The Nail and the Oracle

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “I tried to sidle into it by looking up manned exploration, but I could find only three astronauts’ names in connection with Vexvelt. Troshan. He got into some sort of trouble when he came back and was executed—we used to kill certain criminals six, seven hundred years ago, did you know that?—but I don’t know what for. Anyway, they apparently did it before he filed his report. Then Balrou. Oh—Balrou—he did report. I can tell you his whole report word for word: ‘In view of conditions on Vexvelt contact is not recommended,’ period. By the word, that must be the most expensive report ever filed.”

  It was, thought the Archive Master, but he did not say it aloud.

  “And then somebody called Allman explored Vexvelt but—how did the report put it—’it was found on his return that Allman was suffering from confinement fatigue and his judgment was so severely impaired that his report is discounted.’ Does that mean it was destroyed, Archive Master?”

  Yes, thought the old man, but he said, “I can’t say.”

  “So there you are,” said Charli Bux. “If I wanted to present a classic case of what the old books called persecution mania, I’d just have to report things exactly as they happened. Did I have a right to suspect, even, that ‘They’ had picked me as the perfect target and set up those hints—low-cost feldspar, high-quality coffee—bait I couldn’t miss and couldn’t resist. Did I have the right to wonder if a living caricature with a comedy name—Moxie for-god’s-sake Magiddle—was working for ‘Them’? Then, what happened next, when I honestly and openly filed for Vexvelt as my next vacation destination? I was told there was no Drive Guide orbiting Vexvelt—it could only be reached through normal space. That happens to be a lie, but there’s no way of checking on it here, or even on Lethe—Moxie never knew. Then I filed for Vexvelt via Lethe and a real-space transport, and was told that Lethe was not recommended as a tourist stop and there was no real-space service from there anyhow. So I filed for Botil, which I know is a tourist stop, and which I know has real-space shuttles and charter boats, and which the star charts call Kricker III while Lethe is Kricker V, and that’s when I won the God—uh, the sweepstakes and a free trip to beautiful, beautiful Zeenip, paradise of paradises with two indoor 36-hole golf courses and free milk baths. I gave it to some charity or other, I said to save on taxes, and went for my tickets to Botil, the way I’d planned. I had it all to do over because they’d wiped the whole transaction when they learned about the sweepstakes. It seemed reasonable but it took so long to set it all up again that I missed the scheduled transport and lost a week of my vacation. Then when I went to pay for the trip my credit showed up zero, and it took another week to straighten out that regrettable error. By that time the tour service had only one full passage open, and in view of the fact that the entire tour would outlast my vacation by two weeks, they wiped the whole deal again—they were quite sure I wouldn’t want it.”

  Charli Bux looked down at his hands and squeezed them. The Archives Office was filled with a crunching sound. Bux did not seem to notice it. “I guess anybody in his right mind would have got the message by then, but ‘They’ had underestimated me. Let me tell you exactly what I mean by that. I don’t mean that I am a man of steel and by the Lord when my mind is made up it stays made. And I’m not making brags about the courage of my convictions. I had very little to be convinced about, except that there was a whole chain of coincidences which nobody wanted to explain even though the explanation was probably foolishly simple. And I never thought I was ’specially courageous.

  “I was just—scared. Oh, I was frustrated and I was mad, but mostly I was scared. If somebody had come along with a reasonable explanation I’d’ve forgotten the whole thing. If someone had come back from Vexvelt and it was a poison planet (with a pocket of good feldspar and one clean mountainside) I’d have laughed it off. But the whole sequence—especially the last part, trying to book passage—really scared me. I reached the point where the only thing that would satisfy me as to my own sanity was to stand and walk on Vexvelt and know what it was. And that was the one thing I wasn’t being allowed to do. So I couldn’t get my solid proof and who’s to say I wouldn’t spend the next couple hundred years wondering when I’d get the next little splinter down deep in my toe? A man can suffer from a thing, Master, but then he can also suffer for fear of suffering from a thing. No, I was scared and I was going to stay scared until I cleared it up.”

