The Space Opera Novella

by Frank Belknap Long

  He pointed at it.

  She blushed all the way down to her throat.

  She spoke dreamily, “You looked like a nice man to me. I didn’t think you’d tell on me…”

  He gave her what he thought was a friendly smile, but with the pain in his skin and the pleasure bursting out of his head, he really had no idea of what his actual expression might be.

  “It’s against the law,” he said. “It’s terribly against the law. But it is nice.”

  “How do you think we stand it here?” said the nurse. “You specimens come in here talking like ordinary people and then you go down to Shayol. Terrible things happen to you on Shayol. Then the surface station sends up parts of you, over and over again. I may see your head ten times, quick-frozen and ready for cutting up, before my two years are up. You prisoners ought to know how we suffer,” she crooned, the pleasure-charge still keeping her relaxed and happy, “you ought to die as soon as you get down there and not pester us with your torments. We can hear you screaming, you know. You keep on sounding like people even after Shayol begins to work on you. Why do you do it, Mr. Specimen?” She giggled sillily. “You hurt our feelings so. No wonder a girl like me has to have a little jolt now and then. It’s real, real dreamy and I don’t mind getting you ready to go down on Shayol.” She staggered over to his bed. “Pull this cap off me, will you? I haven’t got enough will power left to raise my hands.”

  * * * *

  Mercer saw his hand tremble as he reached for the cap.

  His fingers touched the girl’s soft hair through the cap. As he tried to get his thumb under the edge of the cap, in order to pull it off, he realized that this was the loveliest girl he had ever touched. He felt that he had always loved her, that he always would. The cap came off. She stood erect, staggering a little before she found a chair to hold on to. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

  “Just a minute,” she said in her normal voice. “I’ll be with you in just a minute. The only time I can get a jolt of this is when one of you visitors gets a dose to get over the skin trouble.”

  She turned to the room mirror to adjust her hair. Speaking with her back to him, she said, “I hope I didn’t say anything about downstairs.”

  Mercer still had the cap on. He loved this beautiful girl who had put it on him. He was ready to weep at the thought that she had had the same kind of pleasure which he still enjoyed. Not for the world would he say anything which could hurt her feelings. He was sure she wanted to be told that she had not said anything about “downstairs”—probably shop talk for the surface of Shayol—so he assured her warmly, “You said nothing. Nothing at all.”

  She came over to the bed, leaned, kissed him on the lips. The kiss was as far away as the pain; he felt nothing; the Niagara of throbbing pleasure which poured through his head left no room for more sensation. But he liked the friendliness of it. A grim, sane corner of his mind whispered to him that this was probably the last time he would ever kiss a woman, but it did not seem to matter.

  With skilled fingers she adjusted the cap on his head. “There, now. You’re a sweet guy. I’m going to pretend-forget and leave the cap on you till the doctor comes.”

  With a bright smile she squeezed his shoulder.

  She hastened out of the room.

  The white of her skirt flashed prettily as she went out of the door. He saw that she had very shapely legs indeed.

  She was nice, but the cap…ah, it was the cap that mattered! He closed his eyes and let the cap go on stimulating the pleasure centers of his brain. The pain in his skin was still there, but it did not matter any more than did the chair standing in the corner. The pain was just something that happened to be in the room.

  * * * *

  A firm touch on his arm made him open his eyes.

  The older, authoritative-looking man was standing beside the bed, looking down at him with a quizzical smile.

  “She did it again,” said the old man.

  Mercer shook his head, trying to indicate that the young nurse had done nothing wrong.

  “I’m Doctor Vomact,” said the older man, “and I am going to take this cap off you. You will then experience the pain again, but I think it will not be so bad. You can have the cap several more times before you leave here.”

  With a swift, firm gesture he snatched the cap off Mercer’s head.

  Mercer promptly doubled up with the inrush of fire from his skin. He started to scream and then saw that Doctor Vomact was watching him calmly.

