The 35th Golden Age of Science Fiction: Keith Laumer

by Keith Laumer

  “What I can’t figure out is why somebody from Vallon didn’t come after this ship. It was right here in orbit.”

  “Consider the immensity of space, Legion. This is one tiny world, among the stars.”

  “But there was a station here, fitted out for handling your ships. That sounds like it was a regular port of call. And the books with the pictures: they prove your people have been here off and on for thousands of years. Why would they stop coming?”

  “There are such beacons on a thousand worlds,” said Foster. “Think of it as a buoy marking a reef, a trailblaze in the wilderness. Ages could pass before a wanderer chanced this way again. The fact that the ventilator shaft at Stonehenge was choked with the debris of centuries when I first landed there shows how seldom this world was visited.”

  I thought about it. Bit by bit Foster was putting together the jig-saw pieces of his past. But he still had a long way to go before he had the big picture, frame and all. I had an idea:

  “Say, you said you were in the memory machine. You woke up there—and you’d just had your memory restored. Why not do the same thing again, now? That is, if your brain can take another pounding this soon.”

  “Yes,” he said. He stood up abruptly. “There’s just a chance. Come!”

  I followed him out of the library into the room with the bones. He moved over to look down at them curiously.

  “Quite a fracas,” I said. “Three of ’em.”

  “This would be the room where I awakened,” said Foster. “These are the men I saw dead.”

  “They’re still dead,” I said. “But what about the machine?”

  Foster walked across to the fancy couch, leaned down beside it, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “Of course it wouldn’t be here.…”

  “What?”

  “My memory-trace: the one that was used to restore my memory—that other time.”

  Suddenly I recalled the cylinder I had pocketed hours before. With a surprising flutter at my heart I held it up, like a kid in a classroom who knows he’s got the right answer. “This it?”

  Foster glanced at it briefly. “No, that’s an empty—like those you see filed over there.” He pointed to the rack of pewter-colored cylinders on the opposite wall. “They would be used for emergency recordings. Regular multi-life memory traces would be key-coded with a pattern of colored lines.”

  “It figures,” I said. “That would have been too easy. We have to do everything the hard way.” I looked around. “It’s a big bureau to look for a collar button under, but I guess we can try.”

  “It doesn’t matter, really. When I return to Vallon, I’ll recover my past. There are vaults where every citizen’s trace is stored.”

  “But you had yours here with you.”

  “It could only have been a copy. The master trace is never removed from Okk-Hamiloth.”

  “I guess you’ll be eager to get back there,” I said. “That’ll be quite a moment for you, getting back home after all these years. Speaking of years: were you able to figure out how long you were marooned down on earth?”

  “I lost all record of dates long ago,” said Foster. “I can only estimate the time.”

  “About how long?” I persisted.

  “Since I descended from this ship, Legion,” he said, “three thousand years have passed.”

  * * * *

  “I hate to see the team split up,” I said. “You know, I was kind of getting used to being an apprentice nut. I’m going to miss you, Foster.”

  “Come with me to Vallon, Legion,” he said.

  We were standing in the observation lounge, looking out at the bright-lit surface of the earth thirty thousand miles away. Beyond it, the dead white disk of the moon hung like a cardboard cutout.

  “Thanks anyway, buddy,” I said. “I’d like to see those other worlds of yours but in the end I might regret it. It’s no good giving an Eskimo a television set. I’d just sit around on Vallon pining for home: beat-up people, stinks, and all.”

  “You could return here some day.”

  “From what I understand about traveling in a ship like this,” I said, “a couple of hundred years would pass before I got back, even if it only seemed like a few weeks en route. I want to live out my life here—with the kind of people I know, in the world I grew up in. It has its faults, but it’s home.”

  “Then there is nothing I can do, Legion,” Foster said, “to reward your loyalty and express my gratitude.”

