Collected Stories

by Donald E. Westlake

  Doubtful, he said, “You don’t want to operate it yourself?”

  “I don’t want to be anywhere near it,” Hester told him. “Not for a while. Go ahead, take a look.”

  They were nearly ready. They slithered and groped toward the surface, moving unfamiliar parts, tiny clods of dirt dropping down past their shuuz. Shooz. Shoez. Shoes.

  A terrible picture, with green horizontal lines of interference and a pink glow around every object. A raspy, furry buzz obscured the sound track. Ensign Benson leaned forward, squinted and listened.

  “I am Hafter Kass,” said the frowning, bulky, steep-shouldered, despairing man seated at the black plastic table, elbows and forearms on the table before him, fingers nervously twining. Behind him was a blank wall with a closed door in it. “I am the real Hafter Kass,” the man said, leaning forward, staring intensely at the camera. Then rage broke through. “Do you hear me? The real Hafter Kass! Goddam it, the real one!”

  “I believe you,” Ensign Benson murmured. “Honest, I do.”

  As though reassured, Hafter Kass subsided into his chair. He was about 40, wearing a rough plaid old-fashioned tunic. He lifted a shaking hand to rub his mouth, then said, “Whoever you are, if anybody ever sees this, get off Matrix. Get off now! Before---“

  He stopped and looked quickly over his shoulder, then back at the camera. “Have to get hold of myself,” he said.

  “Good idea,” agreed Ensign Benson.

  “We arrived three years ago,” Kass went on, “and almost immediately lost contact with the mother ship. That’s the worst of it, knowing there won’t be any help, ever. Not ever. Stuck here, doomed here---“

  Again, Kass visibly brought himself under control. “They didn’t come out right away,” he said. “The---the things. But then they-- No, wait, I’m not making any sense.”

  “True,” Ensign Benson said.

  “About two weeks after we landed,” Kass said, voice trembling, “they appeared. Creatures that looked exactly like us. Like specific ones of us.” He gestured toward the door behind him. Out there, hundreds of Hafter Kasses. Hundreds of Magla Damerons. Hundreds of---” He ran both hands through thinning hair. “Their clothing is exactly like ours, they look exactly like us, they have some kind of low-level telepathy, so they have our memories, our gestures, our expressions. Stee Venking, our zoographer – well, amateur zoographer – anyway, he says these creatures developed this as a defense against predators. Become the predator and it can’t eat you without being a cannibal.”

  Kass gestured helplessly, looking around, then back at the cameras. “At first, we didn’t realize the horror of it. But then we found out what it means. You never know if you’re talking to a human being like yourself or one of them. You’re alone. Every one of us is alone, surrounded by thousands of . . . whatever they are.” He shook his head. “Well, we know what they are. If you kill one, it reverts to its real shape, a kind of fat eight-foot-long worm.”

  “Ugh,” said Ensign Benson.

  “There will never be a child born in this colony,” Kass went on. “How could any of us, any of us human beings, go to bed with-- Never knowing if-- That’s a part of the creatures’ defense mechanism, too. They make the predators die out, cease to reproduce.”

  A chill ran through Ensign Benson at that; a life without even the possibility of sex? Couldn’t you just go along with what you saw, if what you saw was built the way, uh . . .

  But then he frowned, thinking it through. What you saw might be shaped any way at all, but if you knew the odds were hundreds to one that the person in bed with you was really an eight-foot-long worm, even the horniest human being would begin to lose enthusiasm. Bad news.

  Hafter Kass was going on, saying, “Is it any wonder most of us chose suicide?”

  “No,” Ensign Benson told him. An odd, uncomfortable feeling had crept over him, a warmth he rarely experienced. Could it be sympathy? He watched the long-gone Hafter Kass with suspiciously moist eyes.

  “That’s the only way, finally, we can tell us from them,” Kass went on. “When they die, they revert to their real shape. At first, we tried shooting them – each of us shooting his own imitations, because those were the only ones anybody could be sure of – but there’s just too many of them, an entire species. They never fight back, never try to shoot us, but it doesn’t matter. Violence isn’t part of their nature, because it doesn’t matter. They’ve found the ultimate defensive weapon.”

  Again, Kass rubbed a shaking hand across his mouth. “One of the worst things,” he said, “is that after one of us dies, they still go on with the imitation. Your husband, your wife . . . You know they’re dead, but there they are, walking around. And again. And again. Hundreds of them. Smiling at you, calling you by the pet name that only the two of you knew.”

  The door behind Kass opened, and a cluster of people, a dozen or more, came in, looking concerned, saying, “There you are, Hafter,” or “Why are you hiding in here. Hafter?”