  Mercer gasped, “It is—easier now.”

  “I knew it would be,” said the doctor. “I had to take the cap off to talk to you. You have a few choices to make.”

  “Yes, doctor,” gasped Mercer.

  “You have committed a serious crime and you are going down to the surface of Shayol.”

  “Yes,” said Mercer.

  “Do you want to tell me your crime?”

  Mercer thought of the white palace walls in perpetual sunlight, and the soft mewing of the little things when he reached them. He tightened his arms, legs, back and jaw. “No,” he said, “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s the crime without a name. Against the Imperial family…”

  “Fine,” said the doctor, “that’s a healthy attitude. The crime is past. Your future is ahead. Now, I can destroy your mind before you go down—if you want me to.”

  “That’s against the law,” said Mercer.

  Doctor Vomact smiled warmly and confidently. “Of course it is. A lot of things are against human law. But there are laws of science, too. Your body, down on Shayol, is going to serve science. It doesn’t matter to me whether that body has Mercer’s mind or the mind of a low-grade shell-fish. I have to leave enough mind in you to keep the body going, but I can wipe out the historic you and give your body a better chance of being happy. It’s your choice, Mercer. Do you want to be you or not?”

  Mercer shook his head back and forth, “I don’t know.”

  “I’m taking a chance,” said Doctor Vomact, “in giving you this much leeway. I’d have it done if I were in your position. It’s pretty bad down there.”

  Mercer looked at the full, broad face. He did not trust the comfortable smile. Perhaps this was a trick to increase his punishment. The cruelty of the Emperor was proverbial. Look at what he had done to the widow of his predecessor, the Dowager Lady Da. She was younger than the Emperor himself, and he had sent her to a place worse than death. If he had been sentenced to Shayol, why was this doctor trying to interfere with the rules? Maybe the doctor himself had been conditioned, and did not know what he was offering.

  Doctor Vomact read Mercer’s face. “All right. You refuse. You want to take your mind down with you. It’s all right with me. I don’t have you on my conscience. I suppose you’ll refuse the next offer too. Do you want me to take your eyes out before you go down? You’ll be much more comfortable without vision. I know that, from the voices that we record for the warning broadcasts. I can sear the optic nerves so that there will be no chance of your getting vision again.”

  Mercer rocked back and forth. The fiery pain had become a universal itch, but the soreness of his spirit was greater than the discomfort of his skin.

  “You refuse that, too?” said the doctor.

  “I suppose so,” said Mercer.

  “Then all I have to do is to get ready. You can have the cap for a while, if you want.”

  * * * *

  Mercer said, “Before I put the cap on, can you tell me what happens down there?”

  “Some of it,” said the doctor. “There is an attendant. He is a man, but not a human being. He is a homunculus fashioned out of cattle material. He is intelligent and very conscientious. You specimens are turned loose on the surface of Shayol. The dromozoa are a special life-form there. When they settle in your body, B’dikkat—that’s the attendant—carves them out with a
n anesthetic and sends them up here. We freeze the tissue cultures, and they are compatible with almost any kind of oxygen-based life. Half the surgical repair you see in the whole universe comes out of buds that we ship from here. Shayol is a very healthy place, so far as survival is concerned. You won’t die.”

  “You mean,” said Mercer, “that I am getting perpetual punishment.”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Doctor Vomact. “Or if I did, I was wrong. You won’t die soon. I don’t know how long you will live down there. Remember, no matter how uncomfortable you get, the samples which B’dikkat sends up will help thousands of people in all the inhabited worlds. Now take the cap.”

  “I’d rather talk,” said Mercer. “It may be my last chance.”

  The doctor looked at him strangely. “If you can stand that pain, go ahead and talk.”

  “Can I commit suicide down there?”

  “I don’t know,” said the doctor. “It’s never happened. And to judge by the voices, you’d think they wanted to.”

  “Has anybody ever come back from Shayol?”

