Notions: Unlimited

by Robert Sheckley

  “Very good,” Dillon whispered, pulling himself to his feet. “Very good try, Arek. Perhaps you’re tired, too? Perhaps there’s not much left in you but a little emotion?”

  It grew dark, and in the dark something whispered to Dillon, something that looked like him in miniature, that curled itself warmly on his shoulder.

  “But there are worse things than death,” his miniature said. “There are things no living beings can face, guilty knowledge concealed in the very bottom of the soul, loathed and detested, but knowledge, and never to be denied. Death is better than this knowledge, Dillon. Death becomes precious, and infinitely costly. Death is to be prayed for, and cunning schemes are laid to capture death—when you must face what lies at the bottom of your soul.”

  Dillon tried not to listen to the creature who looked so much like himself. But the miniature clung to his shoulder and pointed. And Dillon saw something forming in the darkness, and recognized its form.

  “Not this, Dillon,” his double pleaded. “Please, not this! Be courageous, Dillon! Choose your death! Be bold, be brave! Know how to die at the right time!”

  Dillon, recognizing the shape of what was coming toward him, felt a fear he would never have imagined possible. For this was knowledge from the bottom of his soul, guilty knowledge of himself and all he ever thought he stood for.

  “Quickly, Dillon!” his double cried. “Be strong, be bold, be true! Die while you still know what you are!”

  And Dillon wanted to die. With a vast sigh of relief he began to release his hold, to let his essence slip away....

  And couldn’t

  “Help me!” he screamed.

  “I can’t!” his miniature screamed back. “You must do this for yourself!”

  And Dillon tried again, with knowledge pressing close to his eyeballs, asked for death, begged for death, and could not let himself die.

  So there was only one thing to do. He gathered his last strength and flung himself despairingly forward, at the shape that danced before him.

  It disappeared.

  After a moment Dillon realized that every threat was gone. He was standing alone in territory he had conquered. In spite of everything, he had won! Before him now lay the citadel, untenanted, waiting for him. He felt a wave of respect for poor Arek. He had been a good fighter, a worthy adversary. Perhaps he could spare him a little living space, if Arek didn’t try to—

  “That’s very kind of you, Dillon,” a voice boomed out.

  Dillon had no time to react. He was caught in a grip so powerful that any thought of resistance was futile. Only then did he sense the real power of the K’egran’s mind.

  “You did well, Dillon,” Arek said. “You need never be ashamed of the fight you fought.”

  “But I never had a chance,” Dillon said.

  “No, never,” Arek said gently. “You thought the Earth invasion plan was unique, as most young races feel. But K’egra is ancient, Dillon, and in our time we have been invaded many times, physically and mentally. So it’s really nothing new for us.”

  “You played with me!” Dillon cried.

  “I wanted to find out what you were like,” Arek said.

  “How smug you must have felt! It was a game with you. All right, get it over with, finish it!”

  “Finish what?”

  “Kill me!”

  “Why should I kill you?” Arek asked.

  “Because—because what else can you do with me? Why should I be treated differently from the rest?”

  “You met some of the others, Dillon. You wrestled with Ehtan, who had inhabited a swamp on his home planet, before he took to voyaging. And the miniature who whispered so persuasively in your ear is Oolermik, who came not too long ago, all bluster and fire, much like yourself.”

  “But—”

  “We accepted them here, made room for them, used their qualities to complement ours. Together we are more than we had been apart.”

  “You live together?” Dillon whispered. “In your body?”

  “Of course. Good bodies are scarce in the galaxy, and there’s not much room for the living. Dillon, meet my partners.”

  And Dillon saw the amorphous swamp creature again, and the scaly-hided Oolermik, and a dozen others.

  “But it can’t be!” Dillon cried. “Alien races can’t live together! Life is struggle and death! That’s a fundamental law of nature.”

  “An early law,” Arek said. “Long ago we discovered that cooperation means survival for all, and on far better terms. You’ll get used to it. Welcome into the confederacy, Dillon!”

