Uncanny Tales

by Robert Sheckley

  Beneath that fiery surge, the grass died, but it was not forgotten. A god of grass saw that there should be more grass to replace it. Storms swept through in accord with the commands of the storm god. Rocks toppled from high peaks in obedience to the commands of The Trickster. Rivers overflowed their banks and changed their courses when Proteus commanded it.

  Since there was no human there to object, none of it was damaging, in the long run.

  Everything grew again, and a spirit presided over each thing. There was destruction and there was creation, and all of it was in balance.

  But one day, something different happened, something that had never happened before. There was a flash of light in the early morning sky, a flash not accounted for by any god or spirit.

  The light burned steady and it hung for a while in the sky, then it disappeared. After a while, an observer, if there had been one, would have seen an object falling from above.

  It fell slowly and settled gently to the ground. It was a metal box.

  The elemental spirits came from all over to look at this box. They took a lively interest in what was going on. They even took on shape to observe more closely. Most of these elementals looked like children, but actually they were very old. They had been around for a long time. But they’d never seen anything like this before.

  A cluster of them gathered around the metal box. They had slender, semi-transparent bodies, and they wavered and glittered in the air.

  “What do you think it is, Ariel?”

  “I don’t know, Puck. Did you ever see anything like it?”

  “No. But look. It has writing on it.”

  “Obviously. But we can’t read writing.”

  “Silly. Proper writing reads itself.”

  Puck touched the lettering. There was a sound as of someone clearing his throat. Then the box said, “I am Pandora Box 2234B second series. Open me with care.”

  “What do you suppose is inside?” Ariel asked. “Maybe it’s toys.”

  “Toys aren’t the only things that come in boxes,” Puck said. “Maybe we should ask Prospero.”

  “You know what he’ll say. He’ll just tell us to forget it.”

  “Maybe that’s what we ought to do.”

  “But this box is new! It’s a new thing! And we haven’t had anything new in a long time!”

  “Let’s ask Psyche. She’ll know what to do.”

  Psyche was a beautiful young girl with long brown hair. She wore a simple white dress and carried a bunch of posies. You could see right through her. She appeared as soon as they mentioned her name.

  “What have you got there?” Psyche asked.

  “It’s a Pandora Box!” Ariel said proudly. “I found it!”

  “It doesn’t matter who found it,” Puck said. “The question is, what, if anything, are we to do with it?”

  Just then, Verna, the goddess of the harvest time, appeared in her russet gown, bearing a cornucopia overflowing with fruits and vegetables. She had the appearance of a gracious, middle-aged woman, but she was no older than the others.

  She looked at the box and exclaimed, “It’s here at last!”

  “Were you expecting this?” Psyche asked.

  “Of course! It’s something I need! As a matter of fact, I sent for this.”

  “What’s in it?” Ariel asked.

  “People,” Verna said.

  “What did you need people for?” Puck asked.

  “I haven’t anyone to make a harvest for,” Verna said. “And when you’re goddess of harvests, that’s not so good.”

  “What do you mean, nobody?” Puck said. “All of us love your harvests, Verna, and we tell you so.”

  “I know you do,” Verna said, “and it’s dear of you. But you, like me and the rest of us, are elemental beings. We don’t eat the fruits of the Earth. What could a harvest really mean to us?”

  “It’s the idea that counts,” Puck said.

  “Sometimes that’s not good enough,” Verna said. “Sometimes you want the real thing: people to eat the harvest you’ve brought them.”

  Tyche, goddess of luck, must have overheard that, because she showed up all of a sudden. She was a tall lady with white wings, and she was wearing a plum-colored tunic.

  “Verna’s right,” Tyche said. “I’m just wasting my time, because there’s no one around for me to bring luck to.”

  “You can bring me some!” Ariel said.

  “You’re just saying that,” Tyche said. “But you know very well that creatures like us don’t need luck. What would we do with it? We’re eternal qualities, and for us one day is very much like another, and each day brings just what it brings, no more and no less. We have what we need. What would we do with luck?”

  “Maybe luck has brought us this box,” Ariel said. “Come on, let’s open it.”

  There was more discussion, and more elemental creatures came to join in. They talked all day, and when it was the hour of sunset, Puck said, “This talking is all very well. But we’ve done enough of it, don’t you think? What about we open the box now?”

  And so they did it. Puck pried open the lock. Tyche broke the seal. Verna opened the top. They all peered in. And they all disappeared.

  The box stood there, a large rectangular object made of some unnatural substance, there on the meadow, with mountains in the background, and at the foot of the meadow, the blue reflection of a stream.

  Something within the box moved. A hand appeared at the edge. Then a head. The head lifted, peered out. Then the man pulled himself out of the box and tumbled to the ground.

  Behind him came a woman. And another behind her.

  Then ten, twenty, a hundred came piling out. Another hundred. And hundreds after that.

  The last man out wore a blue uniform and had a cap with a gold leaf on it. In universal symbol language, this meant he was in charge.

