brilliantly lit but deserted amusement park, on a moon that had been bypassed by the waves of interplanetary commerce. One thing was certain; he had to find a way to learn what was going on with Aaron. Especially now, since the latest reports had shown over a dozen ships heading for Myryx. The people aboard were tourists, and they were made up of four of the six species.

  “Are you saying that the city itself is responsible?” Matthew asked.

  “I didn’t want to say it. But you have said it. Now you must consider whether it could be true or not.”

  Matthew thought it over. The city was not deserted; but personnel did not return, nor did they maintain communications. Was the city built as a trap? It was known that other intelligent species came there . . .

  It took Aaron a long time to get to sleep that first night. He realized as soon as he got there that the city was living, functioning, after all these millennia. It seemed ridiculous to ask himself, what for? There was no way he could know the purpose of the alien builders.

  It was strange, there in the guest house. It was a long shadowy room, with a central walkway and tatami-mat rooms on either side. The lighting still worked, too: just raise your finger and up came the lights. He had eaten earlier in the communal messhall. Dinner he had taken only with humanoids. It’s too difficult to share a meal with some species that eats crankcase grease or its moral equivalent. He finished and went for his bath. This was set up so that, after he stripped, he went down a long metal tube, slid down it into the water. It seemed to Aaron an unnecessarily dramatic way of getting into the water, but he didn’t seem to have any other choice. In he went and he plunged down into the water in a dense cloud of white bubbles. There was something a little odd about the gravity around here; he was descending very slowly, and all around him were brightly colored strands and wafteroons of kelp and other long floating things, some of them with what looked like brilliant feathers, others with tiny scales.

  Shapes floated through the water at him, other humanoids, he realized. As he watched, a Cephallonian swam past, looking very sure of itself; then a Naxian, somehow stroking through the water, went by looking no less sure than the Cephallonian. The water he had dived into was lit from below, and the water was very clear. Aaron didn’t find it strange to continue descending, dropping down in a cloud of bubbles past other swimmers, toward the lights below that seemed to recede as he approached them. It didn’t occur to him to ask how come he was able to breathe underwater. If you find that you can, why ask?

  He continued descending, and he had no impression of pressure, nor of breathlessness. He saw others in that brightly lit cone of light-filled water, old friends and new, old lovers and lovers yet to come, and they all waved at him as he continued going down.

  Then he was at the bottom, and he saw a little round opening at the very base of what he could see now was a large glass flask. He swam through it, and abruptly he was on the surface again, shaking water out of his hair and eyes, and looking ahead of him at a small beach, gleaming white and silver over floodlights set into the rocky walls that surrounded it.

  There was a man swimming beside him, unnoticed before. Aaron had never seen him before, but the man waved to him with enthusiasm, and with every sign of knowing Aaron and expecting to be known by him.

  “I’m very sorry,” Aaron said, after he and the man had both climbed out onto the beach. “Am I supposed to know you?”

  “Not yet perhaps,” the man said. He added something that Aaron didn’t catch. But Aaron found he understood anyhow. Even a few unintelligible words served to awaken in him a vision of the meaning of the speaker’s words. Though putting those meanings into words was something else again. Then the figure was no longer there, as happens with figures in a dream, where exits and entrances are no problem, and the continuations are obscure. The point was, of course, that everything was very simple; take the scales from our eyes, very easy, this is the gift, the first gift from those who have gone beyond.

  There is knowledge that sticks to the mind no longer than Chinese food is said to stick to the st
omach. So it was that even though Aaron understood everything, it was only for an instant. Then the dream, which he already knew was to be considered an alternative, was ended, and it was time to start the next thing.

  “Are you feeling better now?” Sara asked.

  Aaron opened his eyes. He was in what looked like a very old room, built of stone pieces crudely joined together. There was a high, raised, canopied bed, and that is what he occupied. There was a brisk fire in the fireplace. Standing in front of it, her hands clasped behind her back, tall and slim, was Sara.

  “What is it?” Aaron asked. “What are you doing here?”

  “You had a close call,” Sara said. “Do you understand how our very possibilities could be in a state of mutability?”