  And Dillon, still dazed, entered the citadel, to sit in partnership with many races of the galaxy.

  THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE

  Jefferson Toms went into an auto-cafe one afternoon after classes, to drink coffee and study. He sat down, philosophy texts piled neatly before him, and saw a girl directing the robot waiters. She had smoky-gray eyes and hair the color of a rocket exhaust. Her figure was slight but sweetly curved and, gazing at it, Toms felt a lump in his throat and a sudden recollection of autumn, evening, rain and candlelight.

  This was how love came to Jefferson Toms. Although he was ordinarily a very reserved young man, he complained about the robot service in order to meet her. When they did meet, he was inarticulate, overwhelmed by feeling. Somehow, though, he managed to ask her for a date.

  The girl, whose name was Doris, was strangely moved by the stocky, black-haired young student, for she accepted at once. And then Jefferson Toms’ troubles began.

  He found love delightful, yet extremely disturbing, in spite of his advanced studies in philosophy. But love was a confusing thing even in Toms’ age, when spaceliners bridged the gaps between the worlds, disease lay dead, war was inconceivable, and just about anything of any importance had been solved in an exemplary manner.

  Old Earth was in better shape than ever before. Her cities were bright with plastic and stainless steel. Her remaining forests were carefully tended bits of greenery where one might picnic in perfect safety, since all beasts and insects had been removed to sanitary zoos which reproduced their living conditions with admirable skill.

  Even the climate of Earth had been mastered. Farmers received their quota of rain between three and three-thirty in the morning, people gathered at stadiums to watch a program of sunsets, and a tornado was produced once a year in a special arena as part of the World Peace Day Celebration.

  But love was as confusing as ever and Toms found this distressing.

  He simply could not put his feelings into words. Such expressions as “I love you,” “I adore you,” “I’m crazy about you” were overworked and inadequate. They conveyed nothing of the depth and fervor of his emotions. Indeed they cheapened them, since every stereo, every second-rate play was filled with similar words. People used them in casual conversation and spoke of how much they loved pork chops, adored sunsets, were crazy about tennis.

  Every fiber of Toms’ being revolted against this. Never, he swore, would he speak of his love in terms used for pork chops. But he found, to his dismay, that he had nothing better to say.

  He brought the problem to his philosophy professor. “Mr. Toms,” the professor said, gesturing wearily with his glasses, “ah—love, as it is commonly called, is not an operational area with us as yet. No significant work has been done in this field, aside from the so-called Language of Love of the Tyanian race.”

  This was no help. Toms continued to muse on love and think lengthily of Doris. In the long haunted evenings on her porch when the shadows from the trellis vines crossed her face, revealing and concealing it, Toms struggled to tell her what he felt. And since he could not bring himself to use the weary commonplaces of love, he tried to express himself in extravagances.

  “I feel about you,” he would say, “the way a star feels about its planet”

  “How immense!” she would answer, immensely flattered at being compared to anything so cosmic.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Toms
amended. “The feeling I was trying to express was more—well, for example, when you walk, I am reminded of—”

  “Of a what?”

  “A doe in a forest glade,” Toms said, frowning.

  “How charming!”

  “It wasn’t intended to be charming. I was trying to express the awkwardness inherent in youth and yet—”

  “But, honey,” she said, “I’m not awkward. My dancing teacher—”

  “I didn’t mean awkward. But the essence of awkwardness is—is—”

  “I understand,” she said.

  But Toms knew she didn’t.

  So he was forced to give up extravagances. Soon he found himself unable to say anything of any importance to Doris, for it was not what he meant, nor even close to it

  The girl became concerned at the long, moody silences which developed between them.

  “Jeff,” she would urge, “surely you can say something!”

  Toms shrugged his shoulders.

  “Even if it isn’t absolutely what you mean.”

  Toms sighed.

  “Please,” she cried, “say anything at all! I can’t stand this!”

