Collected Stories

by Donald E. Westlake

  The land traveler stopped. Reluctantly, the driver said, “All right, get out. I won’t report you.”

  “Gee thanks!” said Billy, bounding over the rail.

  The others followed, and Ensign Benson said, “Where’s the agency?”

  “Don’t milk the joke, fella,” the driver said and accelerated away. But his girlfriend, behind his back, pointed and gestured toward a nearby gray-metal building, then waved a good-luck good bye.

  “She was nice,” Billy said.

  “I’ve never dealt with agents before,” Luthguster said, frowning at the building.

  “Only principals.”

  Ensign Benson stared at him. “You only deal in principles? Come along, councilman; this I have to see.”

  J. Railsford Farnsworth Successors-Talent Agency read the inscription on the frosted fiber of the door. The Earthians filed into a small, bench-lined room personed by a feisty receptionist. “Well, look at what the omkali dragged in,” she said, surveying the bedraggled Terrans.

  Hester glared at the girl. ‘Get smart with me, snip,” she said, “and I’ll breath on you.”

  “Harridan,” commented the receptionist calmly, flipping through a card file on her desk. “Battle-ax.” “Dyke.”

  "Sorry, got nothing for your type at the moment, We have your photo and resume on file?”

  “Girlie,” Hester said, leaning over the desk, “if I had my socket wrench, I’d unscrew your head.”

  “Just a minute, just a minute,” said Ensign Benson, interposing himself. “Is the boss here?”

  The girl frowned at him, then smiled. “Oh yes. You’re the captain.”

  “That’s right, and he’s my best friend. Is the chief in?”

  “You mean-the agent?

  “The man in charge,” said Councilman Luthguster.

  The girl looked dubious. “Who shall I say is calling?”

  The councilman drew himself up to his full round. “The Earth,” he said.

  The girl looked him up and down. “I won’t argue,” she said.

  Framed autographed photos-glossy 8 x 10s-covered every inch of wall space in the small windowless room. The roll-top desk was picturesquely old and battered, the wastebasket overflowing, the leatherette sofa sagging, the two client chairs tired and gnawed.

  So was the agent. A short and stocky man in a wrinkled jump suit with sleeve garters, he looked harried, sympathetic and negative. “I’m sorry, group,” he said. I can’t tell you anything more than my girl did. Space opera just doesn’t move right now. How about a family drama?” Pointing to Billy, he said, “You could be the secret-faggot younger son.”

  “Gee,” said Billy, “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you do know the alternative,” the agent said. “If you’re not in rehearsal, you have to sign up with Temp. When something comes up that suits you, we’ll be in touch. In the meantime, don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

  “Who’s Temp?” Ensign Benson asked. “Is he in charge here?”

  The agent offered a brief smile, knowing, condescending and a bit irritated. “Don’t audition with me, pal,” he said.

  Councilman Luthguster said, “I assure you, my friend, continuing play acting is the farthest thing from my mind. I am here representing the Galactic Council, and I wish to---”

  Óh, please,” the agent said, becoming really annoyed. “If you people don’t get out of here at once, I’ll put your photos and resumes in the inactive file and you’ll be permanently on temp.”

  “Go ahead,” Ensign Benson said.

  The agent blinked at him. “What?”

  “My name is Kybee Benson. I am not the captain and I don’t have a best friend; and if my picture is in your files, you’re a magician.”

  “That goes for me double,” said Hester. “And I’m not a dyke.”

  Ensign Benson stared at her. “You aren’t?”

  “Wait a minute,” the agent said. Doubt curdled his face. “Who are you people?”

  “A mission from Earth,” Ensign Benson said.

  “Representing the Galactic Council,” Councilman Luthguster added.

  “And I’m sorry to bother you, Captain Standforth said, “but your people struck our ship.”

  “So Temp is temporary employment,” Ensign Benson said, “and it’s the source for all the necessary labor in the colony.”

  “That’s right.” The agent and the Earthpersons sat around a long table in a conference room. A secretary had distributed coffee and notepads and pencils and now sat poised to one side with her memo pad open.

  “And, Ensign Benson went on, “for the past five hundred years, you’ve been in rehearsal.”