  “Not since it was put off limits about four hundred years ago.”

  “Can I talk to other people down there?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor.

  “Who punishes me down there?”

  “Nobody does, you fool,” cried Doctor Vomact. “It’s not punishment. People don’t like it down on Shayol, and it’s better, I guess, to get convicts instead of volunteers. But there isn’t anybody against you at all.”

  “No jailers?” asked Mercer, with a whine in his voice.

  “No jailers, no rules, no prohibitions. Just Shayol, and B’dikkat to take care of you. Do you still want your mind and your eyes?”

  “I’ll keep them,” said Mercer. “I’ve gone this far and I might as well go the rest of the way.”

  “Then let me put the cap on you for your second dose,” said Doctor Vomact.

  The doctor adjusted the cap just as lightly and delicately as had the nurse; he was quicker about it. There was no sign of his picking out another cap for himself.

  The inrush of pleasure was like a wild intoxication. His burning skin receded into the distance. The doctor was near in space, but even the doctor did not matter. Mercer was not afraid of Shayol. The pulsation of happiness out of his brain was too great to leave room for fear or pain.

  Doctor Vomact was holding out his hand.

  Mercer wondered why, and then realized that the wonderful, kindly cap-giving man was offering to shake hands. He lifted his own. It was heavy, but his arm was happy, too.

  They shook hands. It was curious, thought Mercer, to feel the handshake beyond the double level of cerebral pleasure and dermal pain.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Mercer,” said the doctor. “Goodbye and a good, good night…”

  CHAPTER II

  The ferry satellite was a hospitable place. The hundreds of hours that followed were like a long, weird dream.

  Twice again the young nurse sneaked into his bedroom with him when he was being given the cap and had a cap with him. There were baths which calloused his whole body. Under strong local anesthetics, his teeth were taken out and stainless steel took their place. There were irradiations under blazing lights which took away the pain of his skin. There were special treatments for his fingernails and toenails. Gradually they changed into formidable claws; he found himself stropping them on the aluminum bed one night and saw that they left deep marks.

  His mind never became completely clear.

  Sometimes he thought that he was home with his mother, that he was little again, and in pain. Other times, under the cap, he laughed in his bed to think that people were sent to this place for punishment when it was all so terribly much fun. There were no trials, no questions, no judges. Food was good, but he did not think about it much; the cap was better. Even when he was awake, he was drowsy.

  At last, with the cap on him, they put him into an adiabatic pod—a one-body missile which could be dropped from the ferry to the planet below. He was all closed in, except for his face.

  Doctor Vomact seemed to swim into the room. “You are strong, Mercer,” the doctor shouted, “you are very strong! Can you hear me?”

  Mercer nodded.

  “We wish you well, Mercer. No matter what happens, remember you are helping other people up here.”

  “Can I take the cap with me?” said Mercer.

  For an answer, Doctor Vomact removed the cap himself. Two men closed the lid of the pod, leaving Mercer in total darkness. His mind started to clear, and he panicked against his wrappings.

  There was the roar of thunder and the taste of blood.

  * * * *

  The next thing that Mercer knew, he was in a cool, cool room, much chillier than the bedrooms and operating rooms of the satellite. Someone was lifting him gently on to a table.

  He opened his eyes.

  An enormous face, four times the size of any human face Mercer had ever seen, was looking down at him. Huge brown eyes, cow-like in their gentle inoffensiveness, moved back and forth as the big face examined Mercer’s wrappings. The face was that of a handsome man of middle years, clean-shaven, hair chestnut-brown, with sensual full lips and gigantic but healthy yellow teeth exposed in a half smile. The face saw Mercer’s eyes open, and spoke with a deep friendly roar.

  “I’m your best friend. My name is B’dikkat but you don’t have to use that here. Just call me Friend, and I will always help you.”

  “I hurt,” said Mercer.

  “Of course you do. You hurt all over. That’s a big drop,” said B’dikkat.