  “Oh, hell—”

  “Yes?” she breathed, her face transfigured.

  “That wasn’t what I meant,” Toms said, relapsing into his gloomy silence.

  At last he asked her to marry him. He was willing to admit that he “loved” her—but he refused to expand on it He explained that a marriage must be founded upon truth or it is doomed from the start. If he cheapened and falsified his emotions at the beginning, what could the future hold for them?

  Doris found his sentiments admirable, but refused to marry him.

  “You must tell a girl that you love her,” she declared. “You have to tell her a hundred times a day, Jefferson, and even then it’s not enough.”

  “But I do love you!” Toms protested. “I mean to say I have an emotion corresponding to—”

  “Oh, stop it!”

  In this predicament, Toms thought about the Language of Love and went to his professor’s office to ask about it.

  “We are told,” his professor said, “that the race indigenous to Tyana II had a specific and unique language for the expression of sensations of love. To say ‘I love you’ was unthinkable for Tyanians. They would use a phrase denoting the exact kind and class of love they felt at that specific moment, and used for no other purpose.”

  Toms nodded, and the professor continued. “Of course, developed with this language was, necessarily, a technique of lovemaking quite incredible in its perfection. We are told that it made all ordinary techniques seem like the clumsy pawing of a grizzly in heat.” The professor coughed in embarrassment.

  “It is precisely what I need!” Toms exclaimed.

  “Ridiculous,” said the professor. “The technique might be interesting, but your own is doubtless sufficient for most needs. And the language, by its very nature, can be used with only one person. To learn it impresses me as wasted energy.”

  “Labor for love,” Toms said, “is the most worthwhile work in the world, since it produces a rich harvest of feeling.”

  “I refuse to stand here and listen to bad epigrams. Mr. Toms, why all this fuss about love?”

  “It is the only perfect thing in this world,” Toms answered fervently. “If one must learn a special language to appreciate it, one can do no less. Tell me, is it far to Tyana II?”

  “A considerable distance,” his professor said, with a thin smile. “And an unrewarding one, since the race is extinct.”

  “Extinct! But why? A sudden pestilence? An invasion?”

  “It is one of the mysteries of the galaxy,” his professor said somberly.

  “Then the language is lost!”

  “Not quite. Twenty years ago, an Earthman named George Varris went to Tyana and learned the Language of Love from the last remnants of the race.” The professor shrugged his shoulders. “I never considered it sufficiently important to read his scientific papers.”

  Toms looked up Varris in the Interspatial Explorers Who’s Who and found that he was credited with the discovery of Tyana, had wandered around the frontier planets for a time, but at last had returned to deserted Tyana, to devote his life to investigating every aspect of its culture.

  After learning this, Toms thought long and hard. The journey to Tyana was a difficult one, time-consuming, and expensive. Perhaps Varris would be dead before he got there, or unwilling to teach him the language. Was it worth the gamble?

  “Is love worth it?” Toms asked himself, and knew the answer.

  So he sold his ultra-fi, his memory recorder, his philosophy texts, and several stocks his grandfather had left him, and booked passage to Cranthis IV, which was the closest he could come to Tyana on a scheduled spaceway. And after all his preparations had been made, he went to Doris.

  “When I return,” he said, “I will be able to tell you exactly how much—I mean the particular quality and class of—I mean, Doris, when I have mastered the Tyanian Technique, you will be loved as no woman has ever been loved!”

  “Do you mean that’“ she asked, her eyes glowing.

  “Well,” Toms said, “the term ‘loved’, doesn’t quite express it. But I mean something very much like it.”

  “I will wait for you, Jeff,” she said. “But—please don’t be too long.”

  Jefferson Toms nodded, blinked back his tears, clutched Doris inarticulately, and hurried to the spaceport.

  Within the hour, he was on his way.

