Notions: Unlimited

by Robert Sheckley

  But his legs were free now. He kicked aside two more plants and lurched into the jungle, with the green shrub growing up his arm.

  Piersen stumbled along until he was far from the other plants. Then he tried to yank the last shrub from his arm.

  The shrub caught both his arms, imprisoning them. Sobbing with anger and pain, Piersen swung his arms high and slammed them against the trunk of a tree.

  The hooks loosened. Again he slammed his arms against the tree, shutting his eyes to the pain. Again and again, until the shrub released.

  Instantly, Piersen began staggering on again.

  But he had delayed his life struggle too long. He was streaming blood from a hundred slashes and the scent was like an alarm bell through the jungle. Overhead, something swift and black descended. Piersen threw himself down and the shape passed over him with a flurry of beating wings, shrilling angrily.

  He rolled to his feet and tried to find protection in a thorny bush. A great, black-winged bird with a crimson breast dived again.

  This time, sharp claws caught him in the shoulder and flung him down. The bird landed on his chest with a wild beating of wings. It pecked at his eyes, missed, pecked again.

  Piersen lashed out. His fist caught the bird full in the throat, knocking it over.

  He scrambled into the thorn bush on all fours. The bird circled, shrilling, trying to find a way in. Piersen moved deeper into the thicket toward safety.

  Then he heard a low moan beside him.

  He had waited too long. The jungle had marked him for death and would never let him go. Beside him was a long, blue-black, shark-shaped creature, slightly smaller than the first he had encountered, creeping quickly and easily toward him through the thorn thicket.

  Caught between a shrieking death in the air and a moaning death on the ground, Piersen came to his feet. He shouted his fear, anger, and defiance. And without hesitation, he flung himself at the blue-black beast.

  The great jaws slashed. Piersen lay motionless. With his last vestige of consciousness, he saw the jaw widen for the death stroke.

  Can it be real? Piersen wondered, in sudden fear, just before he blanked out.

  When he recovered consciousness, he was lying on a white cot, in a white, softly lighted room. Slowly his head cleared and he remembered—his death.

  Quite an adventure, he thought. Must tell the boys. But first a drink. Maybe ten drinks and a little entertainment.

  He turned his head. A girl in white, who had been sitting in a chair beside his bed, rose and bent over him.

  “How do you feel, Mr. Piersen?” she asked.

  “Fair,” Piersen said. “Where’s Jones?”

  “Jones?”

  “Srinagar Jones. He runs this place.”

  “You must be mistaken, sir,” the girl told him. “Dr. Baintree runs our colony.”

  “Your what?” Piersen shouted.

  A man came into the room. “That will be all, Nurse,” he said. He turned to Piersen. “Welcome to Venus, Mr. Piersen. I’m Dr. Baintree, Director of Camp Five.”

  Piersen stared unbelievingly at the tall, bearded man. He struggled out of bed and would have fallen if Baintree hadn’t steadied him.

  He was amazed to find most of his body wrapped in bandages.

  “It was real?” he asked.

  Baintree helped him to the window. Piersen looked out on cleared land, fences and the distant green edge of the jungle.

  “One out of ten thousand!” Piersen said bitterly. “Of all the damned luck! I could have been killed.”

  “You nearly were,” said Baintree. “But your coming here wasn’t a matter of luck or statistics.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mr. Piersen, let me put it this way. Life is easy on Earth. The problems of human existence have been solved—but solved, I fear, to the detriment of the race. Earth stagnates. The birth rate continues to fall, the suicide rate goes up. New frontiers are opening in space, but hardly anyone is interested in going to them. Still, the frontiers must be manned, if the race is to survive.”

  “I have heard that exact speech,” Piersen said, “in the newsreels, on the solido, in the papers—”

  “It didn’t seem to impress you.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true,” Baintree assured him, “whether you believe it or not.”

  “You’re a fanatic,” Piersen said. “I’m not going to argue with you. Suppose it is true—where do I fit in?”