  “The assumption has always been,” the agent said, “that sooner or later, our transportation would arrive. ‘The show must go on eventually’ is our national motto. So we keep a group of shows ready to perform, the choice of shows ready to perform, the choice of which ones being based on popular vote. There’s a certain understandable growing negativity about space opera, which is why you’ve been having so much trouble.”

  “Well, our troubles are over now,” Billy said, beaming at everybody.

  “Ours, too,” the agent said. Eagerly he leaned forward. “What’s our first stop on the tour?”

  The captain said “Tour?”

  “It will make a difference,” the agent explained, “as to which plays we carry. You wouldn’t do Lysistrata in Gayville, for instance.”

  “Sir,” said Luthguster, “You have misunderstood. We are an introductory mission representing the Galactic Council in the reabsorbtion of---”

  “You mean, you aren’t our transportation?”

  “Certainly not,” Luthguster said. “I assure you, sir, I am neither a play actor nor a tour director. I am---”

  “In terrible trouble,” the agent finished. To his secretary-who had stopped note taking, the better to look shocked and horrified-he said, “Erase that bit, Emily, and don’t breath a word of this to anyone.”

  “Oh, sir,” breathed Emily, with all the despairing fervor of any showbiz secretary ordered not to gossip,

  The captain said, “Really, uh, your Honor, I’m sure we can arrange all the transportation you need.”

  “I’m delighted and relieved to hear it,” the agent said. “Five at the very most.”

  The captain said, “All we need is to get to the ship and---”

  “Impossible,” the agent said.

  “I knew there had to be a kicker,” Ensign Benson said. “What is it?”

  The agent pressed all his fingers to his chest in the time-honored agent’s gesture of innocence. “Bubee,” he said, “do I know where your ship is? No. Certain members of the rep company do, If you go to the rep company and tell them you’re here in a spaceship, after five hundred years but you’re not their transportation, do you know what they’ll do?”

  The Earth party shook its heads.

  “Lynch you,” said Emily bitterly. She was shredding her pencil.

  “Very probably,” said the agent.

  Ensign Benson said, “Do you mean we can’t get our space ship back because, if people know it’s real but not your damned tour bus, they’ll blame us?”

  “I couldn’t have phrased it better myself,” the agent said. “Remember, five hundred years is a long rehearsal.”

  Emily, sniffing solemnly over her note pad, murmured, “But what else could we have done? We never knew when….”

  “Yes, Emily,” the agent said sympathetically.

  Councilman Luthguster said, “But this is terrible; I can’t arrange for transportation or trade agreements or development aid or anything until I’m back on the ship.”

  “But how to get there,” Pam said. “That’s the problem.”

  All nodded dolefully. But then Billy leaped to his feet, his fresh face eager and alight. “Say, gang!” he cried. “Why don’t we-I dunno-put on a show?”

  And what a show! Dorothy and the Wizard of J. Railsforth Farnsworth Repertory
Company, and Selected Shorts. The agent helped arrange for cooperation from the craft guilds, and the sounds of cheerful hammering and more cheerful whistling rose up from the stage carpenters building the sets. Backdrops were flown, specialty acts were auditioned and Ensign Benson took to wearing jodhpurs and an ascot. Councilman Luthguster sang the base notes, Billy gave pep talks from the tops of ladders and the captain flew squadrons of stuffed birds. The crew spent hours in the wardrobe shed, sequences from other shows were freely borrowed and even Emily chipped in, writing lyrics.

  Curtain up!

  “Somewhere over the welkin, skies are green….”

  “Of thee I sing, hyperspace!”

  “Toto, I don’t think we’re on Alpha Centauri anymore.”

  “Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho! It’s off to J. Railsforth Farnsworth Repertory Company we go!”

  “Whatever Toto wants, Toto gets.”

  “Hee, hee, hee! And I’ll get that dog, too!”

  “Toto! Toto!”

  “Dingdong, the dingbat’s dead!”

  “Ignore the man behind that curtain!”