  “My.” The old man had been silent, listening, for so long that his voice was new and arresting. “It seems to me that there was a much simpler way out. Every city on every human world has free clinics where—”

  “That’s twice you’ve said that,” crackled Charli Bux. “I have something to say about that, but not now. As to my going to a patch-up parlor, you know as well as I do that they don’t change a thing. They just make you feel good about being the way you are.”

  “I fail to see the distinction, or what is wrong if there is one.”

  “I had a friend come up to me and tell me he was going to die of cancer in the next eight weeks, ‘just in time,’ he says, and whacks me so hard I see red spots, ‘just in time for my funeral,’ and off he goes down the street whooping like a loon.”

  “Would it be better if he huddled in his bed terrified and in pain?”

  “I can’t answer that kind of a question, but I do know what I saw is just as wrong. Anyway—there was something out there called Vexvelt, and it wouldn’t make me feel any better to get rolled through a machine and come out thinking there isn’t something called Vexvelt, and don’t tell me that’s not what those friendly helpful spot removers would do to me.”

  “But don’t you see, you’d no longer be—”

  “Call me throwback. Call me radical if you want to, or ignorant.” Charli Bux’s big voice was up again and he seemed angry enough not to care. “Ever hear that old line about ‘in every fat man there’s a thin man screaming to get out’? I just can’t shake the idea that if something is so, you can prick, poke, and process me till I laugh and scratch and giggle and admit it ain’t so after all, and even go out and make speeches and persuade other people, but away down deep there’ll be a me with its mouth taped shut and its hands tied, bashing up against my guts trying to get out and say it is so after all. But what are we talking about me for? I came here to talk about Vexvelt.”

  “First tell me something—do you really think there was a ‘They’ who wanted to stop you?”

  “Hell no. I think I’m up against some old-time stupidity that got itself established and habitual, and that’s how come there’s no information in the files. I don’t think anybody today is all that stupid. I like to think people on this planet can look at the truth and not let it scare them. Even if it scares them they can think it through. As to that rat race with the vacation bookings, there seemed to be a good reason for each single thing that happened. Science and math have done a pretty good job of explaining the mechanics of ‘the bad break’ and ‘a lucky run’, but neither of them ever got repealed.”

  “So.” The Master tented his fingers and looked down at the ridgepole. “And just how did you manage to get to Vexvelt after all?”

  Bux flicked on his big bright grin. “I hear a lot about this free society, and how there’s always someone out to trim an edge off here and a corner there. Maybe there’s something in it, but so far they haven’t got around to taking away a man’s freedom to be a damn fool. Like, for example, his freedom to quit his job. I’ve said it was just a gruesome series of bad breaks, but bad breaks can be outwitted just as easily as a superpowerful masterminding ‘They.’ Seems to me most bad breaks happen inside a man’s pattern. He gets out of phase with it and every step he takes is between the steppin’ stones. If he can’t phase in, and if he tries to maintain his pace, why there’s a whole row of stones ahead of him laid just exactly where each and every one of them will crack his shins. What he should do is head upstream. It might be unknown territory, and there might be dangers, but one thing for sure, there’s a wh
ole row of absolutely certain, absolutely planned agonies he is just not going to have to suffer.”

  “How did you get to Vexvelt?”

  “I told you.” He waited, then smiled. “I’ll tell you again. I quit my job. ‘They,’ or the ‘losing streak,’ or the stinking lousy Fates, or whatever had a bead on me—they could do it to me because they always knew where I was, when I’d be the next place, and what I wanted. So they were always waiting for me. So I headed upstream. I waited till my vacation was over and left the house without any luggage and went to my local bank and had all my credits before I could have any tough breaks. Then I took a Drive jumper to Lunatu, booked passage on a semi-freight to Lethe.”

  “You booked passage, but you never boarded the ship.”

  “You know?”

  “I was asking.”

  “Oh,” said Charli Bux. “Yeah, I never set foot in that cozy little cabin. What I did, I slid down the cargo chute and got buried in Hold No. 2 with a ton of oats. I was in an interesting position, Archive Master. In a way I’m sorry nobody dug me out to ask questions. You’re not supposed to stow away but the law says—and I know exactly what it says—that a stowaway is someone who rides a vessel without booking passage. But I did book passage, and paid in full, and all my papers were in order for where I was going. What made things a lot easier, too, was that where I was going nobody gives much of a damn about papers.”