  “We are desperately undermanned,” said Baintree. “We’ve offered every inducement, tried every possible method of recruitment. But no one wants to leave Earth.”

  “Naturally. So?”

  “This is the only method that works. Adventures Unlimited is run by us. Likely candidates are transported here and left in the jungle. We watch to see how they make out. It provides an excellent testing ground—for the individual as well as for us.”

  “What would have happened,” Piersen asked, “if I hadn’t fought back against the shrubs?”

  Baintree shrugged his shoulders.

  “And so you recruited me,” Piersen said. “You ran me through your obstacle course, and I fought like a good little man, and you saved me just in the nick of time. Now I’m supposed to be flattered that you picked me, huh? Now I’m suddenly supposed to realize I’m a rough, tough outdoor man? Now I’m supposed to be filled with a courageous farsighted pioneering spirit?”

  Baintree watched him steadily.

  “And now I’m supposed to sign up as a pioneer? Baintree, you must think I’m nuts or something. Do you honestly think I’m going to give up a very pleasant existence on Earth so I can grub around on a farm or hack through a jungle on Venus? To hell with you, Baintree, and to hell with your whole salvation program.”

  “I quite understand how you feel,” Baintree answered. “Our methods are somewhat arbitrary, but the situation requires it. When you’ve calmed down—”

  “I’m perfectly calm now!” Piersen screamed. “Don’t give me any more sermons about saving the world! I want to go home to a nice comfortable pleasure palace.”

  “You can leave on this evening’s flight,” Baintree said.

  “What? Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Piersen. “Are you trying psychology on me? It won’t work—I’m going home. I don’t see why any of your kidnap victims stay here.”

  “They don’t,” Baintree said.

  “What?”

  “Occasionally, one decides to stay. But for the most part, they react like you. They do not discover a sudden deep love for the soil, an overwhelming urge to conquer a new planet. That’s storybook stuff. They want to go home. But they often agree to help us on Earth.”

  “How?”

  “By becoming recruiters,” Baintree said. “It’s fun, really. You eat and drink and enjoy yourself, the same as ever. And when you find a likely looking candidate, you talk him into taking a dream adventure with Adventures Unlimited—exactly as Benz did with you.”

  Piersen looked startled. “Benz? That worthless bum is a recruiter?”

  “Certainly. Did you think recruiters were starry-eyed idealists? They’re people like you, Piersen, who enjoy having a good time, enjoy being on the inside of things, and perhaps even enjoy doing some good for the human race, as long as it’s no trouble to them. I think you’d like the work.”

  “I might try it for a while,” Piersen said. “For a kick.”

  “That’s all we ask,” said Baintree.

  “But how do you get new colonists?”

  “Well, that’s a funny thing. After a few years, many of our recruiters get curious about what’s happening here. And they return.”

  “Well,” Piersen said, “I’ll try this recruiting kick for a while. But only for a while, as long as I feel like it.”

  “Of course,” said Baintree. “Come, you’d better get packed.”

  “And don’t count on me comi
ng back. I’m a city boy. I like my comfort. The salvation racket is strictly for the eager types.”

  “Of course. By the way, you did very well in the jungle.”

  “I did?”

  Baintree nodded gravely.

  Piersen stayed at the window, staring at the fields, the buildings, the fences and the distant edge of the jungle which he had fought and nearly overcome.

  “We’d better leave,” said Baintree.

  “Eh? All right, I’m coming,” Piersen said.

  He turned slowly from the window with a faint trace of irritation that he tried to and couldn’t identify.

  THE NATIVE PROBLEM

  Edward Danton was a misfit. Even as a baby, he had shown pre-antisocial leanings. This should have been sufficient warning to his parents, whose duty it was to take him without delay to a competent prepubescent psychologist. Such a man could have discovered what lay in Danton’s childhood to give him these contra-group tendencies. But Danton’s parents, doubtless dramatizing problems of their own, thought the child would grow out of it.