  Aaron hadn’t thought about it before. Now the proposition forced itself on him. Yet how could it be that the inner thrust of the humanoid race could itself be subject to change and flux? It was like finding out that the background, which you had considered stable, had suddenly flung itself into a series of wild transformations. Not merely the figure, the ground, too. Of course Aaron was vaguely aware that quantum mechanics should have prepared him for that. And if nothing else, man’s ancient doctrine, called under many names, but revived most recently as chaos theory, told him the vanity of the objective.

  “What are you thinking about?” Sara asked.

  “It’s strange,” Aaron said, “that no name has ever been found for the possibility we are discussing. It’s a kind of death of the dream. I hate these vague terms, but how do you speak of it? I’m afraid it’s just one more idea that doesn’t quantify.”

  “Don’t get scared,” Sara said. “You’re doing fine.”

  Maybe he was, but he couldn’t feel it. Aaron knew of this, but he had never encountered it himself—this sharp, sudden, crucial crisis of faith, in which not just oneself as a man is in doubt, but the validity, the usefulness, even the beauty of everything. And there had been epidemics of this sort of thing on other worlds, sudden and unaccountable die-offs, when beleaguered portions of the general population suddenly gave it up. We have seen the future and it is not us. And he wondered if it was possible that Myryx, the alien city, generated such a mood, produced such a poison.

  What had he dreamed? He sat up suddenly. Yes, he had it! The information death of the universe. For information is a kind of energy, too, and it follows its own internal rules. For an information universe to be established, there must be a user of the information. Thus information is always duoform: one who sends; one who receives.

  “This isn’t strictly true, of course,” Aaron said. “We know very few of the properties of information. What we can conjecture is that death may be a multileveled thing. There is death on every level. Dead is dead, but it can come to you on many levels. Information, yes, there is information which is incompatible with the concept of information as we, as science, understand it. We cannot understand that which refuses to share our realm of discourse, and someday this will undermine us.”

  “How long has he been going on this way?” Matthew asked.

  “For the better part of two days,” Dr. Franz said. “He said he had to talk with you, and then he lapsed into incoherence.”

  “Information is a true substratum,” Aaron said. “You can cut off a chicken’s head; that’s one way of destroying him. But you can also deny him existence and that’s another way. There are many roads to inner mysteries and they are never apparent from the viewpoints of other inner mysteries.”

  Easy now, Aaron thought. Pull yourself together. Take stock of the old think piece. Something to be done, but difficulties in your path. Here in this charming city. Where the blue of the something. No. Don’t play around with it. They disapprove of levity.

  “Good afternoon, Aaron.”

  “Good afternoon, Miss Marcheck.”

  Vague glimmerings of old maid fussiness. Behind us, the stars, eternal backdrop, go on eternally. He remembered a long time ago. It had been different. But here? Forlorn! The very word is like a bell. Get hold of yourself.

  The masters passed up and down the ranks of students. The students remained very quiet. The masters had not a hair on their heads. But then he forgot; they had all been shaved; it was preparatory to the next stage.

  “Just ease yourself out of it, Aaron.”

  They were talking about his body. Just ease out of it, indeed! Like to see them bloody try. Nonetheless, it was happening. “Let the body fall away.”

  No letting about it; it did so anyhow, didn’t it? Yes, but we have to agree, anything to keep them quiet, the masters; why was it always like that?

  Wavering doubts, dreams, blown foam, the end of the old days. Why were these hands around him now? Was he drowning, or did they fear he didn’t know how? That’s it; he knew he had something to say, but no, he wasn’t going to say it now.

  Stand him up; give him room.

  Yes, dreary sort of place, they were lapping up the booze, the sweet oblivion, or not so sweet; didn’t make no matter, don’t mind.

  The hyperjump ship should be back. What is it to be alone here on the station? They usually didn’t leave people alone on the hyperjump point. Limited air, food, water. Nothing to do. Wait until the next ship comes along. And how soon will that be? Aaron pulled the jacket more closely around him. At least his main requirements were taken care of. But what did that matter; he was cold, cold, and there was no warmth in sight.