  “Well, ah,” I said. “There is a little something. Let me take the lifeboat, and stock it with a few goodies from the library, and some of those marbles from the storeroom, and a couple of the smaller mechanical gadgets. I think I know how to merchandise them in a way that’ll leave the economy on an even keel—and incidentally set me up for life. As you said, I’m a materialist.”

  “As you wish,” Foster said. “Take whatever you desire.”

  “One thing I’ll have to do when I get back,” I said, “is open the tunnel at Stonehenge enough to sneak a thermite bomb down it—if they haven’t already found the beacon station.”

  “As I judge the temper of the local people,” Foster said, “the secret is safe for at least three generations.”

  “I’ll bring the boat down in a blind spot where radar won’t pick it up,” I said. “Our timing was good; in another few years, it wouldn’t have been possible.”

  “And this ship would soon have been discovered,” Foster said. “In spite of radar-negative screens.”

  I looked at the great smooth sphere hanging, haloed, against utter black. The Pacific Ocean threw back a brilliant image of the sun.

  “I think I see an island down there that will fill the bill perfectly,” I said. “And if it doesn’t, there are a million more to choose from.”

  “You’ve changed, Legion,” Foster said. “You sound like a man with a fair share of joie de vivre.”

  “I used to think I was a guy who never got the breaks,” I said. “There’s something about standing here looking at the world that makes that kind of thinking sound pretty dumb. There’s everything down there a man needs to make his own breaks—even without a stock of trade goods.”

  “Every world has its rules of life,” Foster said. “Some more complex than others. To face your own reality—that’s the challenge.”

  “Me against the universe,” I said. “With those odds, even a loser can look good.” I turned to Foster. “We’re in a ten-hour orbit,” I said. “We’d better get moving. I want to put the boat down in southern South America. I know a place there where I can off-load without answering too many questions.”

  “You have several hours before the most favorable launch time,” Foster said. “There’s no hurry.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “But I’ve got a lot to do—” I took a last look toward the majestic planet beyond the viewscreen, “—and I’m eager to get started.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  I sat on the terrace watching the sun go down into the sea and thinking about Foster, somewhere out there beyond the purple palaces on the far horizon, in the ship that had waited for him for three thousand years, heading home at last. It was strange to reflect that for him, traveling near the speed of light, only a few days had passed, while three years went by for me—three fast years that I had made good use of.

  The toughest part had been the first few months, after I put the lifeboat down in a cañon in the desert country south of a little town called Itzenca, in Peru. I waited by the boat for a week, to be sure the vigilantes weren’t going to show up, full of helpful suggestions and embarassing questions; then I hiked to town, carrying a pack with a few carefully selected items to start my new career. It took me two weeks to work, lie, barter, and plead my way to the seaport town of Callao and another week to line up passage home as a deck hand on a banana scow. I disappeared over the side a
t Tampa, and made it to Miami without attracting attention. As far as I could tell, the cops had already lost interest in me.

  My old friend, the heavy-weight señorita, wasn’t overjoyed to see me, but she put me up, and I started in on my plan to turn my souvenirs into money.

  The items I had brought with me from the lifeboat were a pocketful of little gray dominoes that were actually movie film, and a small projector to go with them. I didn’t offer them for sale, direct. I made arrangements with an old acquaintance in the business of making pictures with low costume budgets for private showings; I set up the apparatus and projected my films, and he copied them in 35 mm. I told him that I’d smuggled them in from East Germany. He didn’t think much of the Krauts, but he admitted you had to hand it to them technically; the special effects were absolutely top-notch. His favorite was one I called the Mammoth Hunt.

  I had twelve pictures altogether; with a little judicious cutting and a dubbed-in commentary, they made up into fast-moving twenty-minute short subjects. He got in touch with a friend in the distribution end in New York, and after a little cagy fencing over contract terms, we agreed on a deal that paid a hundred thousand for the twelve, with an option on another dozen at the same price.

  Within a week after the pictures hit the neighborhood theatres around Bayonne, New Jersey, in a cautious tryout, I had offers up to half a million for my next consignment, no questions asked. I left my pal Mickey to handle the details on a percentage basis, and headed back for Itzenca.