  He never did.

  In school, Danton got barely passing grades in Group Acculturation, Sibling Fit, Values Recognition, Folkways Judgement, and other subjects which a person must know in order to live serenely in the modern world. Because of his lack of comprehension, Danton could never live serenely in the modern world.

  It took him a while to find this out.

  From his appearance, one would never have guessed Danton’s basic lack of Fit. He was a tall, athletic young man, green-eyed, easygoing. There was a certain something about him which considerably intrigued the girls in his immediate affective environment. In fact, several paid him the highest compliment at their command, which was to consider him as a possible husband.

  But even the flightiest girl could not ignore Danton’s lacks. He was liable to weary after only a few hours of Mass Dancing, when the fun was just beginning. At Twelve-hand Bridge, Danton’s attention frequently wandered and he would be forced to ask for a recount of the bidding, to the disgust of the other eleven players. And he was impossible at Subways.

  He tried hard to master the spirit of that classic game. Locked arm in arm with his teammates, he would thrust forward into a subway car, trying to take possession before another team could storm in the opposite doors.

  His group captain would shout, “Forward, men! We’re taking this car to Rockaway!” And the opposing group captain would scream back, “Never! Rally, boys! It’s Bronx Park or bust!”

  Danton would struggle in the close-packed throng, a fixed smile on his face, worry lines etched around his mouth and eyes. His girl friend of the moment would say, “What’s wrong, Edward? Aren’t you having fun?”

  “Sure I am,” Danton would reply, gasping for breath.

  “But you aren’t!” the girl would cry, perplexed. “Don’t you realize, Edward, that this is the way our ancestors worked off their aggressions? Historians say that the game of Subways averted an all-out hydrogen war. We have those same aggressions and we, too, must resolve them in a suitable social context.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Edward Danton would say. “I really do enjoy this. I—oh, Lord!”

  For at that moment, a third group would come pounding in, arms locked, chanting, “Canarsie, Canarsie, Canarsie!”

  In that way, he would lose another girl friend, for there was obviously no future in Danton. Lack of Fit can never be disguised. It was obvious that Danton would never be happy in the New York suburbs which stretched from Rockport, Maine, to Norfolk, Virginia; nor in any other suburbs, for that matter.

  Danton tried to cope with his problems, in vain. Other strains started to show. He began to develop astigmatism from the projection of advertisements on his retina, and there was a constant ringing in his ears from the sing-swoop ads. His doctor warned that symptom analysis would never rid him of these psychosomatic ailments. No, what had to be treated was Danton’s basic neurosis, his antisociality. But this Danton found impossible to deal with.

  And so his thoughts turned irresistibly to escape. There was plenty of room for Earth’s misfits out in space.

  During the last two centuries, millions of psychotics, neurotics, psychopaths, and cranks of every kind and description had gone outward to the stars. The early ones had the Mikkelsen Drive to power their ships, and spent twenty or thirty years chugging from star system to star system. The newer ships were powered by GM subspatial torque converters, and made the same journey in a matter of months.

  The stay-at-homes, being socially adjusted, bewailed the loss of anyone, but they welcomed the additional breeding room.

  In his twenty-seventh year, Danton decided to leave Earth and take up pioneering. It was a tearful day when he gave his breeding certificate to his best friend, Al Trevor.

  “Gee, Edward,” Trevor said, turning the precious little certificate over and over in his hands, “you don’t know what this means to Myrtle and me. We always wanted two kids. Now because of you—”

  “Forget it,” said Danton. “Where I’m going, I won’t need any breeding permit. As a matter of fact, I’ll probably find it impossible to breed,” he added, the thought having just struck him.

  “But won’t that be frustrating for you?” Al asked, always solicitous for his friend’s welfare.

  “I guess so. Maybe after a while, though, I’ll find a girl pioneer. And in the meantime, there’s always sublimation.”

  “True enough. What substitute have you selected?”

  “Vegetable gardening. I might as well be practical.”