  Still they couldn’t just let him die here, could they? He was aware that he was not having these dreams for the first time. He was remembering what had happened the first time. It had all happened before. Or was that merely what they wanted him to believe?

  Aaron sat up abruptly. He felt clear, lucid for the first time in a long time. He was in a large, elaborately decorated room deep within Alien City. It was a room of marble and porphyry. On the mantel were old bronzes. There was a mosaic on the floor. It seemed to depict a sun goddess. Aaron himself was clad in costly robes. He was wearing a long silk robe of many colors. He was holding an orb in one hand, a scepter in the other. His gaze was fixed on the doorway. He couldn’t see how the place was lighted. The lighting seemed to emanate from the stone and marble. But it was not as though it was a quality of those materials. Rather, something was moving along the corridor, something that seemed to be composed of pure light.

  The light flowed along the corridor, entered his room, stopped.

  He could see it, wavering lightly in front of him, a dim flame twisting slowly, about six feet high. Within the turnings of the flame he thought he could make out features. After a while he could recognize them: they were Miranda, Mika, many of the others he had met.

  “Who are you?” he said to the flame.

  “I’m glad to see that you can speak reasonably with me,” the flame said. “I am what they used to call the spirit of place.”

  “Could you explain that a little further?”

  “In every spot, there is that which is the spirit of that spot. When the place dies, so dies the spirit of it. But the spirit can be reborn in other places. I have been reborn.”

  “Are you the spirit of what we call Alien City?” Aaron asked.

  The flame flickered and wavered in what was unmistakably a nod. Aaron realized that it wasn’t actually talking. Rather, words were appearing in Aaron’s mind as if the flame were speaking.

  “How should I call you?” Aaron asked.

  “You may call me Gea,” the flame said. “I am the spirit of place.”

  “Gea,” Aaron said, “what can you tell me about yourself? What is going on? What have you come here for?”

  “I’ve been waiting for someone to recognize me,” Gea said. “I had to show you a lot of things, Aaron, before you knew me for what I am. Do you know now?”

  “Yes, I know,” Aaron said.

  “I have had to show you miracles,” Gea said. “I have had to demonstrate to you all manner of strangeness. Only in that way could you become convinced.”

/>   “Are you purely spirit?” Aaron asked. “Or do you have a corporeal aspect?”

  “I am physical as well as spiritual,” Gea said. “Where I am, all three elements—physical, spiritual, mental—are all aspects of the same reality. This energy is eternal and indestructible; yet its specific form can be destroyed. I have preserved myself throughout these years to be ready for my reentry onto the galactic stage.”

  “I understand,” Aaron said.

  “I do not claim to be God,” Gea said. “But I am something more than man, something more than the other species. Are you ready to serve me, Aaron? You are my prophet.”

  “I am ready,” Aaron said.

  “What a wonderful day of destiny this is,” Gea said, “not just for ourselves, but for the entire human race. It is the time that mankind has long dreamed of. The time of guidance and care. I will take care of my own, Aaron, never fear. I have already shown you a glimpse of what is possible. It remains for us to finish this stage. Then we can go on to where the destiny of the race takes us.”

  Lawrence had been standing by helplessly during this conversation. He seemed to be bound by invisible bonds. Not for the first time he tried to pull himself free. It is only a trick, a sort of hypnosis, he told himself. He pulled against the restraints, but he could not budge. It had been like this for a long time. There was nothing he could do against it now.

  “Father!” he cried. “Do you know what it is that has us?”

  “Of course I know, Lawrence,” Aaron said. “It is what we have always wanted, always dreamed of. A guide, one who will help us through the dangers that the universe presents.”

  “No, Father, you’ve got it wrong!” Lawrence had more to say, but sudden agonizing pain stopped him before he could go on. He wanted to warn Aaron: This thing meant nothing good for them, and certainly not for the human race. But there was nothing he could say.

  “It’s all right, Lawrence,” Aaron said. “Gea and I understand each other. Gea, I want you to send my son and the others away from here. You and I need to talk, to plan our moves.”