  He carried a megaphone. That meant something, too.

  “All right, folks, listen up,” he said to the occupants of the box. “We’ve made it. We’ve escaped the destruction of Earth. Our Pandora Box has carried us out through space, and has made a safe landing on a friendly world.”

  A woman came up to him. From her confident air, you could tell that she was in charge of everything the captain was not in charge of.

  “It’s a nice-looking place,” she said. “I wonder if it has good vibes.”

  He frowned at her. “Now, Myra, what kind of talk is that? Vibes? How could a new world have any vibes at all?”

  “I thought they might be built in,” she said. “Come with the place, so to speak.”

  “You’re talking about things like gods and demons, and influences, and personified stuff like the Wild West Wind or the Angry Ocean?”

  She nodded. “That’s the sort of stuff I mean.”

  “Forget it. That was part of old Earth. We’re starting over here. The influences haven’t arrived yet. We’re on our own. We make our own luck.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. We all know that the gods are human inventions. We’ll make do without them.”

  The woman nodded. There had never been any use arguing with him. But what if he was wrong? What if the gods came first, and then the humans?

  But if that was the case, where were the gods?

  Where was Ariel, where was Puck, and Verna, and all the others? Where was Good Luck and Bad? Where was the Spirit of Invention, the Soul of Progress, and the Shadow of Death?

  Far away, in an ethereal middle distance, a group of qualities as light as gossamer were flying toward the sun.

  “They’re calling us!” Verna said.

  “Forget them,” Puck said. “These people are determined to make their own luck.”

  “That’s very courageous of them, isn’t it?” Ariel asked.

  Puck laughed. “Let’s see how well they do this time! Made a botch of it back where they came from, didn’t they?”

  “We were trying to help them then!” Verna said.r />
  “Have you forgotten so soon, Verna? We did what we could for them, but they finally sent us away. Don’t you remember what they said?”

  Verna shuddered. “They said, ‘The great god Pan is dead’.”

  “Yes, that was the beginning of it.”

  “And now they’ll destroy themselves once again?”

  Puck shrugged. “We’ll just have to wait and see. Meantime, we have to move on. They don’t want us around them. We will go on to the next place.”

  “Why did they have to take over our world?”

  “That’s how humans are. They never think that someone else might be living there. So we have to go on.”

  “And do what?”

  “Find a world we can make safe for ineffable qualities.”

  Ineffable qualities! Then they all remembered who and what they were. They were what made life worth living. And if the humans wouldn’t have them, they’d just have to make life worth living for themselves. It was a bit strange, but that was how it had turned out.

  The Dream of Misunderstanding

  I wrote this to say something about the membrane, as I call it, that separates humans from one another, and makes misunderstanding inevitable. In this story I solve the problem, and show myself and, I hope, others, that solving this problem does not necessarily solve the problem.

  Brenton’s the name. I am a fairly well-known psychologist, well off, and with a respectable list of publications. Maybe you’ve read my popular book, The Dream of Misunderstanding. It has helped a lot of people. I know a lot about misunderstanding. Despite this, I have a lot of trouble helping myself.

  As a matter of fact, my wife and I are separated. I live in my office on the East Side of New York; Myra is in our family apartment on the West Side.

  My own books, excellent though they are generally accounted to be, have failed to get my wife to understand me. I have been brooding a lot over that lately. Maybe that accounts for my dream.

  In my dream, I was standing in a bluish room with no furniture. In front of me was a man larger than life-size. He had a noble beard, and seemed very worthy of respect.

  “Well,” he said, “so you finally made it all the way to me.”

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “I am Ahriman, subdiety in charge of Earthly solutions.”

  “What solution are you talking about?”

  “A solution to the membrane problem.”

  “And what is that?”

  “The membrane is what separates one thing from another on your Earth. It is invisible to human eyes, but it is there all the same. It is the equivalent of a thick, semi-transparent substance that coats the world and separates one person’s understanding from another’s.”

  “This membrane,” I said. “I believe it is unknown to science?”

  “That is true.”

  “What is the effect of this membrane?” I asked.

  “It interferes with human relations. It is the barrier, invisible but palpable, that prevents anyone from really understanding anyone else.”

  “That’s a big problem,” I said. “I’ve often thought about this, using different metaphors.”

  “We are aware that you have worked all your professional life on the problem of human misunderstanding.”

  “Without much success.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. We are aware of your publications on the subject of the impossibility of one person really understanding another. Your books do a good job of describing life as it is lived behind the membrane.”

  “I have proven that understanding is a difficult thing. But to prove a negative is negligible.”

  “Not at all. Your attempts constitute a notable achievement.”

  “My attempts at clarification have only succeeded in muddying up my own situation.”

  “With the ability imparted by this parchment, you can clear up misunderstandings, which are all that separate one person from another.”

  He handed me a parchment. On it was written, “Charles Brenton is now granted the ability to pass through the membranes that separate mind from mind.”

