The Space Opera Novella

by Frank Belknap Long

  He quickly rounded up bearers and loaded them down. It was a gladdening sight—the line of melodiously laden bearers tapering xylophonically into the distance.

  And his tread expressed the rhythm in his blood as he led off. He marched through the wood counting cadence and his profit. It took a while for him to notice he was marching through the wood all alone.

  There was no jangling but that of his nerves, and that was a tocsin. He backtracked, speeding up as he heard the murmuring of natives.

  He nearly tripped over the first of the reclining figures. The murmuring ended and they rose. Without a word, he stepped off again through the wood.

  As he lifted his foot for the sixth step the burdens stopped chiming. He turned. The bearers were again reclining.

  And so it went. Every five paces the bearers sank for a long count. His pleading and threatening moved them, but not physically. They were sorry, they said feelingly. And at last they would emit a sigh and rise and carry on. But every five paces they stopped and reclined.

  On the fifth day he could no longer buoy himself up with his dream of profit. He sank down and sponged his brow dejectedly. The air was almost a membrane, a drumhead for the heat to beat upon. They would never make it in time now, even if the bearers were suddenly to change their strange behavior and lope without halting. Already the geis-berries had lost their fresh tinkle.

  Not that it mattered now, but to still a dully throbbing curiosity, he asked the natives why. Why were they forever taking five?

  Why, they told him, they were giving their souls—their poor souls toddling along—time to catch up.

  He cursed, though what—them, himself, the breaks, the universe—he didn’t know. Not wanting to lose all control in front of them he lit out blindly.

  Little by little he quieted and there came to him deep in the woods a kind of peace. And he found his bearings and returned. And he sat with them, giving his soul time to catch up. And he had done so ever since.

  817 looked around with a start. José had drawled them into dawn. The minaret-like spire starked against the rising sun. It seemed troublingly familiar.

  José said, yawning, “Time we turned in. I’ll show you where to bed down.”

  But 817 was staring at the spire. And in a blinding flash of insight he saw it as the nose of the spacebus. For a moment he couldn’t speak, then—“The spaceport’s only a few hundred yards away?”

  “Why, yes. But—”

  “Blast that manager!” He glanced at his watch. “If I cut across I’ll make the bus before it takes off—and have time to spare.”

  And speeding the parting he beelined for the spire.

  A moaning followed in his wake. Athematic, indeed! And he smiled as he found himself counterpointing the moaning with the tinkling of geis-berries as he brushed past the bushes thronging the wood. The smile deepened. He wouldn’t have to suffer through a wait for the next bus, after all.

  But soon the smile faded. The sounding of geis-berries shimmered the air and dizzied the mind and he found it hard to keep the spire steady.

  In nearing the spire he saw it less and less for the trees. And then he saw it not at all. And with it no longer beckoning he grew more wobbly.

  All at once he realized he was repeating one run of notes over and over and saw he was bumping his way around and around a geis-berry bush. Gravely he shook his head at the bush. Good old José wouldn’t like that one. Not at all athematic.

  Laughing foolishly, he wondered if he would ever find his way out. He waved a finger at an imaginary native of Cernpure II and said wisely, “I know what you want geis-berriesh for, you rashcal.

  The airlock was just hissing shut when he burst from the wood and into the gnomon-shadow of the spacebus.

  The hissing stopped and a dark face thrust out. “Wanna get cindered? Oh, it’s you, Mr. Naimu. Better hurry. We can hold up take-off only five minutes. Got a tight schedule to keep, you know.”

  He knew. His head cleared fast. He ran across the field.

  He ignored the manager’s pleasant greeting. “Hand over my bags.” Then he unbent and smiled forgivingly. He might even tip the manager a boxtop. Boxtops had become a prized medium of exchange on Earth. Someday the manager might stir himself enough to send for a premium and 817 would be doing his bit to spur trading. “It’s working out all right that you forgot to send them after me.”

  “Forgot?” The manager glanced at his calendar. “Didn’t you pass them? Why, they must be a fifth of the way to José’s already.”

