Collected Stories

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Have any birds here?” the captain asked.

  “Oh, all sorts.”

  Ensign Benson had been deeply frowning, intensely brooding, acutely staring into the middle distance, but now all at once he nodded and said, “Hyperradio.”

  Jim frowned around his pipe. “Say what?”

  “You must be in hyperradio contact with one of the colonies we already visited.”

  “Not us,” Jim said. “never heard of hyperradio.”

  “Then someone else has been here from off planet. Recently.”

  “No, sir.” Jim shook his head and Nero’s reins.

  Hank said, “You’re our first visitors in five hundred years. You’ll be starting the guestbook.”

  Ensign Benson gave him the old gimlet eye. “You knew we were coming. You knew how many of us and where we were from and our mission. Somebody had to tell you all that.”

  “Easy,” Hank said, grinning. “The stars told us.”

  The town was small but busy, with a bustling, shop-filled main street, Nero-powered surreys and wagons everywhere, and an aura of prosperity and contentment.

  “What’s that?” the captain asked as they made their way around a white-stone obelisk in its own little center-of-the-street garden.

  “The peace memorial,” Hank said. “We’ve never had anybody to have a war with, but the town plan called for a memorial there----our ancestors’ original town back on earth had one at that spot----so about a hundred years ago, they just went ahead and put up a peace memorial.”

  People waved as they went by, and a dressed-up reception committee waited out front of the grange hall. “I know you’ve all had breakfast,” Hank said, “but you could probably tuck into some real food. Come on.”

  Everybody climbed out of the surrey. Billy Shelby, a happy and innocent smile on his face, said to ensign Benson, “Golly, Kybee, isn’t this place nice?”

  “I’m not so sure,” the ensign muttered, glowering at all those happy people. “Keep your eyes open, Billy. There’s something wrong here.”

  It was a gala breakfast, laid on just for the visitors and with nearly 50 of the most prominent local citizens in attendance. The Terrans were introduced to, among many others, the principals of both high schools, three ministers, one priest, four doctors, both judges, the police chief, the editors of both newspapers…. Oh, the list went on and on. Then they all sat at long trencher tables under crepe-paper decorations of umber and sienna---Earth colors--- and happy chitchat filled the hall as the food came out.

  Real eggs. Real homemade bread with real butter. Real bacon. “Hester,” Councilman Luthguster said, “this is what coffee taste like.”

  “Not my coffee,” said Hester.

  “I know,” said the councilman.

  “How do you like the breakfast?” Hank asked.

  “Fine,” said Ensign Benson, though, in fact, it was all as ashes in his mouth. Looking up, he noticed the designs painted high on the walls, just under the ceiling, 12 on each side, six along each end. Beginning at the front left, three designs incorporated rams’ heads, three involved bulls, then…. “The zodiac,” Ensign Benson said.

  “You know it, then.” Hank Carpenter seemed pleased.

  “Astronomy. Publius Nigidius Figulus wrote on astrology.”

  “One of the great early scholars in the science.”

  Ensign Benson raised such a skeptical brow. “Science?”

  Hank offered such an indolent chuckle: “You’re from Earth, of course,” he said, “where it doesn’t operate as efficiently.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “If you were to take an ordinary chemistry-lab experiment,” Hank suggested, “and try it under water, the results wouldn’t please you. Would that disprove the science or reflect the surroundings?”

  “So what makes this place better surroundings than Earth?”

  “To begin with,” Hank said, “our being at the center of the universe means there's no distortion. Then, our year is precisely three hundred sixty days long, so we don’t have to keep eternally adjusting things. And Ptolemy’s system includes ten planets, and our planet has two moons and our sun; twelve. One heavenly body per house.”

  “Oh, but you can’t seriously----”

  “As the bumblebee said to the physicist,” Hank said, “All I know is, it works.”

  The extremely beautiful blond girl to Billy’s left said, “Hi, I’m Linda. What’s your sign?”

