Perilous Planets

by Brian Aldiss

  One morning, having nothing better to do, I went to visit my cousin Roach. Roach lived in one of those lizard-infested caves on the East Side of the mountain. Roach did not hunt bears. Roach did not grow grain. Roach spent his daylight hours throwing globs of bearfat, bison-chips and old rotten plants against the walls of his cave.

  Roach said that he was an Artist. He said it with a capital ‘A’. (Even though writing has not yet been invented.)

  Unlikely as it may seem, Roach had a woman. She was, however, the ugliest female on the mountain. She spent her daylight hours lying on the dirty floor of Roach’s cave and staring at the smears of old bearfat, moldy bison-chips and rotten plants on the wall.

  She used to say that—this was Roach’s Soul. She would also say that Roach had a very big soul.

  Very big and very smelly.

  As I approached the mouth of Roach’s cave, I smelt pungent smoke. In fact, the cave was filled with this smoke. In the middle of the cave sat Roach and his woman. They were burning a big pile of weeds and inhaling the smoke.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Turning on, baby,’ said Roach. ‘I’ve just invented it.’

  ‘What does “turning on” mean?’

  ‘Well, you get this weed, dig? You burn it, and then you honk the smoke.’

  I scratched my head, inadvertently killing several of my favorite fleas.

  ‘Why do that?‘I asked.

  ‘It like gets you high.’

  ‘You don’t seem any further off the ground than I am,’ I observed. ‘And you’re still kinda runty.’

  Roach snorted in disgust. ‘Forget it, man,’ he said. ‘It’s only for Artists, Philosophers and Metaphysicians, anyway. (Even though Philosophy and Metaphysics have not yet been invented.) Dig my latest!’

  On the nearest wall of the cave, there was this big blob of bearfat. In the middle of it was this small piece of bison-chip. Red and green and brown plant stains surrounded this. It smelt as good as it looked.

  ‘Uh… interesting…” I said.

  ‘Like a masterpiece, baby,’ Roach said proudly. ‘I call it “The Soul of Man”.’

  ‘Uh… “The Sole of Man”? Er… it does sort of look like a foot.’

  ‘No, no, man! Soul not sole!’

  ‘But Roach, spelling hasn’t been invented yet.’

  ‘Sorry. I forgot.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, trying to make him feel a little better, ‘it’s very Artistic. (Whatever that meant.)

  ‘Thanks, baby,’ Roach said sulkily.

  ‘What’s the matter, Roach?’ I asked. He really looked awful.

  ‘We haven’t eaten in a week.’

  ‘Why don’t you go out and kill a bear or something?’ I suggested.

  ‘I don’t have the time to waste on hunting.’ Roach said indignantly. ‘I must live for Art!’

  ‘It appears that you are dying for Art,’ I replied. ‘You can’t do very much painting when you are dead.’

  ‘Well, anyway,’ said Roach, in a very tiny voice, Tm a pretty lousy hunter in the first place. I would probably starve even if I spent the whole day hunting. Or maybe a bear would kill me. This way, I’m at least like starving for a Reason.’

  I must admit it made a kind of sense. Roach is terribly nearsighted. Also amazingly scrawny. The original 90 pound weakling.

  ‘Mmmmmmm…’ I observed.

  ‘Mmmmmmm… what? asked Roach.

  ‘Well, you know old Aardvark? He can’t hunt either. So what he does is he makes spearheads and trades them for bears. Maybe you could…?’

  ‘Go into business?’ Roach cried. ‘Become bourgeois? Please! I am an Artist. Besides,’ he added lamely, ‘I don’t know how to make spearheads.’

  ‘Mmmmm…’

  ‘Mmmmm…’

  ‘I know!’ I cried. ‘You could trade your paintings!’

  ‘Cool, baby!’ exclaimed Roach. ‘Er… only why would anyone want to trade food for a painting?’

  ‘Why because… er… ah…”

  ‘I guess I’ll just have to starve.’

  ‘Wait a minute,” I said. ‘Er… if I can get someone to trade food for your paintings, will you give me some of the food, say… oh, one bear out of every ten?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Roach. ‘What’ve I got to lose?’

  ‘It’s a deal then?’

  ‘Deal, baby!’

  I had just invented the Ten-Percenter.

