John Rackham

by We The Venusians

  "Can't you hear it?" he demanded. "Listen . . ." and he struck a single key. "There are three strings, there, all sing-ging together. And arguing . . . can't you hear that?" M'Grath pulled heavy eyebrows down, suspiciously.

  "No, I can't. You'll have to be more objective than that."

  "That's a start," Harper said. "Go ahead, Taylor. Tune the thing." Anthony groped in the pocket of the fine suit Harper's money had bought for him on Earth, produced the key and damping probe, sat himself at the keyboard. Half of him was keen to minister to the abused instrument, but the other half was confused. Whatever design Harper had in mind was between him and this huge man, and he, Anthony Taylor, was involved merely as an instrument, an extension of the piano itself. That felt wrong. Anthony put the feeling aside, reluctandy, set to work on the strings. Soon engrossed, he could not have said how long it was before he finally looked up in satisfaction, to see an idiot-eye watching him. Cringing from it, he saw another. Cameras had been silently wheeled in, and were now aimed on him, and they were alive. All his habitual hiding reactions stirred him to scramble to his feet and back away.

  "All set?" Harper asked, making Anthony whirl, defensively, and then nod, unwilling to trust his voice.

  "You are quite satisfied that the instrument is in tune?" M'Grath strode forward, ponderously. "You won't mind if I try it? After all, it is my piano!" His open sarcasm was underlined as he rounded the seat and lowered himself without waiting for comment. Anthony watched, fascinated, as he threw back the folds of his robe from his massive forearms, advanced his fingers to the keyboard, and began to play. The room filled with a wild and furious clamor, out of which a melody was barely discernible. Anthony could hardly credit his ears. The fat man was working hard, was intent, his jowly face set in stem concentration. Either he was a consummate actor, or he was under the illusion that he was performing magnificently. Anthony's sense of wrongness grew to an ache as M'Grath brought the piece to its crashing conclusion, sat for a still moment, then looked up.

  "Well ... I won't embarrass you by asking for an opin-

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  ion, Mr. Taylor, on a piece that you could hardly be expected to know . . ."

  "I recognized it," Anthony interrupted, confusion making his voice louder than intended. "You were trying to play a Chopin Etude, one that used to be called the 'Revolutionary Study,' but. . ."

  "Trying to play I"

  "Look, there's something wrong, here. You don't understand . . ."

  "I understand this much," M'Grath thrust out his huge head, angrily. 'Tou have gone beyond the point of excuse. Trying' to play, indeed! I yield the instrument to you, sir. Perform 1"

  "In front of these?" Anthony indicated the goggling cameras. "With all your friends watching. You don't know . . ."

  "Perform!" M'Grath thundered. "I cannot imagine what insane scheme Borden had in mind when he brought you here, but it stops, right now, until you have done your worst. And then . . ." he bent a cold eye on Harper. That worthy was grim-faced.

  "You go ahead, Taylor," he ordered. "This is why you're here. Go on, play, and leave the rest to me."

  Anthony sat, put his fingers silently on the keys, and made a conscious effort to discharge the confusions and chaos in his mind, to replace them with the "mood" of the impassioned exiled patriot, angrily lamenting the sufferings of his homeland . . . and the parallel struck him, all at once. Here he was, a Greenie masquerading as a human, among humans . . . here on his native planet, his home, yet barriered off from it far more savagely than Chopin had even been from Poland. The complex chemistry of frustration, fear and fury flowed from his brain, infusing the music-pattems with new fire. He began to play, savagely, with needle-pointed precision, every note a blow of defiance, every thundering harmonic a blast of anger, the strains and shocks of the past days bursting out of their confinement and shaking him with the fury of their release. So thoroughly did he lose himself in his outburst that he was wet and breathless by the time he reached the end, and it was several seconds before he could establish a clear contact with his surroundings. Then, deflatedly, he looked up, at M'Grath.

  The big man stood absolutely still, like an idol. So com-

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  plete was the blank shock on his face that Anthony half-expected to see him totter and fall. Then a great shudder shook that giant frame, and tears came into those flint-gray eyes. M'Grath sighed, a painful sobbing sigh, put up a hand to his face, shuddered again, and looked down to where Anthony sat.