  “Billy.”

  “Billy? No, that’s your name. When were you born?”

  “About three-thirty in the morning,” Billy said. “Mom said everybody’s born at three-thirty in the morning. Can that be right?”

  Linda thought about that. She had beautiful violet eyes. “You were born in July,” she decided and turned to talk to the person on her other side.

  Ensign Benson ate toast, eggs, bacon, waffles; but he did not, in fact, taste a thing. He was thinking too hard. “If astrology works,” he said, “it rules out free will.”

  “Not at all,” said Hank. The heavens don’t say certainly thus and so will happen, or everybody born at the same time in the same general area would be identical. Astrology deals in probabilities. For instance, the astral alignment so strongly suggested Earth would make fresh contact with its Lost Colonies now that we pretty well discounted any other possibility, but as to the exact make-up of the crew, there were some details we couldn’t be sure of.”

  “Still,” Ensign Benson said, “you’re telling me you people can read the future.”

  “The probabilities,” Hank corrected.

  “Of course,” Pam Stokes said, an actual real piece of bacon in one hand and her ever-present slide rule in the other, “there are many ways to define the center of the universe.” She bit off a piece of crunchy bacon.

  “Oh, sure,” Jim Downey agreed. “And they all work out to be right here.”

  Pam frowned, “This doesn’t taste like bacon.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “No, its----Actually, its better.”

  Putting the slide rule down, she picked up a fork and had at the scrambled eggs.

  Pointing, Jim said, “ What is that little stick, anyway?”

  “This slide rule? It’s a sort of calculator, used before the computer came in.”

  “Like the abacus?” Jim picked it up, pushed the inner pieces back and forth, watched the little lines and numbers join and separate.

  “I guess so,” Pam said, reaching for the toast, pausing in amazement when the toast flexed. “It was my mother’s,” she explained, “and my mother’s mother’s, and my mother’s mother’s mother’s and my mo-----”

  “Very interesting,” Jim said and put it down.

  Ensign Benson, lost in thought, had stopped eating. “If you’re done, “ Hank said, “We’ll show you to your house.”

  The ensign looked at him. “My house?”

  “You and your friends. We thought you’d probably all want to live together at first until you get to know the town, make friends, find employment----”

  “Wait, wait a minute.” Ensign Benson was almost afraid to phrase the question. “How long do you expect us to stay?”

  “I’m sorry,” Hank said, “You haven’t read your chart, of course. You’ll be here forever.”

  Give Councilman Luthguster a crowd, hell make you a speech. “Earth can do much better for the people of Figulus.” He declared to the local citizens assembled at his table. “Technology, trade agreements. A chicken in every pot; a, a, a, a horse in every stable. Peace, prosperity----”

  “We’ve got all that,” said a citizen.

  “And a stable buck,” said another.

  Councilman Luthguster paused in mid-flight. “Buck? A stable buck?” Visions of deer, all with symmetrical antlers, leaped into his head.

  “That’s our unit of currency,” a citizen explained. “We have the quarter-buck, half-buck, buck, five-buck, sawbuck, all the way up to the C-buck and the grand-buck.”

>   “And its stable,” another said. “Been a long time since there was a drop in the buck.”

  “It’s entered the language idiomatically,” said a citizen who happened to be a high school principal. “Pass the buck, for instance, meaning to pay a debt.”

  “Buck the tide,” offered another.

  “That’s to throw good money after bad.”

  “Buck and wing.”

  “To buy your way out of a difficult situation.”

  The councilman stared, popeyed. “But that’s all wrong!”

  A friendly citizen patted his hand. “You’ll learn them,” she assured him. “Won’t take long-a strong-willed Leo like you.”

  “Oh no.” The councilman was firm on that. “How happy I am I’ll never have to learn such gibberish.’

  His audience just smiled.

  “If your stars tell you we’re staying here,” Ensign Benson said, “they’re crazy.”