  ==========

  So I went to see Peacock. Peacock lived in the weirdest cave on the mountain—all filled up with stuff like mooseskins dyed pink, stuffed armadillos, and walls covered with withered morning-glories. For some reason which I have not yet been able to fathom, the women of the more henpecked men on the mountain give Peacock bears to make the same kind of messes in their caves.

  Peacock is pretty weird himself. He was dressed in a skintight sabertooth skin dyed bright violet.

  ‘Hello sweets,’ Peacock said, as I entered his perfumed cave.

  ‘Hello, Peacock,’ I said uneasily. ‘Heard about Roach?’ ‘Roach?’ shrilled Peacock. ‘That dirty, dirty man? That beatnik with the positively unspeakable cave?’

  ‘That’s him,’ I said. ‘Roach the Artist. Very good Artist, you know. After all, he invented it.’

  ‘Well what about that dreadful, dreadful creature?’

  ‘Well you know your friend Cockatoo—?’

  ‘Please, sweets!’ shrieked Peacock. ‘Do not mention that thing Cockatoo in my presence again! Cockatoo and I are on the outs. I don’t know what I ever saw in him. He’s gotten so unspeakably butch.’

  Cockatoo was this… uh . . friend of Peacock’s… or was. They… uh… invented something together. Nobody is quite sure what it was, but we’ve organized a Vice Squad, just in case.

  ‘Yeah,’ I muttered. ‘Well anyway, Cockatoo is paying Roach twenty bears to do a painting in his cave. He says that having an Original Roach in his cave will make your cave look like… er… “A positive sloth’s den, bubby,” I think his words were.’

  ‘Oooooh!’ shrieked Peacock. ‘Oooooh!’ He began to jump around the cave, pounding his little fists against the walls. ‘That monster! That veritable beast! Oooh, it’s horrid, that’s what it is! What am I going to do, sweets, whatever am I going to do?’

  ‘Well,’ I suggested, ‘Roach is my cousin, you know, and I do have some pull with him. I suppose I could convince him to do a painting in your cave instead of Cockatoo’s. Especially if you paid thirty bears instead of twenty…’

  ‘Oh, would you sweets? Would you really?’

  ‘Well I don’t know. I do kind of like you, Peacock, but on the other hand…”

  ‘Pretty, pretty, pretty please?’

  I sighed heavily. ‘Okay, Peacock,’ I said. ‘You’ve talked me into it.’

  ==========

  So Peacock got his Original Roach for thirty bears. Next week, I went to see Cockatoo, and I told him the story.

  I got him to pay forty bears. Forty and thirty is seventy. Which gave me seven. Not bad for a couple hours’ work. I better watch out, or someone’ll invent income tax.

  ==========

  I saw Roach last week, the ingrate. He has moved to a bigger cave on the West Side of the mountain. He has a fine new leopard skin and three new women. He has even invented the Havana cigar, so he can have something expensive to smoke. Unfortunately, he has discovered that he no longer needs me to make deals for him. His going price is eighty bears a painting. I, like a dope, neglected to invent the renewable exclusive agency contract. Can’t invent ‘em all, I suppose.

  ==========

  Roach has become truly insufferable, though. He now talks of ‘art’ with a small ‘a’ and ‘Bears’ with a capital ‘B’. He is the first Philistine.

  He is going to get his.

  How do you like my fine new leopard skin? Would you like one of my Havana cigars? Have you met this new woman yet? Have you seen my new cave?

  I can buy and sell Roach n
ow. I am the first tycoon. How did I do it? Well…

  Hog was the mountain bum. He never trimmed his beard. He didn’t have a woman, not even an ugly one. He laid around his filthy cave all day, doing nothing but belching occasionally. A real slob.

  But even a jerk like Hog can throw bearfat and bison-chips against a cave wall.

  I made an Artist out of Hog. I did this by telling him he could make fifty bears a day just by throwing bearfat and bison-chips against the walls of other people’s caves.

  This appealed to Hog.

  This time I did not neglect to invent the renewable exclusive agency contract. It was another ten percent deal.

  Hog gets ten percent.

  Then I went to Peacock’s cave. I stared in dismay at Roach’s painting. ‘What is that?’ I sneered.

  ‘That, sweets, is an Original Roach,’ Peacock crooned complacently. ‘Isn’t it divine? Such sensitivity, such style, such grace, such—’

  ‘Roach !’ I snorted. ‘You can’t be serious. Why that Neo-pseudo-classicalmodern stuff went out with the Brontosaurs. You’re miles behind the times, Peacock,’ I said, thereby inventing the Art Critic.’ The Artist today is of course the Great Hog.’

