Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “You saw it?” she whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s gone now.”

  Spencer nodded.

  “Where did it go?” There was horror in Patsy’s voice. Her voice shook. She seemed on the verge of tears.

  Spencer didn’t have any of the answers. But he did have something to say.

  “Patsy! Get control of yourself!”

  She shuddered and looked at him in horror.

  Spencer forced himself to take a dry, lecturing voice.

  “We have both seen something impossible. Something we have no immediate explanation for. The intention of showing this to us was to elicit fear, awe, apprehension, self-doubt, and all the other emotions we agents have spent so many years combating, inoculating ourselves against. Patsy, you and I have seen many impossible things in our lives. And we’ve heard of many others. Now let’s take this step by step. After all, you and I are in the smoke and mirrors business. It’s not for us to react like a gullible audience. You and I have been in some strange places, and we’ve seen some unusual things.”

  She stared at him. Spencer forced himself to continue, his voice low and controlled, trying to convince himself as much as her.

  “The affair on Leonardo is an example of the sort of thing we’ve seen. We didn’t experience it ourselves, and so we are not emotionally devastated by it. We’re both working on that case. It has been assigned to us. No matter who we work for, the Leonardo incident is our life. Whatever we may believe about it, it is ours to work on, and to work on in a reasonable manner.”

  Patsy gave a shudder as she expelled a long-held breath. “All right,” she said.

  She was better now. Spencer saw the look of panic fade from her eyes, to be replaced by the sign of intelligence at work.

  “Now I’ll ask you what you should be asking yourself. Was what we saw any less strange than what happened on Leonardo?”

  Patsy shook her head. Spencer noted that her coloring had returned.

  He said, “Was it any stranger than what has been happening in the last 24 hours?” He willed her to speak, but she was not ready yet. So he went on. “No, of course not! In this thing we just saw, no one was killed, no remains were left behind. It could have been a projection of some sort. It might have been a shared hallucination. How and why it was created is not presently our concern. What it is supposed to mean to us is not our present business. We just have to know about the possibility.”

  “All right,” Patsy said. “I’m OK now. It’s just that the first appearance of that thing was so overwhelming. But of course, it was probably meant to be. People are fishing for big stakes in this game!”

  “And so are we,” Spencer said. “Now, it’s time we got out of here and see what lies ahead.”

  Patsy chuckled. “I didn’t know you were quite so level-headed, Spence!”

  Spencer forced himself to smile. “I’m just lucky I didn’t see that thing alone. It was easier to talk you out of it than to try to talk myself out of it.”

  “What bothers me now,” Patsy said, “is why we couldn’t hear any sound from that organ.”

  “I would conjecture that the organ wasn’t built to make sounds,” Spencer said. “But that’s the least of our problems. Let’s get back to present-time. Let’s see what MacDougal has in store for us.”

  At first glance MacDougal seemed like a pleasant world, terrraformed on an ideal California model. The air, as they left the Lander, was dry and warm, the sun was bright, the temperature was mild. There were a few big cumulus clouds drifting through a light blue sky. In the parklike surroundings, small open vehicles moved on the paved roads. One of these vehicles pulled up to them.

  Two men in civilian clothes got out. Both carried briefcases. They checked the newcomers’ identities with a device one of them carried in his briefcase, then welcomed Spencer and Patsy to MacDougal.

  “Nice place you’ve got here,” Patsy said.

  “Just like home,” the older of the two men said. “On this continent, anyhow. Not everything is completed yet. Commander, Miss Klein, welcome. If you’ll step into the vehicle, we’ll take you to your quarters.”

  They were put up in adjoining apartments on the ground floor of a small apartment complex. There was clothing for them both in separate closets. It was late in the day. MacDougal’s small red sun was already setting. They went for dinner at the nearby restaurant attached to their complex. By the time they were through, they were both ready for bed.

  Spencer closed his eyes. He didn’t feel sleep coming. But it must have been sleep, because he became aware that he was dreaming. He was in a cellar. Dim bars of sunlight came through slats in the ceiling. He could see that the cellar was flooded. But he already knew that, because he was standing in several feet of water. The water was cold and unpleasant, and it had a bad odor. He thought he could smell smoke in the air, but he knew nothing could burn in a place as wet as this.

  Then something in the water tapped him lightly on the leg, and he thought: entanglement is trying to happen.

  Spencer could see slender, long, pale skinny things in the water. Eels, perhaps? Or were they snakes? It was difficult to make out in the dim light, through the dirty water. Then one of them nudged his trouser leg. He kicked it away, and almost fell into the water. More of them were coming at him; he felt a nip on his leg, then another. The nips were not painful, but he objected strongly to them. He felt yet another nip.

  He shook his leg, trying to dislodge what was biting at him with a soft, toothless mouth. And then someone was shaking his shoulder and he opened his eyes and saw Patsy.

  “Ken! Are you all right?”

  He managed to say, “Of course! What’s wrong?”

  “You were calling out! What happened?”

  “Dream,” Spencer muttered. “Bloody awful dream. Sorry I woke you.”

  “No problem,” Patsy said. “I was awake anyway. Are you all right now?”