  * * * *

  “Hum. Good. Now the Purists and the Galactic Culture people”—the Chief made a sour face—“will be busy wrangling over means of dealing with Terran superstition-seeding.”

  “Hum. And that leaves the DSX to focus on the Crevbnod menace.”

  “Hum. Remind myself to ask 817 if he’s bringing back any geis-berries.”

  He suddenly smiled at himself. He really needed nothing of the sort. He was already high. Optimism intoxicated him. The DSX was doing its job, even though it had to work with an ever-pursing budget. And after all, this was only 2814 and the deadline of 2828 was a safe way off.

  But it wasn’t until 2822 that the DSX got any forwarder.

  CHAPTER IV

  In 2822, DSX Agent 249 landed on Capella I. He extruded himself and stretched gratefully. He was glad the trip had ended when it did. Any longer and he might have cracked up. The cramped quarters of his spacejeep cramped soul as well as body. In the last stage of the journey he had experienced a growing morbid fear of the hull closing in even more and wrapping him, like a straitjacket or metallic kimono. He had never hated in his life, but now he found himself hating the Crevbnod for cramping Man’s economy. In particular he hated the Crevbnod for forcing the DSX to whittle to nothing the equipment allowance of its agents and reduce them to claustrophobia-inducing vehicles.

  He heard a stirring in the brush and turned to face a group of beings staring at him placidly.

  He took them to be members of the ruling class of Capella I and was just introducing himself to them when another being came up and rather fretfully pulled him away and, mumbling about creatures wandering loose and getting mixed in with shulwijies, led him out through a gate. He saw by the lettering on it that this was the zoo and he gathered that this curious creature was the keeper.

  249 asked the keeper, “Where are you taking me?”

  Absently the keeper said, “Don’t annoy me. Can’t you see I’m busy hunting the cage you got out of?”

  Both stopped short. Somewhat shaken, the keeper peered at somewhat shaken 249. 249 managed to get out that he was one Uzmet Shih and belonged not to the zoo, admirable place though it seemed to be, but to the leading genus of Sol III.

  The keeper hung on to his words and to him. But finally, frowning as though he hated to part with a seemingly sound specimen of anything, he turned him toward the heart of town and loose.

  This ominous beginning left Uzmet feeling a bit out of sorts. But he regained his composure as he followed the open road. Town-ness increasingly smote his senses.

  He had to regain his composure all over again once he lit town. Quick to spot a mark, beggars closed in around him, chanting for alms. There was no breaking out of the tightening noose of the mob. And massing behind the beggars, imitating their shambling gait and their supination in expectation of dispensation, came snickering youngsters, whose parents looked on and smiled fondly.

  The beggars were a sorry lot, showing signs of suffering from palsy, granular kidney, optic atrophy, and encephalopathy. Their plight moved Uzmet and he doled out what he could. More came swarming, while those who had already received came back for more. He had to put a stop to this before he ran out of coins and had to dig into his precious boxtops. He had to come out openly.

  He had to shout above their dinning. “Sorely afflicted,” he said, lo
oking around, “I’m here to help you.” It troubled him to see them all at once gaze at him in terror—a superstitious terror that wanned their faces and drew their eyes as round as magic circles. He smiled reassuringly and spoke more softly, and they tilted their heads and leaned forward, italicizing their lending of auricles. “I’ll bring you all the healing powers of Man—”

  He suspended in surprise. A sibilance was passing through the gathering, which opened out from him like a widening iris. Parents took hold of children and hurried them away. A beggar broke and ran. Others followed. When the dust settled Uzmet was standing alone in the heart of town.

  He pondered his mission. Surely all Capella I wasn’t benighted and benightmared, surely the officials trusted Man’s science?

  A mountain of officialdom came to Uzmet where he stood, even before he had a chance to go looking for it. It gratified him to see how reverently the officials examined his credentials, how tremblingly.

  But just what, they wondered, by his leave, was his job?

  Feeling suddenly benign and whimsical, he told them they might regard him as a sort of public eye.