  ‘Hog?’ whined Peacock. ‘Hog is beastly, beastly. A rude, stupid smelly thing, a positive slob. Why his whole cave is a wretched mass of slop!’

  ‘Exactly,’ I answered. ‘That’s the source of his greatness. Hog is the mountain’s foremost Slop Artist.’

  ‘Oooooh… How much do the Great Hog’s paintings cost?’

  ‘One hundred bears apiece,’ I said smugly. ‘Cockatoo is already contracting to—’

  ‘I told you never to mention that creature to me again!’ Peacock shrieked. ‘He must not steal an Original Hog from me, do you hear? I simply couldn’t bear it! But all this is getting so expensive…’

  I gave Peacock my best understanding smile. ‘Peacock, old man,’ I said, ‘I have a little business proposition for you…’

  Well, that’s all there was to it. You guessed it, now when Peacock makes one of his messes in some henpecked caveman’s cave, it always includes at least one Original Hog, or maybe a couple Original Treesloths—Treesloth being another jerk Artist I have under contract. I sell the painting to Peacock for a hundred bears, and he charges his suck—er, client, two hundred bears for the same mess of bearfat and bison-chips. Peacock calls this Interior Decorating.

  I call it ‘Civilization’. Maybe it’ll last for a couple of months, if I’m lucky.

  * * *

  Science fiction’s most acute writer reminds us how human ingenuity will be needed to conquer other planets—while it ruins this one.

  THE SNOWMEN

  by Frederick Pohl

  ==========

  Tandy said, ‘Not tonight,’ Howard. Why, I’m practically in bed already, see?’ And she flipped the vision switch just for a second; long enough so I could get a glimpse of a sheer negligee and feathered slippers and, well, naturally, I couldn’t quite believe that she really wanted me to stay away. Nobody made her flip that switch.

  I said, ‘Just for a minute, Tandy. One drink. A little music, perhaps a dance—’

  ‘Howard, you’re terrible.’

  ‘No, dearest,’ I said, fast and soft and close to the phone, ‘I’m not terrible, I’m only very much in love. Don’t say no. Don’t say a word. Just close your eyes, and in ten minutes I’ll be there, and—’

  And then, confound them, they had to start that yapping. Bleep-bleep on the phone, and then: ‘Attention all citizens! Stand by for orders! Your world federal government has proclaimed a state of unlimited emergency. All heatpump power generators in excess of eight horsepower per—’

  I slammed down the phone in disgust. Leave it to them! Yack-yack on the phone lines at all hours of the day and night, no consideration for anybody. I was disgusted, and then, when I got to thinking, not so disgusted. Why not go right over? She hadn’t said no; she hadn’t had a chance.

  So I got the Bug out, locked the doors and set the thermostats, and I set out.

  ==========

  It isn’t two miles to Tandy’s place. Five years ago, even, I could make it in three or four minutes; now it takes ten. I call it a damned shame, though no one else seems to care. But I’ve always been more adventurous “than most, and more social-minded. Jeffrey Otis wouldn’t care about things like that. Ittel du Bois wouldn’t even know—his idea is to bury his nose in a drama-tape when he goes out of the house, and let the Bug drive itself. But not me. I like to drive, even if you can’t see anything and the autopilot is perfectly reliable. Life is for living, I say. Live it.

  I don’t pretend to understand this scientific stuff either—leave science to the people who like it, is another thing I say. But you know how when you’re in your Bug and you’ve set the direction-finder for somebody’s place, there’s this beep-beepbeepbeep when you’re going right and a beepSQUAWK or a SQUAWKbeep when you go off the track? It has something to do with radio, only not radio—that’s out of the question now, they say—but with sort of telephoned messages through the magma of the Earth’s core. Well, that’s what it says in the manual, and I know because one day I glanced through it. Anyway. Excuse me for getting technical. But I was going along toward Tandy’s place, my mind full of warm pleasures and anticipating, and suddenly the beepbeepbeep stopped, and there was a sort of crystal chime and then a voice: ‘Attention! Operation of private vehicles is forbidden! Return to your home and listen to telephoned orders every hour on the hour!’ And then the beepbeepbeep again. Why, they’d even learned how to jam the direction-finder with their confounded yapping! It was very annoying, and angrily I snapped the DF off. Daring? Yes, but I have to say that I’m an excellent driver, wonderful sense of direction, hardly need the direction-finder in the first place. And anyway we were close; the thermal pointers in the nose had already picked up Tandy’s temperature gradient.