  “Look, friend,” Hank said. “What if the billions and billions of human beings scattered across the Galaxies were to learn that right here, smack in the middle of it all, was a place where they could find out almost everything about the future? What would happen?”

  “You could do a great mail order business.”

  “They would come here,” Hank said. “In their billions. Our town would be destroyed; our way of life would simply come to an end.”

  Reluctantly, Ensign Benson nodded. “It could get difficult.”

  “And that’s why the stars say you’ll remain here and never expose us to the rest of the human race.”

  “Sorry,” the ensign said. “I understand your feelings, but we have our own job to do. We just can’t stay.”

  “But you will,” Hank said apologetically but firmly. “You see, there's an armed guard at your ship right now, and there will be for the rest of your lives.”

  Odd how easily the next month flowed by. Billy Shelby got a paper route and a job delivering for the supermarket. Pam became a substitute math teacher at one of the high schools, where the male students could never figure out what she was talking about but flocked to her class anyway. Captain Standforth, roaming the country side with his stun gun, brought back many strange and---to him--- interesting new birds to stuff. Councilman Luthguster took to hanging around down at city hall, and Hester Hanshaw became a sort of unofficial apprentice at the neighborhood smithy.

  Socially, the local belief that ‘those who sign together combine together’ made it easy to met folks of similar interests. Herds of hefty Taurians took Hester away for camping trips, Billy joined a charitable organization called Caring Cancers, a Piscean gardening-and-water-polo club enrolled Captain Standforth, Pam linked up with the Friends of the Peace Memorial (an organization devoted to maintaining the patch of flowers and lawn around said memorial) and Councilman Luthguster joined the local branch of Lions Club Intergalactical.

  Only Ensign Kybee Benson failed to make the slightest adjustment. Only he sat brooding on the porch of their nice white-clapboard house with the green shutters. Only he resisted the overtures of his sign’s organization (the Scorpio Swinging Singles Club). Only he failed to learn the local idioms, take an interest in the issues raised by the morning and evening newspapers (which gave the following day’s weather, with perfect accuracy), involve himself in the community. Only he refused to accept the reality of the local saying that meant the end of negotiation, parley, haggling. The buck stops here.

  “Buck up, Kybee,” Billy said, coming up the stoop.

  “What?” Ensign Benson, in his rocking chair on the porch, glared red-eyed at the returning delivery boy. “What is that supposed to mean in this miserable place?”

  “Gee, Kybee,” Billy said, backing away a little, “the same as it does back on Earth. It means ‘be cheerful; look at the sunny side’”.

  “What sunny side? We’re trapped here, imprisoned in this small town for the rest of our----”

  “Garr-rraaaghhh!” Ensign Benson announced, leaped to his feet and chased Billy three times around the block before his wind gave out.

  Somehow, the second month was less fun. The area round about Centerville had shown to Captain Standforth its full repertory of birds; the board of aldermen would let Councilman Luthguster neither deliver a speech to them nor (as a noncitizen) run for office against them; the high school boys, having grown used to Pam’s useless beauty and having realized none of them would ever either claim her or understand her, now flocked away from her classes; at the supermarket , Billy was passed over for promotion to assistant produce manager; and a Nero kicked Hester in the rump down at the smithy, causing her to limp.

  On the social side, things weren’t much better. Hester found her biking Taurians too bossy and quit. Caring Cancers met every week in a different members home to discuss, over milk and gingersnaps, possible recipients for its good works but so far hadn’t found any, which made Billy feel silly. The captains gardening-and-water-polo club kept postponing its meetings, necessitating constant rounds of messages and plan reshufflings. No two Friends of the Peace Memorial could agree on a flower arrangement. And Councilman Luthguster, after a hard-fought campaign in which he had taken an extremely active part, had been blackballed at the Lions Club.