  This enlightened them and they looked meaningly at one another. And two of them came forward and before he divined their aim blindfolded him—as they said, to keep him from dissipating his glance on the world at large or on those not standing in need of its healing power. It was a holy gift and he must not misuse it.

  The way they took his figure of speech dumbfounded him. And because of this and because they put it so guilelessly and because he prided himself on being humble, he let them do it and made himself seem to take it with good grace.

  The two officials, Axos and Znassos, guided him with their voices, a cappella, taking him, they told him, to the finest suite of the finest hotel.

  But all the same, after stumbling along for a time and seeing he could hardly carry out his mission at this hobbling rate and in this stifling state, Uzmet sniffed at the idea. And to the dismay of Axos and Znassos he tore off the blindfold and found himself at the entrance to the zoo.

  Axos and Znassos with some embarrassment apologized for taking a wrong turn. And quarreling with each other over which was to blame and with much show of consulting signs, they and a musing Uzmet wound back into town and up at a hotel. Uzmet was glad they gave him a fair-sized room. He opened the window wide.

  Alone in his room, he flopped down on the pallet.

  * * * *

  He wakened and listened for what had wakened him. He heard it—a barbaric yawping.

  Through the window he could see across the dark town and he barely made out figures moving about in the zoo. Through his Doozy-Wheat spy-ring—he hated to think how many boxtops it had cost but he was glad he had it now—shulwijies leaped at him, the telescopic infra-red device picking up their body heat.

  They kept lifting their faces to the sky and yawping. Then the moon came up and with a triumphant yawp they quieted.

  Uzmet wakened again. It was hours later. The moon had gone. The sky was dark, an altar black with the fires of many burnt offerings.

  Shulwijy yawping tore the air. No moon obeyed. And at last shulwijy voices gave out, trailing off into silent mourning.

  Uzmet wakened a third time. Dawn lay on his eyelids. He listened and heard a breathing other than his own. Slowly he lifted his lids and saw gauzily a hand above his brow and in the hand a point of steel glinting. He opened his eyes wide.

  Here was one of yesterday’s beggars, attacking his sometime benefactor and would-be healer. He must be—in the classical idiom—plumb loco!

  Uzmet’s gaze transfixed him. The knife dropped, stabbed the floor, vibrated like a living factorial sign.

  The beggar hid his face in his hands. “Don’t look at me!”

  Uzmet said pityingly, “Tell me why?”

  And brokenly from the beggar came, “If you heal me, how shall I beg? If I can’t beg, how shall I live?”

  Uzmet sought to soothe the beggar, whose name was Xij. Uzmet admitted he had let his feelings over-ride his Chief’s admonishing—to locate the roots of superstition and leave to others the rooting out. As for his healing glance, that was wholly a misunderstanding. Xij had nothing to dread.

  Xij’s blue-gummed smile beggared description. To keep from bursting with gratitude he chose to tell—better yet, show—what he knew of the beginnings of Capellan superstitions. Uzmet dressed swiftly and went with him.

  Axos and Znassos lay in wait outside. They greeted him warmly—if anything, a bit too warmly, what with all the surreptitious prodding and probing accompanying their questions about his well-being.

  They would have passed Xij by with only dirty looks but he murmured to them. And Uzmet caught their cries of delight, “Ah, nothing to dread! Nothing to dread!” though Axos and Znassos tried to cover these with clinkings that were if anything too generous. And they waved Uzmet and the beggar fond farewell.

  Two corpuscles, Uzmet and Xij oozed away from the heart of town.

  Word seemed to have gone out. Snickering youngsters took off after them.

  It moved Uzmet that Xij didn’t turn on those tormenting him. “It’s noble of you not to mind.

  “Mind? That’s how I learned this trade.”

  They moved on in silence as the dwellings sparsed and the youngsters fell away. As zoo-ness increasingly smote his senses Uzmet tried to ease himself out of Xij’s friendly hold. But the hold tightened in token of even firmer friendliness.

  Well, he was nearing his spacejeep at the same time. Sanctuary.