  “I’m fine,”: Spencer said. He sat up in bed, noticing that his feet and legs were dry. Already the details of the dream were fading from his memory. Both the dream and his instant analysis of it were fading. A moment later, both were gone.

  Patsy lay down on the bed beside him and pulled the covers over her. “See you in the morning,” she whispered.

  Not long after that, he was falling asleep again. He drifted through various dream images, then felt Patsy stir beside him. Her bare foot touched his leg. Spencer made a little sound and rolled toward her. Soon he was wrapped up in her, coiled around her long, delicious body. Something warned him that this was not as it should be. How did Patsy get so long, so soft yet firm? She was much longer, and there was an indescribable softness yet firmness about her flesh that was not at all reminiscent of Patsy. She even smelled different . . . And then it slowly dawned on Spencer that this was not Patsy in the bed with him. This was someone else.

  Jen! Again he breathed in her indescribable aroma. He knows it was her. The length of her, the feel of her naked body, the dark unmistakable fragrance of her hair . . . But what was she doing here? She didn’t even like him! He was sure of that. He thought of asking her why she’s here. But it was too pleasant just to lie here beside her. And besides, what was there to say?

  Then she spoke.

  “Ken?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re awake?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “But before that, you were dreaming.”

  “Yes . . .”

  “Tell me your dream, Ken.”

  “I don’t remember it,” he said, the words coming out automatically, the result of long years of practice in revealing nothing . . . or as little as possible. But as he said it, he remembered what he had been dreaming.

  “I think you do, Ken.”

  “Hey, if I could remember, I’d be glad to tell you. What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “I came to exchange something with you.”

  “What?”

  “A night of
pleasure, and information on the plastic plate in your head, in exchange for your dream.”

  A night of pleasure. He felt her press against him, felt her arms around his neck. He couldn’t think what harm it would do to tell her his dream. Maybe part of her work as a doctor had to do with collecting dreams . . .

  But his work in secret service was telling nothing to no one without specific authorization.

  Still, what harm could it do?

  He didn’t know the answer to that, but he was beginning to suspect it could be a lot. She was offering too much! The habits of years of considering motives, juggling everything from a security angle were strong.

  “I’d tell you if I could,” he said. “But I really can’t remember.”

  He felt her body stiffen. She hadn’t expected that! He felt her arms move again. She was lightly caressing his neck and chest. But this, which should have been delightful, seemed to Spencer the worst thing of all. He couldn’t get the idea of a succubus out of his mind—one of those beautiful women of ancient legend who sucked the lifeblood out of their helpless victims. He thought of her long, sharp fingernails, now touching him gently on the neck.

  A moment later she was gone. He didn’t even feel her move, but she was no longer there. Somebody else was lying beside him. Patsy.

  “You awake?” he whispered to her.

  “Not really,” she moaned, her voice heavy with sleep. “Ken . . .”

  “Yes?” he said after a minute.

  “I really need to get some more sleep,” she said. “Then we can . . .”

  She rolled toward him in the bed. He felt again her sharp hip in his side.

  Soon, from the sound of her breathing, he could tell she was asleep.

  A thousand questions tugged at Spencer’s mind. A thousand explanations passed in and out of his thoughts. But he had one thought that stuck. It was the notion that tonight, somehow, in some way he didn’t understand, he had been given a test. Jen had been a part of it, but he didn’t know if she even knew that. She, or whatever that thing in the bed with him had been, was the bait, the reward. Revelation of his dream had been the target. And by not telling her, he figured he had won. But what had he won, from whom had he won it, and what did it have to do with Leonardo?

  That left the question of what part Patsy had played. Had she played any part at all? Someday he’d find out. But for now he was aware that he had undergone a test, and had won.

  The next morning, Spencer and Patsy went to the communications building. There they were assigned small offices and desks, computers and filers, and given work to do. The work involved assessing risks on a small world called Wolfe-Dexter IV.

  Spencer felt strange, doing this work. This was not the sort of thing he was trained to do, though he figured out how to do it easily enough. It took no great smarts for him to realize that he—and Patsy also—had been assigned low-grade intelligence work; enough to keep their minds occupied, but not enough to teach them anything.

  Patsy was not in her office at lunch time. Spencer ate alone in the big cafeteria, walked around the grounds for a few minutes afterwards, then returned to his office.

  He worked steadily through the long, slow afternoon, doing the sort of thing he thought he was finished with years ago. In late afternoon he noticed that people from other offices were packing up and leaving. He decided to do the same. He had no papers that he wanted to take with him. So he zipped up his briefcase and stood up to leave.

  Just then his the door of his office opened and a young woman he didn’t know put her head in.

  “Someone to see you, Commander Spencer.”

  “Show him in,” Spencer said. “Or her.”

  The girl disappeared from the doorway. A moment later the door pushed open again and someone stepped in whom Spencer was more than a little surprised to see.

  THE TWO SHECKLEYS

  Sheckley got an invitation to create a story for an anthology about a Gateway leading to “strange and alien lands, alternate dimensions, pasts or futures, or who-knows-where.” In brief, to worlds of heart’s desire. The makeup of the Gateway, and of the worlds that lay beyond it, was entirely up to him. It was just the sort of assignment a science-fiction writer likes.