  The finale! A scrim parted and a gasp went up from the audience as Hopeful appeared, gleaming in the Hestia light. Dorothy (Pam), the Cowardly Lion (the captain), the Scarecrow (Ensign Benson), the Tin Person (Hester), the Wizard (Councilman Luthguster) and Toto (Billy) marched, singing, toward their ship.

  Along the way, the agent shook Councilman Luthguster’s hand.

  “Hurry back,” he said. “We’ll take lunch.”

  Klonk-klonk, up the yellow-metal ladder. Snuck went the air-lock door.

  Ssssssummmmmmmmmm went the spaceship, up, up and away.

  What stage effects!” marveled the cheering throng. “What magic! What realism! What a finish!”

  What-no encore?

  HITCH YOUR SPACESHIP

  _______________________

  Breakfast on the hopeful consisted of ocher juice, parabacon, toastettes, mock omelet, papjacks, sausage, (don’t ask) and Hester’s coffee. It was called Hester’s coffee because Hester made it and Hester drank it; the others had to draw the line somewhere.

  This morning, all hands had gathered for the prelanding meal. At the head of the round table sat Captain Standforth himself, under the glassy eyes of nearly two score defunct birds mounted on the walls, the stuffing of which was his only true vocation. Descended from those Standforths, the ones who had so routinely over the past seven generations covered themselves with glory in the service of the Galactic Patrol, the captain had been compelled by both his family and destiny to enlist when his turn came, just as the patrol had been compelled by family and history to take him, inadvertently and unhappily proving that sometimes neither nature nor nurture may create character. Taxidermy? A Standforth? Regrettably, yes.

  Gathered around, scoffing down the fabrifood, were the rest of the expendable captain’s expendable crew, plus his lone expendable passenger, Councilman Morton Luthguster, as plump and pompous as a pouter pigeon crossed with a blimp. The crew consisted of second-in-command Lieutenant Billy Shelby, young and idealistic but not to awfully bright; Astrogator Pam Stokes, very bright and very beautiful but a stranger to passion; Ensign Kybee Benson, whose encyclopedic knowledge of human societies did not keep him from being personally antisocial; and stockily blunt Chief Engineer Hester (of the coffee) Hanshaw, proud mistress of the engine room.

  The captain wiped his lips on a toastette, then ate it. “Well,” he said to his murky band, “we’ll be landing soon.” His mild eyes gleamed with visions of this unknown planet and the unimaginable new birds he would soon disembowel.

  Councilman Luthguster, swirling a forkful of papjack in pseudoleo, said, “What is this place we’re coming to, Ensign Benson? What are its characteristics?”

  “No one knows for sure about this one, Councilman,” the ensign told him. “The old records simply say the colonies were a group of like-minded people whose goal was a simple life free of surprises.”

  “Well, we’ll be a surprise,” the councilman said.

  Councilman Luthguster said, “What’s the name of the place, Ensign Benson? I’ve noticed that the name the colonists give their settlements frequently offers a clue to their social structure.”

  “It’s called Figulus,” Ensign Benson said.

  “Figulus?”

  Blank looks around the table. Billy Shelby said, “Wasn’t he one of the founders of ancient Rome? Figulus and Venus.”

  “No, Billy,” said Ensign Benson.

  Jim frowned skyward. “You don’t suppose they got the coordinates wrong? Landed someplace else on Figgy?” Behind them, on the knoll where they stood, the pleasant town dreamily awaited.

  “They’re dawdling over their breakfast, like as not,” Hank replied. “In fact, there they come yonder.”

  “Publius Nigidius Figulus,” Ensign Benson said. “He was the most learned Roman of his age, a writer and a statesman, died circa forty-five BC”

  Billy looked sad. “Died at the circus? That’s awful.”

  “Terrible,” the ensign agreed. “Figulus was most noted for his books on religion and-----”

  “We’re,” Pam Stokes said, her ancestral slide rule moving like a live thing in her slender-fingered hands, a subtle alteration simultaneously taking place in the faint aura of engine hum all about them, “here.”

  Everyone jumped up to look out the view ports at Figulus, third of ten planets in orbit around the Sollike star called Ptolemy. Only Ensign Benson remained at the table, draining his vial of ocher juice. “And astrology,” he finished.