  More and more, the former space rovers hung around the house, vaguely fretful. The bilious green sky, the nasty sun (color of ochre juice), the two mingy little marble moons in the eccentric orbits all pressed down on the landscape, on the town, on their own little gabled house, with its squeaking floors and doors that stuck. The local citizens had brought from the Hopeful all their personal possessions---cloths, tools, video camera and monitor, the captain’s birds, Pam’s sky charts Billy’s collection of the Adventures of Space Cadet Hooper and His Pal Fatso and Chang, Ensign Benson’s folders of Betelgeusean erotica, the bound cassettes of Councilman Luthguster’s speeches to the Galactic Council (with the boos edited out), even Hester’s coffee mug---but all these things simply reminded them of their former lives, made their present state less rather than more bearable.

  Centerville was a small town in no nation. Distractions were few and local. No movies or videos, only the Morning Bugle and the Afternoon Independent for reading matter, very little variety in clothing or food (all good, all stolid) and no real use for any of their skills or talents. In 500 years, the population had grown from the original 63 to just over 11,000, but 11,000 aren’t very many when that’s all there are.

  Even the news that both high school bands would march in next month’s Landing Day parade didn’t lift their spirits a hell of a lot. That’s how bad things were.

  Ensign Benson brooded alone in his rocking chair on the front porch, watching the world (hah!) go by, when a bit of the world in the person of mayor Hank Carpenter came up onto the stoop to say, “Hey, Kybee.” The ensign gave him a look from under lowered brows. Hank cleared his throat, a bit uncomfortable. “We’re sending an ambulance,” he said.

  “You’re what?”

  “Sorry,” Hank said, looking truly sorry, “but we’ll be taking the captain over to the hospital for a while.”

  “What for?”

  “Well, uh, he’s about to commit suicide.”

  Ensign Benson stared. He knew these people now; they didn’t lie and weren’t wrong. But the captain? He said, “I thought I’d be the first to snap.”

  “Oh, no,” Hank assured him. “In fact, you’ll, uh, be the last.”

  “That’s it,” Ensign Benson said. Rising, he pointed stern finger at Hank. “Keep your ambulance. We’ll take care of our own.”

  “Well, if you’re sure you----”

  But the ensign had gone into the house and slammed the door.

  He found the captain upstairs in his room, fooling with a rope. “Come downstairs,” he said. “Now.”

  In the kitchen Billy and Hester were making coffee-separately, in different pots. The ensign and the captain entered and the ensign said, “Watch him. If he starts drinking anything funny, stop him.”


  Billy said, “You mean, like Hester’s coffee?” But the ensign was gone.

  Soon he was back, with Pam and the councilman. “Its time,” he told them all,

  “To quit fooling around and get out of here.”

  “But, Kybee,” Billy said, “we can’t. These people know the future, and they say we’ll never leave.”

  “Probabilities,” The ensign corrected him. “The future is not fixed, remember? There's still free will. The probabilities are caused by our narrowing free will. Things will probably happen in this way or that way because we are who we are, not because the stars force us into anything.”

  Hester said, “I don’t see how that helps.”

  “We have to break out of the probabilities. Somehow or other-I don’t see it clearly yet, but somehow or other-if we do what we wouldn’t do, well get out of here.

  Pam said, “But what wouldn’t we do?” The ensign gave her a jaundiced look. “I know what you wouldn’t do,” he said. “But I would do it, so that’s that. No, we need something that’s so far from the probabilities that , that….”

  The others watched him. Ensign Benson seemed to be reaching down far inside himself, willing a solution where there was none. “Take it easy, Kybee,” Billy said.

  Hester said “Do you want some coffee? Billy’s coffee.”

  Slowly, the ensign exhaled; it had been some time since he’d breathed. “I know what were going to do,” he said.

  “No!” said the captain. “I won’t!”

  “That’s the point,” Ensign Benson said.

  Hester said, “There’s no way your going to get me to do a thing like that.”