  Sheckley was a fantasist not entirely unknown to the public. For fifty years he had pursued his calling, inventing worlds both characteristic of the genre and unique to himself. From his teeming brain had come planets of pleasure and worlds of pain. Nor had he neglected the multitudinous possibilities in between, the many worlds of possibility where tedium sometimes vies with expectation.

  At the beginning of his career he had possessed a considerable Central Posterior Imago, a structure that develops in some individuals shortly after puberty and is most often located below and slightly to the right of the amygdala. Due to his possession of this, the making of imaginative worlds had become almost second nature for him. But in recent years, that subamygdalic organ had begun to shrink and atrophy, thus leaving him at a disadvantage in the making of his confections.

  That was bad enough; but also, in recent years Chaos Theory had come to his attention, and its pernicious influence had come to infect his imaginative faculty. Especially difficult had been the the idea of bifurcations, with the strong and unwelcome implication that deviation from a desired goal was in the very nature of things. But equally damaging was The Theory’s insistence on sensitivity to initial conditions, which could not be planned out in advance. To start at the wrong point or the wrong moment was to doom yourself to failure; yet there was no avoiding the very strong likelihood of this, given the almost infinite number of points in time and space you could begin from, and the inevitable conclusion that most of them were wrong. Any and every moment could be a fruitful starting-point; or, more likely, a disastrous one, undertaken under the influence of unknown factors and mediated by invisible conditions. Awareness of all this was a detriment to output.

  Sheckley’s production dwindled in the knowledge that any beginning was more than likely a wrong one, which would follow the trail of bifurcations to an unwanted result. This was the fate that had been meted out to this impecunious weaver of yarns—to be in the position of Penelope of the ancient Odyssean legend, unweaving at night what he had wrought during the day—the marvelous figures of his yarn, which, upon reflection, never seemed good enough to him.

  This time had to be different, however. Sheckley had bills to pay—bills that were in themselves memories of past indiscretions and bad decisions—alimony bills, rent bills, heating bills, water and power bills. These had come of late in the shocking red color of imminent action. The grim figure of Retribution was moving into his life, ready to wink him out of his apartment, cut off his cigarettes, turn off his water, and disconnect his power—in effect, cut off life itself.

  But it didn’t have to be that way! This assignment was his key to extricating himself from a fate long brooded upon. Successful completion would bring other assignments in their wake, and others beyond that. He simply had to tell a tale about the Gateway, and the worlds of desire that lay beyond it.

  So, that evening, well supplied with cigarettes, he sat down at his computer and tapped out the words of an opening. He was sure it was the wrong opening, but you have to begin somewhere.

  Glancing up from his endeavors, he saw that he was in an unfamiliar place. Instead of the smoky front room of his apartment, he was sitting in what looked like a large office lobby with a high ceiling. His laptop was on his lap. There were a lot of people coming in and out of the main doors, and above them was a large sign which read: WELCOME TO GATEWAY.

  He blinked several times, perhaps unnecessarily. He suddenly realized what must have happened. He had somehow projected himself into his own story. He was in that Gateway that he had contracted to write about.

  To be a character in a story one is composing is not the usual order of things. But it was one that Sheckley was not entirely unaccustomed to. Many years ago he had written himself into a novel entitle
d Options. This was not unheard of in the world of letters, but to Sheckley it had been uncomfortable, and he had soon written himself out again. Some perversity made him keep his appearance in that book. He had considered the act of self-insertion to be unallowable; but it had happened, and he refused to undo what had come to pass. His appearance in Options had gone unnoticed by the reading public, or at least uncommented upon, except for Mike Resnick, who said Sheckley should stay there until he came up with the twenty dollars he owed Resnick. So Sheckley thought, perhaps this lapse would be allowed, too.

  He felt a little uncomfortable being in an invention he was supposed to be inventing, but he decided to make the best of it. Closing his laptop, he walked to the lobby doors and gazed outside. He saw that he was in a city, a European city from the look of it. In fact, it looked like what he imagined Prague might look like: a vertiginous collection of buildings leaning one against the other, crowds of people in drab gray and brown clothing, looking much like the people in the lobby.

  So this was The Gateway! And beyond it lay the worlds of heart’s desire. But how to get from here to there? He would have to ask someone. He picked out a middle-aged man with a small moustache (a Czech moustache, no doubt) and said to him, “Excuse me, sir, could you tell me how to get to the next world?”

  The man pursed his lips. “You must be referring to the world of heart’s desire that lies beyond Gateway, or so we are taught.”

  “That’s it exactly,” said Sheckley.

  “You are referring, of course, to the Great Good Place that will satisfy our desires after our long confinement in the Vale of Tears which is the Earth.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Well then, you will have to ask one of the People on the Advisory Committee.”

  “Whom do the Advisory Committee advise?” Sheckley asked.

  “No less an entity than the universe itself.”

  “Why would the universe call upon this committee for advice?”

  “It is part of the universe’s plan for self-organization.”