Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “No one likes a wise guy,” the Tyrannosaurus remarked. “But at least he served to provide something useful.” He swung the Orpheus Machine gently from its silver chain.

  “What am I supposed to learn from this?” Sheckley asked, too heartsick and footsore to evince much surprise.

  “That the advantage of being a viewpoint character is that worse things are always happening to someone else.”

  “How can you be talking like this? You’re a stupid reptile, if you’ll excuse my saying so, and you’re not supposed to philosophize.”

  “It is the work of your intelligence to figure out why I can speak like this.”

  Sheckley’s mind took up the challenge. It was obviously a case of ancient heredity, he thought. The Tyrannosauruses had been the cleverest of the great reptiles. With their convoluted brains and opposable talons they invented consciousness, back at a time when man was but a cowering lemurlike creature, given little chance to survive. Who could have guessed that an asteroid was even then on its way to Yucatán, its destiny to wipe out the giant reptiles and encourage the development of Man? Yes, the great reptiles were all dead—except for this one that Bob had apparently conjured up for his own purposes.

  Sheckley further surmised that this must be Bob’s most recent attempt at a plot device to bring the story to its desired conclusion. But what conclusion was he reaching for?

  Shortly after this conjecture, Sheckley heard a sound—a musical sound so beautiful that his horror at the turn of events was overmastered by his rapture at the music. He had never cared for von Turendeldt anyway. Sheckley’s mind conformed to the new pattern imposed by the succulent sounds, and his mind became ordered, harmonious, at peace. Stray thoughts fell away like dandruff in the hands of a giant lotion.

  He looked up. The Tyrannosaurus was playing the Orpheus Machine at him.

  Sheckley asked the obligatory question, since the Tyrannosaurus seemed to be expecting it.

  “How can such things be?”

  “You must realize, Sheckley, that you are a part of the plot as well as the writer of it. I am a part of the plot device Bob sent to expedite matters and to bring you to the Great Good Place. And now, we are at the setting off point.”

  The Tyrannosaurus led Sheckley through the final brass door of impossibility.

  Suddenly Sheckley found himself out of doors, in a vast, brightly lit place. He was standing on a cliff. On the other side, he could see a rainbow bridge stretching from where he was, across a bottomless abyss into a beautiful new land.

  But standing at the near entrance to that bridge were guards in black uniforms, carrying automatic weapons, which they raised threatingly when they saw the Tyrannosaurus and Sheckley.

  “Who goes there?” their captain barked.

  “A Tyrannosaurus and a man,” the Tyrannosaurus said.

  “You have no passes. We have received no authorization. You cannot pass.”

  The Tyrannosaurus turned on the Orpheus Machine. It sang to the guards a song of homecoming and of man’s inalienable right to it. It pointed out without words, in emotional, irrefutable language, that man didn’t need no stinking passes, man had the right to go wherever his imagination took him.

  And the guards were lulled by this music of peace and reason. They holstered their weapons and, saying to themselves, “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” let down the chain that barred the path across the rainbow bridge.

  With the guards singing hosannahs behind them, Sheckley and the Tyrannosaurus crossed, and they stepped into the new land.

  There was a forest to one side, and the Tyrannosaurus galloped toward it. As for Sheckley, in a green meadow on the forest’s edge he had discerned a figure, and now, with mounting excitement, he made his way toward it.

  It was a woman. A beautiful young woman, with more than a passing resemblance to Paulette Goddard, and to many other dreams who had walked the Earth. There was a serenity about her features that promised Sheckley eternal contentment. He stepped toward her, his arms open wide.

  She looked at him in shock and annoyance. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

  Sheckley knew at that moment the sorrow and chagrin of one-sided love. He loved this woman on first sight. But how could such a vision love him?

  There was a galloping sound.

  The Tyrannosaurus suddenly came galumphing up. “I forgot my duty as a plot device!” he cried. “So sorry. I spotted this lady Tyrannosaurus in the forest, and for a moment I went autonomous—sorry, I need to finish this first.”

  He loomed over Sheckley, huge and deadly, his teeth and claws gleaming in the sun.

  Sheckley knew a moment of fear. Was it all to end like this? A great claw came toward him. Sheckley was frozen, and even though the claw was approaching him slowly, he couldn’t unfreeze himself sufficiently to get out of its way.

  He had a moment of dread anticipation, which turned into a treasured moment of fond recollection a moment later when the great claw stopped inches from his face and held out something that was dangling from one of its talons. It was the Orpheus Machine.

  “You give me this? It’s very good of you, but how can this be?”

  “My entire purpose, the reason I was created,” the Tyrannosaurus said, “was to deliver this plot device to you. But during the build-up to that, I attained a degree of autonomy. It was heady stuff—it made me forget for a moment my real purpose—to deliver this instrument of loving conciliation to you, Sheckley.”

  Sheckley took the machine. He poked at one of the buttons and pointed the machine at the girl. Through the alchemy of the plot device’s ability to get things done, the girl’s eyes softened, her lips parted, she said, “It’s you, isn’t it? The one I have so long desired!”

  “Yes, I am that one!” Sheckley cried. Then he cringed for a moment, because he felt a sudden weight in his mind. It was Bob, who had managed to leave Earth on the wings of his own plot device and now shared Sheckley’s mind.

  “But this time we won’t dialogue,” Bob said. “We’ll talk to her, not to each other.”

  Bob Sheckley, no longer divided, looked at the girl. She looked at him. His arms opened. She ran to them and snuggled against his body.

  “There’s still a lot to explain here,” Sheckley said, but the music of the Orpheus Machine swelled in his head, and all need for understanding the facticity of the moment was lost. The Orpheus Machine sang to him that the loss of the need for explanations is the beginning of wisdom. So Sheckley thought as he and the girl, hand in hand, walked down to the verdant forest in search of something good to eat.