The Abominal Earthman (1963) SSC

by Frederik Pohl

  V

  All through the night, sputtering electric flares illuminated the square outside the building where the humans were captive.

  Under the flickering light, the gray Gormen worked to pile fragments of control mechanism onto a high-wheeled cart. It was a maddening sight for Hibsen; he knelt by the window as long as he could, feeling every hammer blow on his own flesh. But not even rage can sustain wakefulness forever, and in time he slept.

  Rae Wensley woke him in the morning. She had got up to the baby’s crying, fed him, changed him and put him in a corner, a tilted table protecting him from being stepped on. Hibsen heard and came instantly awake.

  He sat up, looked around once and scowled. Outside, the square was empty of life. Cold damp air rolled in the open door. Gray light was coming up.

  “I see they’re through,” Hibsen whispered bitterly, nodding toward the square.

  But Rae was more preoccupied with other problems. She had discovered there were only three more sterile bottles of formula for the baby, plus what little was in his mother’s breasts. Mary Marne’s intentions were good, but she had not been able to nurse the child. It was absolutely essential to find a substitute.

  She said as much to Hibsen. He shrugged. “Three bottles is a whole day, isn’t it? We’ll see.”

  “And we’re out of diapers.”

  He got up and walked away. “Ask your friend Brabant,” he said over his shoulder. “He’s on good terms with the local authorities.”

  He left the girl angry, but that was the way he wanted her to be, angry. Anger is too powerful a force to be confined; it bursts out and drenches whatever object is convenient. If he left her angry enough, perhaps some of it would erupt at the headshrinker.

  And that was fair and just, Hibsen considered, because he was at least half sincere in saying that he believed Brabant had sold out to the Gormen. What’s more, it served his ends. There was still the chance of escape—somehow. And it was going to be a long, lonely voyage back to Earth, and it would be much less lonely if Rae Wensley came along.

  Without the headshrinker.

  The Gorman was back inside the door again, watching, watching. De Jouvenel, dunking a cake of compressed cereal into cold black coffee, said dourly: “I wanted to jump that thing. Brabant wouldn’t let me. What do you think, Hibsen?”

  Hibsen grinned tightly. “I think—” He glanced at Rae Wensley and winked. “I think you better hurry up with that cup, Joe. Others are waiting.”

  Rae was trembling. “Stop it! I know you don’t like Dr. Brabant, but this is no way to talk! You’ve got no right to assume he’s doing anything wrong. You weren’t even here when the Gormen took him away!”

  “He didn’t struggle very hard,” de Jouvenel observed.

  Hibsen shook his head. “No, Joe, that’s no way to talk. We’ve got no right to assume anything wrong.” And he winked again.

  He got up and drifted over to the window, well pleased. Out there was scout rocket one, squatting patiently. Maybe, thought Hibsen, maybe yet—

  But it was out of the question. They couldn’t possibly fly that one. Not without the built-in computing autopilots. But there was the chance—maybe, possibly—that they could find and reinstall the computing mechanisms. Or something. Anyway—

  “Hey,” said Hibsen, “come here a minute, Marne. What’s that?”

  He pointed across the square. There was a building, more or less like the others, but light glinted from something inside it.

  “Looks like gold,” de Jouvenel ventured. “Jaroff, is that the place you call the House of Morgan?”

  The old man limped over. “That?” he said, squinting. “No. The one with the pink roof, that’s the House of Morgan. That’s where they got Skinner, you know. When they first landed.”

  “Well, then, what the devil is it?”

  “That’s their ship,” Jaroff said wearily, and dragged himself back.

  Hibsen caught his breath. “Their ship.”

  Then he stood straight, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. “All right!” he said in a harsh tone. “That’s the answer! They’ve messed up our rocket—we’ll use theirs!” He looked around at the circle of doubting faces. “What’s the matter now? Don’t you believe I can fly it?”

  “No,” said a voice from the door, “I don’t believe you can.”

  They all turned. There was Brabant, two Gormen behind him, standing in the door.

  Silence for a second.