  "My Godl" he breathed. Then he swung on Harper. "You damned amateur," he said, harshly, "that wasn't therapy. It was surgery. Brutal!"

  "But effective, you have to admit that."

  "Not if the patient dies, you fool! I'm not thinking of myself, now. I'm thinking of . . ." He made a sudden dart, moving surprisingly fast for one of his bulk, to shut off the cameras. "The damage is probably done, by this time, but we can, at least, spare them the discussion . . ."

  Anthony had risen by this time, driven by something which clamored for expression. "It's all right for you two," he said, stumbling over his words in his efforts to express his humiliation. "You know what this is all about. It's some sort of experiment, for you. But what about me? What about us?" He thought, belatedly, of Martha, and Willers, who were standing by, agape and lost. "We're not just animals, you know, to do tricks for your amusement," M'Grath twisted his head sideways, sneering.

  "You! I can't be bothered with you just now. Later, perhaps, you shall have your explanation. And your chance to perform. Harper, am I to understand you right? Have our internal faculties become so deformed, so ingrown, that we can't see our poverty? Is that . . . ?" He broke off and swung his heavy head at Lyons, impatiently.

  "Bamey, make yourself useful, can't you? Get them out of here. Take them away. Entertain them, anything so long as you get them out of my sight."

  Mr. Lyons shoved himself away from a wall where he had been leaning, and nodded, cheerfully. "You know," he said, "I'm no music-lover. It's all just a pleasant noise, to me. But I've heard you play that piece a dozen times, and that's the first time I ever knew it had a tune to it!"

  "That point has already been made, effectively," M'Grath said, in chill tones. "I am still suffering from the demonstration. I must ask that you take that as an excuse for my

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  poor manners," he swept the guests with an inclusive eye. "Please leave us. Go with Mr. Lyons."

  "Did something go wrong?" Willers demanded, as Lyons escorted them back into the amphitheatre-space. "What's this all about, anyway?"

  "Don't ask me. Musically, I'm a moron. Me, Bord Harper, and one or two more. Just about everybody else either plays a piano, or sings, or both, but I will say this. I never heard a piano talk like that, before."

  "You say everyone plays, or sings?" Anthony caught at that. He had grasped, vaguely, that Harper was exposing M'Grath's conceit, letting the fat man leam, the hard way, that his talent was shoddy. There was, also, the implication that this exposure was taking place before an involved and critical audience. Hence the brutality. But if that whole audience was in the same state of fog as M'Grath, the brutality and the shock would be multiplied. He began to sweat. M'Grath was a psychologist. He was tough. Yet the shock had squeezed tears from him. What might it have done to the others, that unseen audience? What had Harper done?

  "I'm scared!" Martha said. "There's something weird about this place. Why is everybody hiding from us? Do we have a plague or something?"

  As if it had been a cue, they heard the rapid clatter of feet and a petite, black-haired girl came running down a ramp from the outside upper level. She wore black loose trousers and a brief, unfastened bolero which fluttered in the wind of her hurrying enough to show that there was nothing else underneath. The black stuff was heavily ornamented in gold thread, and her box-cut black hair was held with a single gold band. There was just the suspicion of a slant to her jet-black eyes as she stared at Anthony.

  "I'm Milly Ko," she said,
breathlessly, "and I want you!"

  "I don't understand," Anthony hesitated, looking from her to Lyons. "I haven't fixed up anywhere to stay, yet. I don't know what arrangements Mr. Harper has in mind."

  "It's all right," Lyons assured, with a grin. "Milly won't eat you. We keep pretty much open house, here. We can always find you, if we want you for something special."

  "My hospitality," Milly said, briskly, "is all yours. You can have anything you want. Just ask. But I want you to

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  come and fix my piano the way you did M'Grath's, and then . . . then I want you to play that Etude again, for me. Will you?" "I suppose so."

  "All right. Come on!" She took his arm and he had to step out to keep pace with her hurry. "You have bags, luggage?"

  "Nothing at all," he confessed.