  “Can I have a cap, please,” begged Mercer. It was not a question; it was a demand; Mercer felt that his private inward eternity depended on it.

  B’dikkat laughed. “I haven’t any caps down here. I might use them myself. Or so they think. I have other things, much better. No fear, fellow, I’ll fix you up.”

  Mercer looked doubtful. If the cap had brought him happiness on the ferry, it would take at least electrical stimulation of the brain to undo whatever torments the surface of Shayol had to offer.

  B’dikkat’s laughter filled the room like a bursting pillow.

  “Have you ever heard of condamine?”

  “No,” said Mercer.

  “It’s a narcotic so powerful that the pharmacopeias are not allowed to mention it.”

  “You have that?” said Mercer hopefully.

  “Something better. I have super-condamine. It’s named after the New French town where they developed it. The chemists hooked in one more hydrogen molecule. That gave it a real jolt. If you took it in your present shape, you’d be dead in three minutes, but those three minutes would seem like ten thousand years of happiness to the inside of your mind.” B’dikkat rolled his brown cow eyes expressively and smacked his rich red lips with a tongue of enormous extent.

  “What’s the use of it, then?”

  “You can take it,” said B’dikkat. “You can take it after you have been exposed to the dromozoa outside this cabin. You get all the good effects and none of the bad. You want to see something?”

  What answer is there except yes, thought Mercer grimly; does he think I have an urgent invitation to a tea party?

  “Look out of the window,” said B’dikkat, “and tell me what you see.”

  The atmosphere was clear. The surface was like a desert, ginger-yellow with streaks of green where lichen and low shrubs grew, obviously stunted and tormented by high, dry winds. The landscape was monotonous. Two or three hundred yards away there was a herd of bright pink objects which seemed alive, but Mercer could not see them well enough to describe them clearly. Further away, on the extreme right of his frame of vision, there was the statue of an enormous human foot, the height of a six-story building. Mercer could not see what the foot was connected to. “I see a big foot,�
� said he, “but—”

  “But what?” said B’dikkat, like an enormous child hiding the denouement of a hugely private joke. Large as he was, he would have been dwarfed by any one of the toes on that tremendous foot.

  “But it can’t be a real foot,” said Mercer.

  “It is,” said B’dikkat. “That’s Go-Captain Alvarez, the man who found this planet. After six hundred years he’s still in fine shape. Of course, he’s mostly dromozootic by now, but I think there is some human consciousness inside him. You know what I do?”

  “What?” said Mercer.

  “I give him six cubic centimetres of super-condamine and he snorts for me. Real happy little snorts. A stranger might think it was a volcano. That’s what super-condamine can do. And you’re going to get plenty of it. You’re a lucky, lucky man, Mercer. You have me for a friend, and you have my needle for a treat. I do all the work and you get all the fun. Isn’t that a nice surprise?”

  Mercer thought. You’re lying! Lying! Where do the screams come from that we have all heard broadcast as a warning on Punishment Day? Why did the doctor offer to cancel my brain or to take out my eyes?

  The cow-man watched him sadly, a hurt expression on his face. “You don’t believe me,” he said, very sadly.

  “It’s not quite that,” said Mercer, with an attempt at heartiness, “but I think you’re leaving something out.”

  “Nothing much,” said B’dikkat. “You jump when the dromozoa hit you. You’ll be upset when you start growing new parts—heads, kidneys, hands. I had one fellow in here who grew thirty-eight hands in a single session outside. I took them all off, froze them and sent them upstairs. I take good care of everybody. You’ll probably yell for a while. But remember, just call me Friend, and I have the nicest treat in the universe waiting for you. Now, would you like some fried eggs? I don’t eat eggs myself, but most true men like them.”

  “Eggs?” said Mercer. “What have eggs got to do with it?”

  “Nothing much. It’s just a treat for you people. Get something in your stomach before you go outside. You’ll get through the first day better.”