  They passed through the gate at feeding time. The keeper glanced up from throwing an alivi down the maw of a tebk and dovetailed gazes with Uzmet. And he raised his voice above the cavernous echoing of the alivi’s relishing of the tebk’s parasitic growths and said, “Now don’t you go getting yourself mixed in with them there shulwijies.”

  Uzmet, his own gaze searching for his craft, felt following him the keeper’s gaze, brimming with longing to take possession of this strange animal.

  “What made him say that?” Xij was staring magic circles.

  “Why, my craft happened to set down in ah, that clump! …And I came out among the shulwijies.”

  “How is it you landed there of all the places on this planet?” Xij let go of molten lead. “You have powers!”

  “Who wants to harm you?” Uzmet smiled benevolently. His conscience made him add, “Even if it were true, which it isn’t, that I have supernatural powers.”

  Xij disbelievingly averted his face.

  Uzmet stole a glance through his spy-ring at his craft. Through interstices of the foliage the spacejeep showed symptoms of disease. Splotches of ceramic skin lay bare where glaze was missing. Someone had chipped at the thick coating, as if hoping to enter and/or damage the craft. But at the moment the tampering itself and not the why was what mattered.

  In his first seething, Uzmet felt tempted to scruple no more. If these Capellans insisted on being serving-men, handing supernatural powers to him on a platter, why scorn the chance to invoke their superstitious fear of these powers to put them in their place?

  But the image of his Chief blazed in his mind, reminding that superstition was the enemy. And remorsing at once he turned to Xij.

  “Oh, come now, what makes this such a terrifying coincidence?”

  “As if you don’t know!”

  “I don’t.”

  “Really?”

  “I swear by—What does one swear by here?”

  “One’s wen.”

  “I swear by my wen.” His conscience didn’t make him add he owned no wen.

  “We—ell.” And Xij, his wanting to believe overmastering his wanting to be leaving, slowly lowered his guard.

  Uzmet smiled to himself and turned his attention to the shulwijies, who seemed too lethargic to turn theirs to him. They’d make fitting masco
ts for zombies, he thought.

  The keeper came up, staring still at Uzmet.

  To swerve the gaze Uzmet said, “They’ve plumped out amazingly since yesterday. What do you feed them?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Used to try feeding them all kinds of food. They won’t touch a thing. Each of them crazier than the others.”

  Uzmet thought how to translate “You can lead a horse to water—” but it came out a ruin, “Joy horse water water horse need,” so he skipped it. Instead he asked, “How do they live? Do they metabolize sunlight? Air?”

  “I’m afraid we’re not much on physiology,” the keeper said. His tone said they were much on a much loftier level.

  “Well, where’d they spring from?”

  Xij opened his mouth but the keeper forestalled him.

  “They came, before my time, with some visiting ship.” And from what the keeper went on to say Uzmet gathered that the visitors had hovered here and asked for leave to dump a load of what the Capellans heard them call shulwijies. The beasts were overrunning the visitors’ home planet but the visitors were too softhearted to exterminate them and were taking this way of getting shut of them. The Capellans protested: they didn’t want the beasts to multiply and overrun this planet. The visitors assured them these were all of the same sex. “And I’ll have to admit we’ve never seen them mating. But something’s wrong,” the keeper said glowering, “because no matter how many of them we sacrifice their number stays the same.”

  Uzmet frowned. “You sacrifice them?”

  Xij had been sulking, as if he felt they were leaving him out of it. Now his eyes brightened and his mouth opened.

  “Of course,” the keeper said. “I’ll get to that after a spell. But first—”

  Xij mumbled, “Pish—”

  “But first,” the keeper said firmly, “let me tell it the way it happened.” And he told Uzmet that the visitors left behind to repay the Capellans for taking on the beasts a number of amulets—each a leaden circlet with a gem set in it. And the Capellans soon had cause to shout blessings after the visitants. For many of them came down with disease and the visitants had sworn by their wens that the amulets had the power of carrying disease away. The Rx was to pass an amulet on, letting it make the rounds of the ailing and the possibly ailing until it became saturated with the disease—at which point the amulet would automatically soar out into space.