  “People of Fugulis-----”

  “Hi, Senator,” Jim said.

  Councilman Luthguster frowned across the top of his P.A.-system microphone at the two locals at the foot of the extruded stairs. He was on the platform at the top. Both were middle-aged, mild-mannered, Jim with a gray cardigan and a pipe, Hank with eyeglasses and a tweed jacket. All four elbows sported leather patches. “I am a councilman,” he informed them.

  “Ha!” said Hank. “That’s a five-buck you owe me, Jim.”

  Jim scratched his head. “I would have sworn a plenipotentiary from Earth would be at least a senator.”

  Councilman Luthguster stared. “Í haven’t told you that yet,” he told the world through the P.A.-system.

  Just inside the ship where the others waited, Ensign Benson frowned and said, “What’s going on out there?” He edged closer to the open hatch, where he could hear both sides of the conversation. ”Well, in any event,” Hank was saying, while his pal Jim sadly produced a five-buck from his wallet and handed it over, “the councilman is not the one we have to talk to here. No, we want the man in charge.”

  “You mean the captain?”

  Hank said, “No, no, he’s just some sort of hobbyist along for the ride. We want the---what will you call him? Social scientist. Anthropologist.”

  “Sociologist,” Jim suggested. “Ethnologist.”

  Ensign Benson stepped out onto the light. “Social engineer,” he said.

  “How do you do, sir,” Hank said, smiling behind his glasses, coming up the ladder with hand outstretched. “I’m Hank Carpenter, mayor of Centerville.”

  Back on the ground, Jim made a dang-it gesture with his pipe. “I knew he’d be a Scorpio! Dang it, that’s what we should have bet on.”

  Ensign Benson accepted Hanks firm but friendly handshake. “Centerville?”

  “Well, sir,” Hank said, “it happens that this is the center of the universe. May not look like much, but that’s what it is and why our forebears came here. But lets quit jawing. You and the councilman and the four inside the ship, come on to town and meet the folks.”

  Ensign Benson held tight to the stair rail. “Four inside?”

  “Well, there's your captain,” Hank said. “Tall, skinny, distracted fella. A Pisces. And his number two, a nice young boy but not too quick upstairs-probably a Moon Child. Moony, anyway.”

  “Show-off,” Jim said. He was still smarting ove
r his fiver.

  Hank went on, pretending not to notice. “Then there's your navigator---“

  “Astrogator.”

  “Same thing, just gussied up. A highly motivated young person, probably female.”

  “Not yet,” Ensign Benson muttered.

  “But definitely Virgo.”

  “That I’ll go along with.”

  “Now, your engineer,” Hank went on, “a solid Taurus, but we just can’t decide if it’s a man or a woman.

  “Nobody can,” Ensign Benson said.

  “I heard that,” Hester said, coming out onto the platform to shake a wrench at the ensign. “I’m a woman, and don't you forget it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Come on, folks,” Hank said, gesturing toward town. “You’ve had a long, hard journey; come along and relax.”

  The captain, the lieutenant and the astrogator joined the three other earthlings on the platform and they all looked off toward town. A pretty little place with peaked roofs, a traditional white steeple and a sports ground alive with running, yelling children, it nestled in a setting of low hills where neat farms mingled with elm groves, the whole area very much like bits of Devon and Kent-the parts beyond commuting distance from London. "What a nice place,” Pam said, her slide rule for one instant forgotten.

  “You’ll learn to love it,” Hank assured them, “in time.”

  “Chick, chick, Nero,” Jim said as Hank explained to the Earthers, “Our energy sources are really very slender. No oil, no coal. Hydropower and solar power give us enough electricity to run our homes and businesses, but there was no way we could keep powered transportation. Fortunately, there were several indigenous animals capable of domestication, including the like of old Nero here.”

  Nero, a gray-and-white creature that might very well pass for a horsy steed in the dusk with the light behind it was apparently quite strong; without effort it pulled this ten-seater surrey and its eight passengers along the gently up-and-down crushed-stone road toward the town. A farmer in a nearby field, plowing behind another Nero, waved; Hank and Jim and Billy and Hester waved back.