Fifth Planet

by Fred Hoyle

  It was now about six o’clock, the peak of the evening pressure. He calculated they would certainly be back in the city by eight o’clock, in fact they might be able to chase up the apartment before then, if the medicos were through with their business. That would give nice time for him and Cathy to step out for dinner. She was bound to be upset but almost nothing on earth could put Cathy off her food for very long.

  He made several mistakes at the complex junctions. The place had obviously been laid out by topologists. But at last he made it. When he gave them his name at the desk, a girl

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  with a zebra hair-do put through a call and an usherette showed him the way. They walked along seemingly endless corridors and wound up in a plushly furnished office. An elderly grey-haired man with the resigned look of a large bloodhound shook his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you, Professor Conway, your wife’s had rather a bad shock. We knew that Colonel Faw- sett was a very sick man, otherwise we wouldn’t have asked you both to come here today at such short notice.’

  ‘You mean he’s dead?’

  The man nodded. ‘There seemed to be nothing we could do for him. We’ve not run across anything quite like it before. But of course we’ll go on with the investigation.’

  Conway didn’t hear him. He was thinking about the night almost two years ago when Cathy had asked him to do what he could to get Fawsett into the act. He remembered the way he’d overridden his own scruples. He still couldn’t decide whether he had been right or wrong. He’d known there would be danger on the expedition, but he’d never thought it would end this way.

  ‘You mean you’ve absolutely no idea what the trouble was?’

  ‘No, we know it was a disease in the fever area, that’s all. Even on this planet it’s a pretty wide area, and maybe it isn’t surprising ...’

  ‘How did it happen ? I mean how did the end come?’

  It still seemed incredible to 'him that Fawsett was dead.

  ‘It didn’t take long, that’s all I can tell you. Your wife sat with him for maybe twenty minutes and he didn’t seem to notice 'her. Suddenly he seemed to recognize her and became quite violent. He’d had one or two similar crises before, but he’s a strong young man and he’d managed to pull through. This time he just didn’t make it. It was a very nasty experience for your wife, I’m afraid. We gave her a sedative and she’s been resting. Would you 'like to come along and see her?’

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  Conway said that he would and followed the man along more corridors, not quite so interminable as before. They turned into what Conway supposed was a small private ward. Cathy was there, sitting strangely still, her head drooped, looking down at her hands. Apparently she had heard them, for she looked up for a moment.

  ‘Would you like me to make arrangements for her to be looked after, tonight, or for as long as it might seem ... ?’

  Conway shook his head.

  ‘No, I think I would like to take her back with me. You see she probably associates this place with what happened. It will be better to get her into a different environment. I can call a doctor when we get back into the city.’

  ‘Would you like us to see to it?’

  ‘No, I think I’d like to contact a friend. But I’ll be in touch if there’s any difficulty.’

  Conway told Cathy to come with him. Quite silently she walked at his side, as a girl took them back to the hospital entrance. He offered her his arm on the way to the car but she refused it. They drove silently back along the highway. Conway didn’t know why he’d done it, why he’d brought her with him, without saying a word to the man at the hospital. But in the first brief moment when she’d looked up at him he’d known - he’d known that this was not Cathy.

  He found a space in one of the gigantic parking blocks and led the way into the main thoroughfare. The woman - or the thing - that looked like Cathy followed him, still without a word. The Mayflower Restaurant was close by. He took her in and miraculously found a table for two. She made no attempt tx> look at the menu so he ordered for both of them. He ordered lobster thermidor for her, which Cathy loved. He made no attempt to talk and they were through the joyless meal in no time at all. Back at the parking block he paid for the car and set about the awkward navigational problem of finding the apartment. It was almost half past nine by the time they reached it. He made a brief tour of the place; it had a kitchenette, a large room, two bedrooms

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  and the usual plumbing. Whoever the guy in South America weis he was doing all right for himself.

  So far his mind had been numb with shock. He had driven the car, parked it, ordered dinner, and found the apartment more or less like an automaton. Now he began to thaw out. He wanted to know where Cathy was. He looked at the woman and said, ‘Who the hell are you?’

  Still there was not a word from her. My God, he thought, is she dumb? In an angry voice he repeated the question, ‘Who the hell are you?’

  Then her mouth opened, ‘That is a difficult question, and I must have time to think before I can answer it.’

  ‘To hell with that. What I want to know is where is my wife?’

  He wais beginning to tremble and was fast losing control of himself. He took the woman roughly by 'her arm and shouted:

  ‘Where is my wife ?’

  Before she could answer the lights seemed to dim and somewhere a band was playing ‘Undecided’. The floor heaved. There was noise, confusion, faces. One moment he was lying dazed on the floor being kicked savagely on the thigh.