  Then, “Come in, Doc,” said Hibsen, “come right in. We’ve been wanting to talk to you. Bring your friends, if you like. They’re just as welcome as you are.”

  Brabant came in, glancing at Rae, but his face was impassive.

  Hibsen breathed on the star sapphire in his left lapel and burnished it on his other sleeve. It was a habit of his; it made him feel a little more comfortable in situations of strain. He said politely: “Did you have a nice time, Doc?”

  “Not very.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Hibsen, shaking his head in regret. “I guess they just don’t know how to treat a guest. Right, Jaroff?” The old man looked dimly away. “Well, when you came in, you had some comments to make on my idea, didn’t you, Doc? You said I couldn’t fly the Gorman ship.”

  “And you can’t.”

  “Mind telling me why?”

  “Because,” Brabant said, “you’re not a Gorman. You ought to know that much, Hibsen, being a computerman! Why do you think they pulled the course-computers out of the scout rocket?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Hibsen said, “we were wondering about that, Dr. Brabant.”

  “Because they don’t need them, that’s why! We do, but they don’t—that’s the way Gormen are built.”

  Hibsen said angrily, knowing it was untrue, unable to keep from saying it: “I can do anything they can do! Whose side are you on?”

  Brabant blazed: “You fool! Do you think you can fly a rocket without computers? You can’t! No man can as much as balance a rocket on its tail—it takes a machine to do that. And the machines aren’t there. The Gormen never had them in their own ship, so naturally they’ve taken them out of ours! Curiosity? I don’t know. It’s as good an explanation as any.”

  He got up and pointed out the window. The three impassive aliens watched him with their eyes, but didn’t move.

  “Look out there! See those buildings down the square? They’re full of Gormen! I guarantee you can’t take a single step out of this building without one of them being right on your back. They’refast. But even if you could, then what? It doesn’t matter which ship you go for, our scout or theirs; it needs a machine to fly it. You’ve all been in rockets at takeoff. You know what happens. A couple of seconds of full blast, and they haven’t even moved yet.

  “Then they begin to lift—oh, maybe a couple of inches in the next second. In the fifth second, they can gain perhaps a foot or two. But they have to get upward of fifty or sixty miles an hour to become aerodynamically stable—and that takes fifteen seconds. And in those fifteen seconds, friend, you can be dead a dozen times. Anything—anything—can tip the ship, just a fraction of a second of arc, but when it begins to tip, it has to be corrected—not when you get around to it, butright now. Are you fast enough for that, Hibsen? You’re not. I’m not. No human being is.”

  He turned from the window. “As far as we’re concerned, those ships might as well not be there.”

  Hibsen stood looking angrily after Brabant as the psychologist walked away, over to the wall where their scant rations lay heaped, and selected a biscuit.

  Absently Hibsen rubbed his sapphire, unable to take his eyes off Brabant. No one spoke, and that annoyed Hibsen; what right did the headshrinker have to come in and demolish their plans? All right, he thought irritably, maybe it wasn’t going to be easy. But surely there was a way. There hadto be a way. Otherwise that star sapphire would wind up in some rhinoceros-skinned alien’s pocket, a toy for the kiddies, maybe, instead of a couple of decades of happy liv
ing for Robert Hibsen, Esq.

  De Jouvenel said across the room: “What’s the matter, Doc? Didn’t your friends feed you?”

  Brabant, chewing, said stolidly: “No.” But his expression was strained. Hibsen noticed and was maliciously amused. Why, Doc’s worried too, he thought.

  Brabant looked at the half biscuit, uneaten, in his hand, stopped chewing and put it down. “Well, we’ll have to do better than this. I’ve arranged for supplies to be brought out of the scout rocket.”

  “What?” Rae Wensley demanded. “How—”

  Brabant’s expression changed slightly, queerly, almost to a look of embarrassment. “I’ve made some arrangements with them,” he said, his voice not very loud. “I—I’ll need your cooperation—all of you—to help carry them out.”

  De Jouvenel laughed without humor.

  Rae asked sharply: “What arrangements?”

  “The only kind that are open to me.” Brabant said steadily. “Please, Rae. Don’t act as if I had any choice or—”

  “What arrangements?”