  "You won't go back empty-handed, anyway," she told him. "That much is certain. I can see what Borden meant by medicine. As soon as the rest of them have swallowed it they won't be able to do enough for you." She steered him almost at a trot along the corridors and out on the steps. "The other two ... do they play?"

  "Singers," he mumbled. "She's a soprano, he's a tenor."

  "That Harper! If they are up to your standard, mister, this little dead-and-alive dome is due to erupt."

  At the foot of the steps she hustled him aboard a smaller car and sat beside him, seizing the control-bar. At once the car shot away and spun round, narrowly avoiding two more which were converging on the steps.

  "Vultures!" she muttered, putting on a broad smile and sending a mocking wave to a blonde girl in one of the cars. "That's Hilda Craven. A soprano, really, but she likes to fancy herself as a pianist. Ill bet she is livid at missing you."

  "Is that right you're all musical amateurs?"

  "Amateurs! Yes, I suppose we deserve that, now that you're here. Yes, just about everybody plays, and-or sings. My God, what else is there? We've painted all the pictures, carved all the statues, read and written all the books, played all the games. We swim, we exercise, we compete, we argue, but we know all the answers. We know each other, inside out. There's very little point in anything, any more." The furious rush of the car whipped her bolero out behind her. Her skin was silky smooth, her body lithe, her breasts pointed and as forthright as her manner. Anthony shrank from her, just an inch or two, and she noticed it.

  "There's sex, too," she said. "Even that gets stale, especially here. We have no taboos about dress, or chastity, or who sleeps with whom. But it doesn't seem to work.

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  When you can have everything you want, you don't want anything bad enough to bother." "Everything?"

  "Anything and everything," she said, wryly. "It sounds like Heaven . . . but it works out more like the other place. There's no thrill of achievement, any more, when you can have anything you want, just by wanting. That's why we all turn to music. Not listening to it, but doing it . . . because it needs effort to make your own, and it's never done, never stale."

  "That's because you have to put something of yourself into it," he said, and she gave him a quick side-glance. Her expression baffled him, and he suddenly realized it was getting dark. Overhead, the "sunlight" had almost gone, giving way to a silver glow that conveyed a sense of coolness. The red time-arrow stood at twenty-one. Nine P.M.

  "We're here," she said, bringing the car to a stop outside a house that was as subdy Japanese as herself in its slant lines and planes. He followed her indoors. "Plenty of rooms," she made sweeping gestures. "Take whatever one you fancy. There's a shower-room at the end of this passage. There'll be a meal ready in about half an hour. Any food fads?"

  "Hardly . . . except that I don't take sugar, or alcohol. Please don't go to a lot of trouble."

  "It's no trouble." She twisted out of her bolero, threw it aside, then stepped out of her trousers and threw them after the bolero. Then she stepped to a wall, picked a kimono from a hook, slung it over her arm, turned to him, and then noticed his strained expression. "That's something else you'll have to get used to," she said easily. "We don't bother much with clothes, here. They're a damned nuisance, mosdy, and what's the point of covering up, when there's no weather, or indulging in status-symbols, when everybody is on the same level?"

  She led him into a side-passage. "I'm going to shower, and then make a call or two, to see how the others are taking it. The piano, my piano, is this way." They came to a bigger room. "There it is, and I'm ashamed of it, now. To think that M'Grath has the only in-tune piano on VenusI"

  "I don't understand that bit." He touched a key or two, winced at the jangle, and turned to her. "Surely you have

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  pitch-pipes, tuning-forks or any one of a dozen other ways of getting a standard to go by?"

  "You don't understand, do you?" She shook her head. There was an odd, almost insane glitter in her eyes and anger in the set of her slim body as she stared at him. "We are the Venus Colony." There were capitals in her tone. "We are the richest, the bestest, the most exclusive club there ever has been. Such things as tuning forks, and adjustments are for slobs, for people with humility, people who can conceive of being wrong. Not usl" The savagery in her voice made him shiver. She was baring herself before him in more than body, masochistically exposing the flaws in her values, rending the whole synthetic fabric of the community before his eyes.