  The lifeboat was just as I’d left it; it would have been all right for another fifty years, as far as the danger of anybody stumbling over it was concerned. I explained to the crew I brought out with me that it was a fake rocket ship, a prop I was using for a film I was making, I let them wander all over it and get their curiosity out of their systems. The concensus was that it wouldn’t fool anybody; no tail fins, no ray guns, and the instrument panel was a joke; but they figured that it was my money, so they went to work setting up a system of camouflage nets (part of the plot, I told them) and off-loading my cargo.

  A year after my homecoming, I had my island—a square mile of perfect climate, fifteen miles off the Peruvian coast—and a house that was tailored to my every whim by a mind-reading architect who made a fortune on the job—and earned it. The uppermost floor—almost a tower—was a strong-room, and it was there that I had stored my stock in trade. I had sold off the best of the hundred or so films I had picked out before leaving Foster, but there were plenty of other items. The projector itself was the big prize. The self-contained power unit converted nuclear energy to light with 99 percent efficiency. It scanned the “films”, one molecular layer at a time, and projected a continuous picture—no sixteen-frames-a-second flicker here. The color and sound were absolutely life-like—with the result that I’d had a few complaints from my distributor that the Technicolor was kind of washed-out.

  The principles involved in the projector were new, and—in theory, at least—way over the heads of our local physicists. But the practical application was nothing much. I figured that, with the right contacts in scientific circles to help me introduce the system, I had a billion-dollar industry up my sleeve. I had already fed a few little gimmicks into the market; a tough paper, suitable for shirts and underwear; a chemical that bleached teeth white as the driven snow; an all-color pigment for artists. With the knowledge I had absorbed from all the briefing rods I had studied, I had the techniques of a hundred new industries at my fingertips—and I hadn’t exhausted the possibilities yet.

  I spent most of a year roaming the world, discovering all the things that a free hand with a dollar bill could do for a man. The next year I put in fixing up the island, buying paintings and rugs and silver for the house, and a concert grand piano. After the first big thrill of economic freedom had worn off, I still enjoyed my music.

  For six months I had a full-time physical instructor giving me a twenty-four-hour-a-day routine of diet, sleep, and all the precision body-building my metabolism could stand. At the end of the course I was twice the man I’d ever been, the instructor was a physical wreck, and I was looking around for a new hobby.

  Now, after three years, it was beginning to get me: boredom, the disease of the idle rich, that I had sworn would never touch me. But thinking about wealth and having it on your hands are two different things, and I was beginning to remember almost with nostalgia the tough old times when every day was an adventure, full of cops and missed meals and a thousand unappeased desires.

  Not that I was really suffering. I was relaxed in a comfortable chair, after a day of surf fishing and a modest dinner of Chateaubriand. I was smoking a skinny cigar rolled by an expert from the world’s finest leaf, and listening to the best music a thousand-dollar hi-fi could produce. And the view, though free, was worth a million dollars a minute. After a while I would stroll down to the boathouse, start up the Rolls-powered launch, and tool over to the mainland, transfer to my Caddie convertible, and drive into town where a tall brunette from Stockholm was waiting for me to take her to the movies. My steady gal was a hard-working secretary for an electronics firm.

  I finished up my stogie and leaned forward to drop it in a big silver ashtray, when something caught my eye out across the red-painted water. I sat squinting at it, then went inside and came out with a pair of 7×50 binoculars. I focused them and studied the dark speck that stood out clearly now against the gaudy sky. It was a heavy-looking power boat, heading dead toward my island.

  I watched it come closer, swing off toward the hundred-foot concrete jetty I had built below the sea-wall, and ease alongside in a murmur of powerful engines. They died, and the boat sat in a sudden silence dwarfing the pier. I studied the bluish-grey hull, the inconspicuous flag aft. Two heavy deck guns were mounted on the foredeck, and there were four torpedoes slung in launching cradles. The hardware didn’t make half as much impression on me as the ranks of helmeted men drawn up on deck.