  Hibsen saw, with more pleasure than he had expected to find in anything that day, in that place, that Rae’s face was filled with apprehension and the faint foreboding of anger. Well, he thought, well! Maybe the kid was getting smart!

  Brabant said shortly: “I made an even trade. Information for our lives. They want to study us—we let them. In exchange, they let us feed ourselves and they promise not to— to—” He faltered, looking at Sam Jaroff.

  “They promise!” Rae Wensley cried. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “There’s no choice,” Brabant protested. “How do you know, maybe with our cooperation they’ll learn enough so that they can find a way to get along with the human race! After all, we’re as much freaks to them as they to us—they didn’t expect to find creatures with the power of star flight any more than we did! Psychologically, we’re a complete mystery to them—as much as they are to us—and that’s my department, of course. So I’ve agreed to—”

  De Jouvenel snapped: “To help them conquer Earth.”

  “No! To—”

  “Don’t lie, Brabant!” shouted Marne, his splinted arm forgotten, shouldering his way forward. “Giving aid and comfort to the enemy is treason! You louse, your skin is worth a lot to you, isn’t it? But it’s worth less to us! You know what treason means?”

  “Shut up!” said Brabant. “You don’t have a choice. The Gormen—”

  “Oh, but we do, headshrinker,” interrupted Hibsen at last He pushed Marne and de Jouvenel aside to face Brabant. “Our choice is cooperation or death—your death, Brabant! And don’t think we can’t kill you!”

  Brabant stood quietly looking at him for a second, then nodded, his expression bleak. “Yes,” he said, “I thought you’d get around to that. But you’re wrong there too, Hibsen. You can’t kill me. The Gormen won’t let you.”

  “They’ll never know! Some day when you’re not expecting it—”

  “They already know,” Brabant said, not raising his voice. “Didn’t Jaroff tell you? Every last one of them speaks English.”

  VI

  Brabant and his two Gorman companions had gone, taking Sam Jaroff with them. It had not been a pleasant departure; the old man had screamed terribly, waking the baby, upsetting the orphaned Crescenzi children. But will he, nill he—he had gone, hardly reassured even in part by Brabant’s sworn promise that he wouldn’t be hurt.

  Just as Rae got the two children calm enough to consider a nap, a party of Gormen came rapidly, silently in. Speak English or not, their purpose was not conversation. They fanned out and swiftly, without pause or consultation, began going through every single article of food, clothing and equipment in the room.

  “Hibsen!” cried Rae at the inner door. “All of you, come here! They’re up to something!”

  The men came hurrying down and clotted at the doorway, indecisive, but there was nothing for them to do. The aliens didn’t touch any person; it was only the inanimate possessions of the party that interested them. And those they went through with the meticulous care of monkeys preening their mates for salt.

  “They’re searching us,” Hibsen said. “Looking for weapons, I guess. Well, that’s a laugh! I wish we had some for them to find.”

  But the Gormen drew a broader line than his. A steel rule that could conceivably be filed to a point, the single glass nursing bottle that Mary had somehow acquired among the one-use plastics (it could be shattered, perhaps), everything that might have an edge or produce a bang was found and confiscated.

  “They’re thorough enough,” Hibsen said bitterly. “All right, let them go ahead. There’s nothing we can do about it anyway—now.” But they weren’t waiting for his permission; they finished their job and stood briefly at the door.

  For the first time, Rae Wensley heard one of them speak. It was a thin rabbity squeal, too faint to make much of an impression, but it was clearly a language. There was question and answer, and then half the party left, carrying their few trophies….

  And the other three came purposefully toward Rae.

  She screamed. She couldn’t help it; it was too sudden—so sudden that she couldn’t stop the scream and barely had time to start it; so sudden that she couldn’t hear the sudden shouts from the men, or see how two of the Gormen interposed themselves—fast, fast!—between her and the men, while the other picked her up, as quick, as brisk, as carelessly as a merry-go-round rider snatching the brass ring. Half a second, it seemed, and she had barely caught her breath to scream again and she was already outside, the other Gormen a solid barrier at the door behind her.