  “You might as well,” Al said. “Well, boy, good luck, boy.”

  Once the breeding certificate was gone, the die was cast. Danton plunged boldly ahead. In exchange for his Birthright, the government gave him unlimited free transportation and two years’ basic equipment and provisions.

  Danton left at once.

  He avoided the more heavily populated areas, which were usually in the hands of rabid little groups.

  He wanted no part of a place like Korani II, for instance, where a giant calculator had instituted a reign of math.

  Nor was he interested in Heil V, where a totalitarian population of 342 was earnestly planning ways and means of conquering the Galaxy.

  He skirted the Farming Worlds, dull, restrictive places given to extreme health theories and practices.

  When he came to Hedonia, he considered settling on that notorious planet. But the men of Hedonia were said to be short-lived, although no one denied their enjoyment while they did live.

  Danton decided in favor of the long haul, and journeyed on.

  He passed the Mining Worlds, somber, rocky places sparsely populated by gloomy, bearded men given to sudden violence. And he came at last to the New Territories. These unpeopled worlds were past Earth’s farthest frontier. Danton scanned several before he found one with no intelligent life whatsoever.

  It was a calm and watery place, dotted with sizeable islands, lush with jungle green and fertile with fish and game. The ship’s captain duly notarized Danton’s claim to the planet, which Danton called New Tahiti. A quick survey showed a large island superior to the rest. Here he was landed, and here he proceeded to set up his camp.

  There was much to be done at first. Danton constructed a house out of branches and woven grass, near a white and gleaming beach. He fashioned a fishing spear, several snares and a net. He planted his vegetable garden and was gratified to see it thrive under the tropic sun, nourished by warm rains which fell every morning between seven and seven-thirty.

  All in all, New Tahiti was a paradisical place and Danton should have been very happy there. But there was one thing wrong.

  The vegetable garden, which he had thought would provide first-class sublimation, proved a dismal failure. Danton found himself thinking about women at all hours of the day and night, and spending long hours crooning to himself—love songs, of course—beneath a great orange tropic moon.

  This was unhealthy. Desperately
he threw himself into other recognized forms of sublimation; painting came first, but he rejected it to keep a journal, abandoned that and composed a sonata, gave that up and carved two enormous statues out of a local variety of soapstone, completed them and tried to think of something else to do.

  There was nothing else to do. His vegetables took excellent care of themselves; being of Earth stock, they completely choked out all alien growths. Fish swam into his nets in copious quantities, and meat was his whenever he bothered to set a snare. He found again that he was thinking of women at all hours of the day and night—tall women, short women, white women, black women, brown women.

  The day came when Danton found himself thinking favorably of Martian women, something no Terran had succeeded in doing before. Then he knew that something drastic had to be done.

  But what’ He had no way of signaling for help, no way of getting off New Tahiti. He was gloomily contemplating this when a black speck appeared in the sky to seaward.

  He watched as it slowly grew larger, barely able to breathe for fear it would turn out to be a bird or huge insect. But the speck continued to increase in size and soon he could see pale jets, flaring and ebbing.

  A spaceship had come! He was alone no longer!

  The ship took a long, slow, cautious time landing. Danton changed into his best pareu, a South Seas garment he had found peculiarly well adapted to the climate of New Tahiti. He washed, combed his hair carefully, and watched the ship descend.

  It was one of the ancient Mikkelsen Drive ships. Danton had thought that all of them were long retired from active service. But this ship, it was apparent, had been traveling for a long while. The hull was dented and scored, hopelessly archaic, yet with a certain indomitable look about it. Its name, proudly lettered on the bow, was The Hutter People.

  When people come in from deep space, they are usually starved for fresh food. Danton gathered a great pile of fruit for the ship’s passengers and had it tastefully arranged by the time The Hutter People had landed ponderously on the beach.

  A narrow hatch opened and two men stepped out. They were armed with rifles and dressed in black from head to toe. Warily they looked around them.