  I couldn’t read the signature, but it was bold and black and somehow looked holy.

  I took the parchment in my hand. A feeling of competence and rightness came over me.

  The parchment shrunk and flew from my hand into my head. It was glorious to feel it there. My image of my own rightness increased.

  The subgod said, “Are you sure you know what to do with it?”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Anything you want to run over with me?”

  “No, I’ve got it. Many thanks, and I’ll get to work immediately.”

  “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  I saw in a flash what needed to be done. God knows I had written about it often enough. The world was filled with misunderstandings. Ignorant and misinformed armies clashed by night, innocent women and children were killed, dictators and terrorists reigned.

  There was work to be done with all of that and much more. On an international level.

  And there were many problems in America, too. There were some things I badly needed to tell our President, and have him understand them. I saw them all. The parchment in my head gave me the ability to do that.

  There was work to be done, and no time to lose.

  But first, I thought I’d begin with a situation nearer to home.

  Light as air, I flew out of my apartment window and across town. I crossed Central Park, and admired the lights along the roadways. Across Central Park West, then I turned uptown for a few blocks, and then west again. I saw Myra’s apartment building ahead. It used to be mine, too.

  I entered through a long-remembered window. Like a breath of wind I moved through the rooms. I found my wife asleep in her bed. Alone in her room. I paused a moment to admire her beauty. Then, pursuant to the instructions of the subdiety as I understood them, I entered her mind.

  The membrane at the threshold held me back for a moment. Without Ahriman’s parchment, I couldn’t have done it. As it was, I feared the parchment might not work. But I found myself passing through it slowly, turning myself into something infinitesimal, ions, electrons—except for psychology I have no scientific training. Anyhow, I passed through the membrane.

  Once on the other side, I reconstituted myself.

  I was in a corridor that curved far away into the distance. It was lined with filing cabinets, which held the banks of dicta Myra lived by. These were the commands that she gave herself, the judgments she made, and most of them followed the commands set down from childhood. There were many she had not altered since that time.

  Her mind to me was a long labyrinthine path that wound slowly into the interior of her soul.

  I had gotten through the membrane. I was in another person’s mind! I was in my wife’s mind.

  I passed the secret place where she kept her ideas about herself. I was tempted to look at them and do a little rearranging. But a tact I hadn’t thought myself capable of kept me from it. I continued down the corridor.

  Soon I came to where her memories of me were stored. These I scanned with some care.

  I felt horror at the interlocking logic of those thoughts, those impressions. I knew she had once loved me, once thought highly of me. How could it have changed into this? How could she have thought I thought that? I would never have accused my worst enemy of the thoughts and emotions she assigned to me. “Cold” and “prissy” was the least of it.

  Very gently I began readjusting her attitudes toward me.

  “Basic liking” needed some tweaking to bring it up to a proper level. “Appreciation of his looks” needed a little more adjustment. “Approval of deeds as understood from motives” required a lot of attention. “Perception of gallantry” also took some work.

  There were other things to adjust. I reversed a number of her perceptions so that she would wake up realizing they were misperceptions. I wanted her to think, “Oh, I don’t know how I could have
gotten him so wrong ...”

  Frankly, I wasn’t too sure I had indeed meant what I wanted her to believe I’d meant, but if I was going to err, it would be in my own favor.

  I saw her turn in her sleep, smile, reach toward me. For a moment I thought there was hope. But then a spasm shook her body. She rolled away, and still asleep, her face twisted in disgust. She shuddered.

  “Get out of me!” she cried, still asleep.

  Obviously, my actions had stirred up a rebellion in her. In the unconscious, I suppose. I watched her reject the alien thoughts. My thoughts, my adjustments!

  She couldn’t bear to see me through my eyes, from my point of view.

  I realized that even if I had created a truer version of myself, it wasn’t her truth, wasn’t true for her, and maybe had never been true, maybe never could be true. This despite my good intentions.

  The repair work I had done in her mind began to shake and quiver. Each place I had touched turned a dark and unpleasant color. In that darkness I saw the rejection of my own valuations, my own desired self-images that I had tried to impose on her. She threw them off as alien matter. Shamefaced, my self-conceptions had crept back inside of me.

  In the midst of this, I had another vision. A vision within a vision, as it were. I caught a glimpse of that universal mind, owned by no one and everyone, to which few are given access. I saw all our differences reconciled. But this too faded away. Apparently this ultimate reconciliation with the person I loved was not allowed by the ground rules of existence.

  Shortly after that, I was expelled from her mind.

  Her interior filing cabinets were shaking and quaking. The corridor itself writhed. The interior of her mind suddenly seemed to knot, then explode outward with an irresistible force. I was thrown from her mind against the membrane. I passed through as before, and came out the other side intact.

  Someone was standing there, waiting for me. It was the Ahriman, the subgod who had given me the parchment. Now he plucked it out of my head.