  I sat and watched. The men shuffled off onto the pier, formed up into two squads. I counted; forty-eight men, and a couple of officers. There was the faint sound of orders being barked, and the column stepped off, moving along the paved road that swung between the transplanted royal palms and hibiscus, right up to the wide drive that curved off to the house. They halted, did a left face, and stood at parade rest. The two officers, wearing class A’s, and a tubby civilian with a brief case came up the drive, trying to look as casual as possible under the circumstances. They paused at the foot of the broad flight of Tennessee marble steps leading up to my perch.

  The leading officer, a brigadier general, no less, looked up at me.

  “May we come up, sir?” he said.

  I looked across at the silent ranks waiting at the foot of the drive.

  “If the boys want a drink of water, Sarge,” I said, “tell ’em to come on over.”

  “I am General Smale,” the B.G. said. “This is Colonel Sanchez of the Peruvian Army—” he indicated the other military type”—and Mr. Pruffy of the American Embassy at Lima.”

  “Howdy, Mr. Pruffy,” I said. “Howdy, Mr. Sanchez. Howdy—”

  “This…ah…call is official in nature, Mr. Legion,” the general said. “It’s a matter of great importance, involving the security of your country.”

  “OK, General,” I said. “Come on up. What’s happened? You boys haven’t started another war, have you?”

  They filed up onto the terrace, hesitated, then shook hands, and sat down gingerly in the chairs. Pruffy held his briefcase in his lap.

  “Put your sandwiches on the table, if you like, Mr. Pruffy,” I said. He blinked, gripped the briefcase tighter. I offered my hand-tooled cigars around; Pruffy looked startled, Smale shook his head, and Sanchez took three.

  “I’m here,” the general said, “to ask you a few questions, Mr. Legion. Mr. Pruffy represents the Department of State in the matter, and Colonel Sanchez—”

&
nbsp; “Don’t tell me,” I said. “He represents the Peruvian government, which is why I don’t ask you what an armed American force is doing wandering around on Peruvian soil.”

  “Here,” Pruffy put in. “I hardly think—”

  “I believe you,” I said. “What’s it all about, Smale?”

  “I’ll come directly to the point,” he said. “For some time, the investigative and security agencies of the US government have been building a file on what for lack of a better name has been called ‘The Martians.’” Smale coughed apologetically.

  “A little over three years ago,” he went on, “an unidentified flying object—”

  “You interested in flying saucers, General?” I said.

  “By no means,” he snapped. “The object appeared on a number of radar screens, descending from extreme altitude. It came to earth at…” he hesitated.

  “Don’t tell me you came all the way out here to tell me you can’t tell me,” I said.

  “—A site in England,” Smale said. “American aircraft were dispatched to investigate the object. Before they could make identification, it rose again, accelerated at tremendous speed, and was lost at an altitude of several hundred miles.”

  “I thought we had better radar than that,” I said. “The satellite program—”

  “No such specialized equipment was available,” Smale said. “An intensive investigation turned up the fact that two strangers—possibly Americans—had visited the site only a few hours before the—ah—visitation.”

  I nodded. I was thinking about the close call I’d had when I went back to see about lobbing a bomb down the shaft to obliterate the beacon station. There were plainclothes men all over the place, like old maids at a movie star’s funeral. It was just as well; they never found it. The rocket blasts had collapsed the tunnel, and apparently the whole underground installation was made of non-metallic substances that didn’t show up in detecting equipment. I had an idea metal was passé where Foster came from.

  “Some months later,” Smale went on, “a series of rather curious short films went on exhibition in the United States. They showed scenes representing conditions on other planets, as well as ancient and prehistoric incidents here on earth. They were prefaced with explanations that they merely represented the opinions of science as to what was likely to be found on distant worlds. They attracted wide interest, and with few exceptions, scientists praised their verisimilitude.”