  She was lugged across the square and into a building. Squeaking Gormen were all over the building, more than a score of. them, surely, but she didn’t have a chance to count or to conjecture on what they were doing, she was carried so swiftly and carelessly up a flight of stairs. The alien who carried her made no sound. However rapidly one foot descended on the tread above the other, it was placed just there, with just the right force; it didn’t stamp, it didn’t stumble. She could hear, from the floor above, a human voice, droning a long steady stream, growing louder as she approached.

  The Gorman dumped her upright on the floor and vanished, as silent descending the stairs as he had been coming up.

  Brabant was in the room. So was Sam Jaroff—it was his voice. He sat half-reclining on an improvised chair, his eyes closed, talking endlessly.

  Rae opened her mouth, but Brabant, frowning, shook his head, held a finger to his lips. He seemed mildly surprised to see her, but not very; he didn’t, in fact, seem interested in her, only in Jaroff.

  “—the one that had a green thing on his shoulder,” Jaroff was saying. “A kind of an emblem with three leaves—only not leaves, but sort of swirly things. Like the way fire is drawn coming out of a pinwheel, spinning back. And he was heavier than the other one—about ten per cent, I’d say, or almost; and when they cut my arm, he used both hands, but the other only used his left. The little one in the green room, though, used his right when he put the electrodes around my arm. The thing about him was the little box he carried, gold, with eleven white dots and two red ones on the outside, four white in a line, then—”

  Jaroff droned on. It was very queer of Dr. Brabant, Rae thought, catching her breath, to be practicing deep recall on the old man in front of the Gormen.

  She looked around the room. It was larger than any of those in the house the Gormen had given them for a prison, and it contained things she couldn’t recognize but that looked out of place—black metallic things, gold things; Gorman things, most likely. This building was obviously their headquarters, or a part of it. It had a sour reek that, she realized, had been in her nostrils for a long time. She’d thought of it as the smell of Aleph Four, but now she began to wonder. Perhaps it was a Gorman smell.

  Then she saw something that was not Gorman.

  It was black, but its insides were glass, steel and copper; it had come from the scout r
ocket. The parts were here! Joy swelled inside her. They were here. Brabant had saved them. No doubt he had a plan. And—

  She looked more carefully, and all that was here was a tape recorder, part of the radio equipment, and a few cells from the power pack. Something Brabant was using, no doubt, in whatever it was he was doing. But it wasn’t what they needed to make that ship fly.

  “—after Skinner died,” Jaroff was continuing. “Then I was sick for a long time, because of the greenish lumps in the mush, I guess. There were more of them than there were of the purple later on, and they were a little bigger. While I was feverish, the rhino from the green room came eight times and—”

  There was a murmur from one of the Gormen and Brabant said, cheerfully enough: “All right, Jaroff. Snap out of it.”

  The old man woke, blinked, saw the Gormen, and quailed. “Don’t worry,” Brabant reassured him. “That’s all for today. You can go back to the others now.” Jaroff, trembling, walked hesitantly to the door of the room and paused. “Down the stairs. Go ahead. One of the Gormen down there will convoy you to the others. Nothing to be afraid of.”

  Brabant watched him out of sight, then turned to Rae.

  “Well,” he said, “I asked them to get Mary Marne, but I suppose one human female looks like another to them. Or maybe my description wasn’t so good.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said Brabant. He beckoned to her. “Over here. You’re next.”

  It wasn’t the most attractive invitation Rae Wensley had ever had, but there wasn’t any choice. She sat where he ordered her.

  “Let’s see,” he said thoughtfully, glancing at the six silent aliens. “I guess we’ll start you off with knee jerks. Put these on, Rae.” He handed her a set of earphones and bent to tie something with a wire attached to her knee. “Easy,” he protested as she jerked away. “This is science.”

  Self-consciously, Rae put the earphones on. He was bright and cheerful enough, she thought angrily. How could he? An hour before, he was being called the worst name in the vocabulary of the human race—a traitor to humanity itself— and now he might have been back on Explorer II, light-years from the nearest solid body, giving her the regular psychological check.