  The next moment he was on his feet and back in the apartment. And the woman who looked like Cathy was standing there shaking her head. The men were gone, and so was the pain in his leg. But he had had a bang on the head, he could feel it very definitely. He started to rub it and the woman said, ‘Please do not do that again.’.

  It was as though the shake he’d given her had somehow contrived to waken her attention. With quick strides she explored the apartment. Satisfied, she said, ‘I shall sleep in here, and you will sleep in the other room. I am very weary and do not wish to talk now. You will understand very clearly that you are not to leave this apartment. I would be glad if you would put my things in my room.’

  Conway unpacked, thinking that whoever or whatever

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  the woman was, it was at least a relief that she seemed to be rational. He supposed he was frightened although it wasn’t a feeling that he was used to experiencing very much. But he suddenly remembered the pump-handle and the fight he’d had about two years before in a dockland pub. Conway knew for a certainty that what he had just seen was not real, he had seen one of his memories.

  The woman went into her room and he could hear her preparing for bed. He wondered if she creamed her face exactly the same way as Cathy had done. Had done? What had happened to Cathy? Where was she? The voice was certainly exactly Cathy’s voice, but the precision of the thoughts was very definitely not. Conway lay down on the bed in his clothes and tried to think. The shock was getting him now. He must try to keep right on thinking as clearly as ■he could. It was obvious that Fawsett had picked up something much more serious than pneumonia. It wasn’t anything as simple as a virus or a bacterium that had attacked him on Achilles. But in some way, like a more or less ordinary disease, he’d managed to infect Cathy. He didn’t understand it at all, how it was possible scientifically, but he knew that there had to be some cold crystal-clear explanation. That was his link with sanity.

  Suddenly it was borne in on Conway how very simply the inhabitants of Achilles, whoever they were, had managed to deal with the Earth. The human species had put a large fraction of its total activities into hopping around from place to place, in making the expedition to Achilles. And as a result it had seen - well, Conway didn’t exactly know yet what the members of the expedition had seen, but he already had a shrewd suspi
cion that it wouldn’t amount to very much. The Achilleans in return had hardly bothered to trouble themselves at all. They hadn’t spent hundreds of thousands of millions in building space-ships, they had simply waited. They had simply waited for humans to carry them back to Earth. It was both simple and elegant. And now this thing, sleeping there in the next room, in the guise

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  of his beautiful wife, could do just what she wanted to do, she could make the young men see visions and the old men tell tales. Conway rubbed his head. The visions need not always be pleasant ones.

  The idea gnawing at the base of his brain was that he ought to do something about it. It could be a completely effective form of take-over. The thought of contacting the military nauseated him. Really when he came right down to it 'he hated the whole social structure, he knew he had hated it since his first thinking moments. They had said he was abnormal, and now 'he saw with an extreme clarity of perception that they were right, and he was heartily and completely glad of it. But this thing in the other room was another matter. So far it had done nothing but ride in a car and eat lobster thermidor, and make him see a vision of a scar-faced thug, but he guessed it was going to develop. He knew what he must do. He must go and tell the police and let them deal with it.

  He got off the bed and tiptoed to the door. A moment later he was out in the passage-way, listening intendy outside the door where the thing was sleeping - surely it was sleeping. It had Cathy’s face and body, her voice even to all the little inflections, so surely it had her other bodily habits, including that of sleep.

  The corridor was a rather long one, running the whole length of the apartment. It ended in the outer door. He heard a click and, looking up, saw that someone had just come into the apartment. The figure was still in the shade by the door. He moved a few yards towards it, and the figure also stepped forward into the light. He stared at it for a moment and then shuddered with panic, for it was himself who had come in through the door, none other than himself. The figure was advancing on him now, slowly and threateningly; he could see the fist knotted and he knew what would happen if he stood his ground. With a shriek he turned back into the apartment. The woman was standing in the open door of her room. She looked at him coolly and

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  said, ‘I am sorry to have, frightened you. But it is my will that you shall not leave this apartment. I have need for you, so you will return to your room and stay there. So long as you do so no harm will come to you.’

  He glanced back down the passage-way and the figure had gone. He looked at the woman and she stared back at him unwinkingly. At 'last he turned and went back into the bedroom. He was sweating furiously and longed to take a shower but he was too weak. He collapsed on to the bed and lay trembling and thinking feverishly fast. Of course there had been no figure, there couldn’t be, it was in 'his own mind, it was there that he had perceived the vision. But knowing this didn’t help, in a way it made it worse. Childishly he switched off the light to stop himself from seeing things although he realized that this was quite useless, for there was also light and dark in his own mind. It was all there ready to be released, like a record that could be played at any moment if only you knew how to play it; and this creature in the room dose by knew exactly that.

  The door opened with a click. He willed himself now not to see anything, but it was a voice that he heard, the voice of his wife, saying, ‘It may be better if we leave the two doors open. Then you will know that I am here. Try to remember that I do not want to frighten you.’