  “And you felt you could get to Vexvelt through Lethe.”

  “I felt I had a chance, and I knew of no others. Cargoes from Vexvelt had been put down on Lethe, or I wouldn’t have been sucked into this thing in the first place. I didn’t know if the carrier was Vexveltian or a tramp (if it was a liner I’d have known it) or when one might come or if it would be headed for Vexvelt when it departed. All I knew was that Vexvelt had shipped here for sure, and this was the only place where maybe they might be back. Do you know what goes on at Lethe?”

  “It has a reputation.”

  “Do you know?”

  The old man showed a twinge of irritation. Along with respect and obedience, he had become accustomed to catechizing and not to being catechized. “Everyone knows about Lethe.”

  Bux shook his head. “They don’t, Master.”

  The old man lifted his hands and put them down. “That kind of thing has its function. Humanity will always—”

  “You approve of Lethe and what goes on there.”

  “One neither approves nor disapproves,” said the Archive Master stiffly. “One knows about it, recognizes that for some segments of the species such an outlet is necessary, realizes that Lethe makes no pretensions to being anything but what it is, and then—one accepts, one goes on to other things. How did you get to Vexvelt?”

  “On Lethe,” said Charli Bux implacably, “you can do anything you want to or with any kind of human being, or any number of combination of them, as long as you can pay for it.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it. Now, the next leg of your trip—”

  “There are men,” said Charli Bux, suddenly and shockingly quiet, “who can be attracted by disease—by sores, Archive Master, by the stumps of amputated limbs. There are people on Lethe who cultivate diseases to attract such men. Crones, Master, with dirty leather skin, and boys and little—”

  “You will cease this nauseating—”

  “In just a minute. One of the unwritten and unbreakable traditions of Lethe is that, what anyone pays to do, anyone else may pay to watch.”

  “Are you finished?” It was not Bux who shouted now. “You accept Lethe. You condone Lethe.”

  “I have not said I approve.”

  “You trade with Lethe.”

  “Well, of course we do. That doesn’t mean we—”

  “The third day—night, rather, that I was there,” said Bux, overriding what was surely about to turn into a helpless sputter, “I turned off one of the main streets and into an alley. I knew this might be less than wise, but at the moment there was an ugly fight going on between me and the corner, and some wild gunning. I was going to turn right and go to the other avenue anyway, and I could see it clearly through the alley.

  “I couldn’t describe to you how fast this happened, or explain where they came from—eight of them, I think, in an alley, not quite dark and very narrow, when only a minute before I had been able to see it from end to end.

  “I was grabbed from all sides all over my body, lifted, slammed down flat on my back and a bright light jammed in my face.

  “A woman said, ‘Aw shoot, ’tain’t him.’ A man’s voice said to let me up. They picked me up. Somebody even started dusting me off. The woman who had held the light began to apologize. She did it quite nicely. She said they had heard that there was a—Master, I wonder if I should use the word.”

  “How necessary do you feel—”

  “Oh, I guess I don’t have to; you know it. On any ship, any construction gang, in any farm community—anywhere where men work or gather, it’s the one verbal bullet which will and must start a fight. If it doesn’t, the victim will never regain face. The woman used it as casually as she would have said Terran or Lethean. She said there was one right here in town and they meant to get him. I said, ‘Well, how about that.’ It’s the one phrase I know that can be said any time about anything. Another woman said I was a good big one and how would I like to tromp him. One of the men said all right, but he called for the head. Another began to fight him about it, and a third woman took off her shoe and slapped both their faces with one swing of the muddy sole. She said for them to button it up or next time she’d use the heel. The other woman, with the light, giggled and said Helen was Veddy Good Indeed that way. She spoke in a beautifully cultivated accent. She said Helen could hook out an eye neat as a croupier. The third woman suddenly cried out, ‘Dog turds!’ She asked for some light. The dog turds were very dry. One of the men offered to wet them down. The women said no—they were her dog turds and she would do it herself. Then and there she squatted. She called for a light, said she couldn’t see to aim. They turned the light on her. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Is there something wrong, Master?”