  He was still uneasy about it as he stood under the shower, with cool, clean water cascading over him, and tried to imagine what it was like for a person to believe himself a skillful, talented musician, and suddenly to find that he is a fumbling ignorant amateur. He saw again the shock it had been for M'Grath, multiplied that by a potential hundred, expanded it into the basis of a whole ethic, for an entire closed colony of people, imagined it suddenly shattered . . . and his mind boggled at the result. He was so engrossed in the size of the problem that he had been rubbing and scratching at a persistent itch for about five minutes before it penetrated his awareness. Then, with a start of sick horror, he realized he was itching all over. He froze, under the stinging spray. The time! How had he missed that?

  The time, here, was purely arbitrary. How long since he had taken his anti-tan tablet? No way of knowing, at all. He shut the shower off, roughly, seized a towel, went slopping out in search of the room where he had left his clothes.

  The itch was painful, now, but it didn't show. He stared at his arms, legs, shoulders, as far as he could see, just to make sure. It didn't show, yet. But he had to have anti-tan, and soon. Martha Merrill! The idea came like deliverance, until he thought it further. If she would admit to having any. If she had any to spare. And she would run short, too, eventually.

  He got to his feet, dried himself, slid into his jacket and

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  pants and shoes, feeling that dreadful mental fuzziness creeping up on him again. The smell of food touched his nostrils. He followed it, along a corridor and into a big quiet room, austere in Oriental simplicity. Three steps inside the door, he stopped. Milly Ko was there, wrapped in a loose green robe and squatting at a low table. Opposite her sat a little man in a black formal suit, with a white collar and string tie. But what caught Anthony's breath was the slim green girl who stood by Milly's side, as still as a graven image in emerald. Naked as a statue, and as beautiful . . . and as empty of life, her eyes like purple jewels, staring at nothing. On his entry, Milly put out a hand, touched the green girl on the thigh with a dismissing gesture. She moved, silent on bare feet, went away.

  "You're in time," Milly said, waving. "Sit and eat."

  "That green girl," he said, sinking to his knees where she pointed, "you have her as a servant?"

  "Hardly. No, I just like having them around, like ornaments. They're pretty, when they're fresh-caught."

  "How long—how long do they last?"

  "Oh, about a week. You can't feed them, you see. Our food doesn't attract them. Just water, and a little sugar once a day, and they stay." She took a bowl, of wafer-thin china, ladled green steaming stuff
into it, passing it across, and he stared at it, suspiciously.

  ^Is this

  "Bean soup? That's right. This must be the one place in the Universe where bean-soup is a prize delicacy. It is, too. That bowlful, back on Earth, would cost you a mint. Try it, you'll never have the chance again, once you leave here."

  He tasted, swallowed, and was disappointed. It was indistinguishable from thick bean-soup anywhere. He took a second mouthful, and warmth seemed to explode in his stomach, in a glow that burned all the way out to the tips of his fingers and toes. Then, like a convulsion, sweat burst out on him from every pore.

  "There!" she laughed. "That's the way it hits everybody, the first time. We don't often have guests, but I've watched that happen to them over and over. It just shows what an awful state your metabolism is in."

  She took up her own bowl and began spooning. He watched her, and hot bitterness swelled up to his tongue.

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  "For this, you hold the whole of Earth to ransom ... so that your metabolism can benefit?"

  "That is naive saying." The retort came in a flat snap from Mr. Ko, who did not bother to turn his head. "Beans, like diamonds, have scarcity value only. Too many would destroy market."

  "But they are not diamonds, they're food, and medicine. If they were plentiful, and cheap, that would benefit everybody."

  "Fallacious argument. Please think. Large production not possible, without large expense. But even child can see it is not economic to spend much money in order to make product cheap. Also, bean diet increases life expectancy. On large scale, would destroy Earth economy in many ways. So, shortage is maintained, not by us, but by orders from Earth. We obey, they leave us alone."

  "You mean Earth dictates your policy?"

  "That's right," Milly put in. "Hari is our economic expert, and I can't explain things the way he could, but it's simple enough. We produce. Earth is the market. God, what would we do with beans, if we couldn't sell the things?"