  Tandy opened the locks herself. ‘Howard,’ she said in soft surprise, clutching the black film of negligee. ‘You really came. Oh, naughty Howard!’

  ‘My darling!’ I breathed, reaching out for her. But she dodged.

  ‘No, Howard,’ she said severely, ‘you mustn’t do that. Sit down for a moment. Have one little drink. And then I’m going to have to be terribly stubborn and send you right home, dear.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, because that was, after all, the rules of the game. ‘Just one drink, certainly.’ But, damn it, she seemed to mean it! She wasn’t a bit hospitable—I mean, not really hospitable. She seemed friendly enough and she talked sweetly enough, but… Well, for example, she sat in the positively-not chair. I can tell you a lot about the way Tandy furnished her place. There’s the wing chair by the fire, and that’s a bad sign because the arms are slippery and there’s only room for one actually sitting in it. There’s the love seat—speaks for itself, doesn’t it? And there’s the big sofa and, best of all, the bearskin rug. But way at the other end of the scale is this perfectly straight, armless cane-bottomed thing, with a Ming vase on one side of it and a shrub of some kind or other rooted in a bowl on the other, and that’s where she sat.

  I grumbled, ‘I shouldn’t have come at all.’

  ‘What, Howard?’

  ‘I said, uh, I couldn’t come any, uh, faster. I mean, I came as fast as I could.’

  ‘I know you did, you brute,’ she said roguishly, and stopped the Martini-mixer. It poured us each a drink. ‘Now don’t dawdle,’ she said primly. ‘I’ve got to get some sleep.’

  ‘To love,’ I said, and sipped the top off the Martini.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she warned. I got up from the floor at her feet and went back to another chair. ‘You,’ she said, ‘are a hard man to handle, Howard, dear.’ But she giggled.

  Well, you can’t win them all. I finished my drink and, I don’t know, I think I would have hung around about five minutes just to show who was boss and then got back in the Bug, and gone home. Frankly, I was a little sleepy. It had been
a wearing day, hours and hours with the orchids and then listening to all nine Beethoven symphonies in a row while I played solitaire.

  But I heard the annunciator bell tinkle.

  I stared at Tandy.

  ‘My,’ she said prettily, ‘I wonder who that can be?’

  ‘Tandy!’

  ‘Probably someone dull,’ she shrugged. ‘I won’t answer. Now, do be a good boy and—’

  ‘Tandy! How could you?’ My mind raced; there was only one conclusion. ‘Tandy, do you have Ittel du Bois coming here tonight? Don’t lie to me!’

  ‘Howard, what a terrible thing to say. Ittel was last year.’

  ‘Tell me the truth!’

  ‘I do not!’ And she was angry. I’d hurt her, no doubt of it.

  ‘Then it must be Jeffrey. I won’t stand for it. I won the toss fair and square. Why can’t we wait until next year? It isn’t decent. I—’

  She stood up, her blue eyes smoldering. ‘Howard Mc-Guiness, you’d better go before you say something I won’t be able to forgive.’

  I stood my ground. ‘Then who is it?’

  ‘Oh, darn it,’ she said, and kicked viciously at the shrub by her left foot, ‘see for yourself. Answer the door.’

  ==========

  So I did.

  Now, I know Ittel du Bois’s Bug—it’s a Buick—and I know Jeff Otis’s. It wasn’t either one of them. The vehicle outside Tandy’s door parked next to mine was a very strange looking Bug indeed. For one thing, it was only about eight feet long.

  A bank of infrared lamps glowed on, bathing it in heat: the caked ice that forms in the dead spots along the hull, behind the treads and so on, melted, plopped off, turned into water and ran into the drain grille. You know how a Bug will crack and twang when it’s being warmed up? They all do.

  This one didn’t.

  It didn’t make a sound. It was so silent that I could hear the snip-snip of Tandy’s automatic load adjuster, throwing another heatpump into circuit to meet the drain of the infrared lamps. But no sound from the Bug outside. Also it didn’t have caterpillar treads. Also it had—well, you can believe this or not—it had windows.

  ‘You see?’ said Tandy, in a voice colder than the four miles of ice overhead. ‘Now would you like to apologize to me?’