  “I would like you to tell me how you made contact with Vexvelt,” said the old man a little breathlessly.

  “But I am!” said Charli Bux. “One of the men pressed through, all grunting with eagerness, and began to mix the filth with his hands. And then, by a sort of sixth sense, the light was out and they were simply—gone! Disappeared. A hand came out of nowhere and pulled me back against a house wall. There wasn’t a sound—not even breathing. And only then did the Vexveltian turn into the alley. How they knew he was coming is beyond me.

  “The hand that had pulled me back belonged to the woman with the light, as I found out in a matter of seconds. I really didn’t believe her hand meant to be where I found it. I took hold of it and held it, but she snatched it away and put it back. Then I felt the light bump my leg. And the man came along toward us. He was a big man, held himself straight, wore light-colored clothes, which I thought was more foolhardy than brave. He walked lightly and seemed to be looking everywhere—and still could not see us.

  “If this all happened right this minute, after what I’ve learned about Vexvelt—about Lethe too—I wouldn’t hesitate, I’d know exactly what to do. What you have to understand is that I didn’t know anything at all at the time. Maybe it was the eight against one that annoyed me.” He paused thoughtfully. “Maybe that coffee. What I’m trying to say is that I did the same thing then, in my ignorance, that I’d do now, knowing what I do.

  “I snapped the flashlight out of the woman’s hand and got about twenty feet away in two big bounds. I turned the light on and played it back where I’d come from. Two of the men had crawled up the sheer building face like insects and were ready to drop on the victim. The beautiful one was crouched on her toes and one hand; the other, full of filth, was ready to throw. She made an absolutely animal sound and slung her handful, quite uselessly. The othe
rs were flattened back against wall and fence, and in the light, for a long second, they flattened all the more, blinking. I said over my shoulder, ‘Watch yourself, friend. You’re the guest of honor, I think.’

  “You know what he did? He laughed. I said. ‘They won’t get by me for a while. Take off.’ ‘What for?’ says he, squeezing past me. ‘There’re only eight of them.’ And he marches straight down on them.

  “Something rolled under my foot and I picked it up—half a brick. What must have been the other half of it hit me right on the breastbone. It made me yelp, I couldn’t help it. The tall man said to douse the light, I was a target. I did, and saw one of them in silhouette against the street at the far end, standing up from behind a big garbage can. He was holding a knife half as long as his forearm, and he rose up as the big man passed him. I let fly with the brick and got him right back of the head. The tall man never so much as turned when he heard him fall and the knife go skittering. He passed one of the human flies as if he had forgotten he was there, but he hadn’t forgotten. He reached up and got both the ankles and swung the whole man screaming off the wall like a flail, wiping the second one off and tumbling the both of them on top of the rest of the gang.

  “He stood there with the back of his hands on his hips for a bit, not even breathing hard, watching the crying, cursing mix-up all over the alley pavement. I came up beside him. One, two got to their feet and ran limping. One of the women began to scream—curses, I suppose, but you couldn’t hear the words. I turned the light on her face and she shut right up.

  “ ‘You all right?’ says the tall man.

  “I told him, ‘Caved in my chest is all, but that’s all right, I can use it for a fruit bowl lying in bed.’ He laughed and turned his back on the enemy and led me the way he had come. He said he was Vorhidin from Vexvelt. I told him who I was. I said I’d been looking for a Vexveltian, but before we could go on with that a black hole opened up to the left and somebody whispered, ‘Quick, quick.’ Vorhidin clapped a hand on my back and gave me a little shove. ‘In you go, Charli Bux of Terratu.’ And in we went, me stumbling all over my feet down some steps I didn’t know were there, and then again because they weren’t there. A big door boomed closed behind us. Dim yellow light came on. There was a little man with olive skin and a shiny, oily mustache. ‘Vorhidin, for the love of God, I told you not to come into town, they’ll kill you.’ Vorhidin only said, ‘This is Charli Bux, a friend.’ The little man came forward anxiously and began to pat Vorhidin on the arms and ribs to see if he was all right.