  Four months later, after considerable difficulties, Toms stood on Tyana, on the outskirts of the capital city. Slowly he walked down the broad, deserted main thoroughfare. On either side of him, noble buildings soared to dizzy heights. Peering inside one, Toms saw complex machinery and gleaming switchboards. With his pocket Tyana-English dictionary, he was able to translate the lettering above one of the buildings.

  It read: COUNSELING SERVICES FOR STAGE-FOUR LOVE PROBLEMS.

  Other buildings were much the same, filled with calculating machinery, switchboards, ticker tapes, and the like. He passed THE INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH INTO AFFECTION DELAY, stared at the two-hundred-story HOME FOR THE EMOTIONALLY RETARDED, and glanced at several others. Slowly the awesome, dazzling truth dawned upon him.

  Here was an entire city given over to the research and aid of love.

  He had no time for further speculation. In front of him was the gigantic GENERAL LOVE SERVICES BUILDING. And out of its marble hallway stepped an old man.

  “Who the hell are you?” the old man asked.

  “I am Jefferson Toms, of Earth. I have come here to learn the Language of Love, Mr. Varris.”

  Varris raised his shaggy white eyebrows. He was a small, wrinkled old man, stoop-shouldered and shaky in the knees. But his eyes were alert and filled with a cold suspicion.

  “Perhaps you think the language will make you more attractive to women,” Varris said. “Don’t believe it, young man. Knowledge has its advantages, of course. But it had distinct drawbacks, as the Tyanians discovered.”

  “What drawbacks?” Toms asked.

  Varris grinned, displaying a single yellow tooth. “You wouldn’t understand, if you don’t already know. It takes knowledge to understand the limitations of knowledge.”

  “Nevertheless,” Toms said, “I want to learn the language.”

  Varris stared at him thoughtfully. “But it is not a simple thing, Toms. The Language of Love, and its resultant technique, is every bit as complex as brain surgery or the practice of corporation law. It takes work, much work, and a talent as well.”

  “I will do the work. And I’m sure I have the talent.”

  “Most people think that,” Varris said, “and most of them are mistaken. But never mind, never mind. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any company. We’ll see how you get on, Toms.”

  Together they went into the General Services Building, which Varris called his home. They went to the Main Control Room, where
the old man had put down a sleeping bag and set up a camp stove. There, in the shadow of the giant calculators, Toms’ lessons began.

  Varris was a thorough teacher. In the beginning, with the aid of a portable Semantic Differentiator, he taught Toms to isolate the delicate apprehension one feels in the presence of a to-be-loved person, to detect the subtle tensions that come into being as the potentiality of love draws near.

  These sensations, Toms learned, must never be spoken of directly, for frankness frightens love. They must be expressed in simile, metaphor, and hyperbole, half-truths and white lies. With these, one creates an atmosphere and lays a foundation for love. And the mind, deceived by its own predisposition, thinks of booming surf and raging sea, mournful black rocks and fields of green corn.

  “Nice images,” Toms said admiringly.

  “Those were samples,” Varris told him. “Now you must learn them all.”

  So Toms went to work memorizing great long lists of natural wonders, to what sensations they were comparable, and at what stage they appeared in the anticipation of love. The language was thorough in this regard. Every state or object in nature for which there was a response in love-anticipation had been cataloged, classified, and listed with suitable modifying adjectives.

  When he had memorized the list, Varris drilled him in perceptions of love. Toms learned the small, strange things that make up a state of love. Some were so ridiculous that he had to laugh.

  The old man admonished him sternly. “Love is a serious business, Toms. You seem to find some humor in the fact that love is frequently predisposed by wind speed and direction.”

  “It seems foolish,” Toms admitted.

  “There are stranger things than that,” Varris said, and mentioned another factor.

  Toms shuddered. “That I can’t believe. It’s preposterous. Everyone knows—”

  “If everyone knows how love operates, why hasn’t someone reduced it to a formula? Murky thinking, Toms, murky thinking is the answer, and an unwillingness to accept cold facts. If you cannot face them—”

  “I can face anything,” Toms said, “if I have to. Let’s continue.”