  After this the trembling got a bit less, and he kept listening, he kept trying to hear the woman breathing. He thought he could just do so. Then his thoughts seemed to disintegrate like a distant sound blown away by a puff of wind.

  It was quite late when Conway woke the following morning. Even before his brain woke up he felt wonderfully refreshed, it was the way he used to sleep when he was a kid. He’d gone to bed at night, then, click - and it was morning. That’s the way he felt now. Then the memories of the previous evening flooded in on him. He jumped to the window, opened the curtain, and when the sunlight flooded in the bad dreams seemed to fade. It was absurd of course, one could see things in broad daylight just as much as at

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  night, but somehow he felt a lot better in the light. He went

  out into the passage and heard the woman moving about. He wondered if they had both woken at the same moment.

  He took a shower, and while he was doing so the woman came and stood outside. When he 'had finished she slipped off her dressing-gown, completely without concern, and took her turn in the shower. Conway couldn’t help wondering whether she had inherited Cathy’s sexual proclivities as well as her voice and her other physical characteristics. He dressed quickly and set about making a light breakfast. His friend six places removed had an unusual assortment of food stuffs in the ice-box, so it was an unusual combination of stuff that appeared on the table. Still, it was an unusual morning. He wondered for a long moment how it came about that he was taking the whole matter so lightly. He tried to recall the horror of the previous night, but in some odd way the sharpness had been lost, as if the memories had slipped back into their proper place.

  He noticed that there was a general air of incompetence in the way the woman moved around the kitchen, exactly as there had been with Cathy. This again helped him to feel a bit easier in his mind.

  ‘Got anything to say this morning? You keep telling me you don’t want me to go, but if you want me to stay there’s quite a bit of explaining you ought to do,’ he began.

  She smiled. It was rather like one of Cathy’s smiles, but not so vague, not addressed at the world in general.

  ‘I’d like to explain if I could. But I haven’t got all this organized yet.’

  She tapped her head as she said this.

  ‘It’s all very confused. And I just don’t know how much you could understand. I’ll find out if you give me time.’

  ‘You came over in the ship ?’

  ‘Yes of course. But it was not a pleasant trip. The creature I came in was very hysterical.’

  ‘Fawsett?’

  ‘That was his name. He was a man like you.’

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  ‘Why did you kill him ?’

  ‘I had no wish to kill him. It was his refusal to accept a compromise that killed him. It was he who killed another of us.’

  ‘Another of you?’

  ‘Yes, another of us was travelling in the body of one of the other men. Fawsett killed him. It is not nice to be trapped inside the body of a murderer.’

  Conway found it difficult to understand this piece of universal ethics, delivered to him in exactly the pitch and overtones of his wife’s voice.

  ‘But why did you come ?’

  ‘To find out what this planet is like. For the same reason that you came to our planet.’

  ‘It was a bit hard on Fawsett, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I would have left him at the end. Even if it had been necessary to kill myself I would have left him.’

  ‘I don’t understand how you can go into and how you can leave another person.’

  ‘I keep saying that it is too early for me to make you understand. I may never be able to, but I will try later on.’ ‘And what about my wife?’

  ‘Well, is this not your wife ?’

  The creature held out her hand and turned it backwards and forwards. ‘It is a funny thing, isn’t it? A hand. Isn’t it your wife’s hand ?’

  ‘Yes, but what about her?’

  ‘You keep always coming back to the same point, and I tell you that I do not know how to answer. If you can tell me exactly what you mean by the words me, you, him, her, then I will answer your question.’

  Conway thought for a moment.

  ‘You mean,’ he said slowly, ‘that we only have a vague
, instinctive idea of what we ourselves are. And that when we talk about somebody else - when I talk about my wife - I have a vague idea about something like me?’

  ‘The point is that you are vague. You must be able to talk

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  about these things in a precise way, in the same sort of precise way you talk about gravitation and about electricity, if we are to do any better than speak in generalities.’

  Conway felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to crinkle. He realized that if at breakfast the previous day he 'had been given one single wish it would, ironically, have been that Cathy would be able to think with the same rationality as this creature was thinking.

  ‘As for your wife,’ the creature went on, ‘nothing has gone, nothing has been dissipated. If it was not so, then all this around me’ — she indicated the breakfast things and the kitchen in general — ‘would drive me mad, just as what you saw last night frightened you. It is only because of her that I can keep sane in this world.’

  ‘But it isn’t she who is talking now.’

  ‘Because it is I who have control of the thinking processes. One thing I would like to know, did your wife ever think?’

  Conway paused for a moment and then shook his head sadly.

  ‘No, Cathy didn’t really think, she was almost pure

  animal.’

  ‘And you who do think a great deal had a very great liking for her?’

  ‘Yes, I had a very great liking for her if you wish to put it that way.’

  ‘That is why I was determined that you should not leave last night.’