  Kass didn’t even turn as the people gathered around him. His expression bleak, he faced the camera. Beneath the friendly cries of the newcomers – two of them, Ensign Benson realized with a sudden shiver, identical Hafter Kasses – beneath their voices but clear and passionate, Kass said to the camera, “Get away from here. This is hell. This is the worst you can imagine. I may even be the last human alive here, there’s no way to know. I’m surrounded by people, and I’ve been in solitary confinement for three years.”

  “Oh, Hafter,” one of the others cried, happy and careless, “you’re taping! Can I tape, too? Shall I sing?”

  “No,” Hafter said. Rising, he moved the table, shoving the others out of his way as though they were dummies on rollers – none objected – and darkness descended as he approached the camera. There was a click, and the recording ended.

  “Oh, boy,” Ensign Benson said. “Not good.” Decisively, he got to his feet, left Hester’s workroom, hurried through the ship to the exit and went down the ramp, looking around for the rest of the crew.

  The nearest was Pam, walking diagonally away toward the ruined colony. “Pam!” Ensign Benson called, and when she turned, he waved to her to stop, to wait for him. “We’ve got to get into the ship!” he cried, trotting up to her.

  She frowned as he approached. “Kybee? What’s wrong?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Just get into the ship; I’ll go after the others.” And he hurried past her toward the ruins. But when he looked back after a few half-running paces, she was still standing there, frowning at him. “For God’s sake, Pam!” he yelled. “Get going!”

  “Kybee?” Pam said. “What’s wrong? “ But her voice came from behind him.

  When Pam saw the strange woman beyond Kybee, she couldn’t understand who it might be. A survivor from the colony, for 500 years? One of the three without graves? But that was impossible. This attractive-looking woman was young, was certainly no more---

  Was herself.

  Dread touched Pam. All at once, she was not an astrogator, not a scientist, not a rational, civilized person, but a primitive creature feeling a sudden surge of the most basic fear. She stared, not understanding, and the woman stared back at her with an expression of horror. “Kybee!” they cried together. “What’s happening?”

  He stared from one to the other. “Which--- Which---“

  “Kybee, it’s me! It’s Pam!” But it was the other one who said that.

  Pam hurried toward Kybee, crying, “Don’t listen to her! She’s---She’s-- I don’t know what she is!”

  “The ship,” Kybee muttered, dazed. “Save the ship.”

  “Yes,” Pam said, reaching for his arm, her terror deepening when he pulled away. “We’ll go into the ship,” she said. “We’ll figure out---“

  But he was backing away, staring from her to the impostor, his eyes terrified. “How do I--- How can I-- You don’t get inside the ship!” And he turned and ran.

  The Billys and the Hesters and the Ensign Bensons were building
sheds and lean-tos. The Councilman Luthgusters were sorting through the food supplies Kybee had pushed out of the ship the day before so that the real crew members wouldn’t starve to death. The Pams were cooking on the makeshift stoves the Hesters had constructed. Most of the Captain Standforths had quit banging on the Hopeful’s door and yelling on the monitor cameras and had wandered off across the landscape, presumably in search of birds suitable for taxidermy.

  In a horrible way, it was fascinating to see how the creatures worked it. The fear and disbelief and repugnance that were the natural reaction of the real crew members were perfectly mirrored in all the imitations. Then, as time went by without any change in the situation, with no further events, no escalation of threat, as horror became dulled, that, too, was echoed, the real and the fakes all calming together, getting used to this madness together.

  If he were out there with the rest of them, would he behave any differently from the headshaking wide-eyed Ensign Bensons he watched on the viewscreens? No, he would not.

  It was two days since Kybee had run back into the ship and sealed the entrance behind him, and he had not yet slept. What was he going to do? What were any of them going to do? They were doomed here, just like the original colonists. He couldn’t fly the ship alone, and even if he could, what about the others? He couldn’t just abandon them here, in this hell on Earth. Or hell on Matrix. “In this case,” Kybee muttered to himself, watching the mobs on the viewscreens, “hell really is other people.”

  It was strange how circumstances changed attitudes. Kybee had always felt impatient loathing toward his shipmates, knowing himself to be the only truly sharp – and sharp-edged – person on the ship. He had thought it miserably unfair that he should be assigned to this team of losers on this mission into oblivion; what did he have in common with them?

  It was only now, in this extremity, that he found himself drawing parallels, that he saw his own social prickliness as much of a liability as Hester’s bluntness or Pam’s unworldliness or the councilman’s pomposity. Damn it, somehow, damn it, in the course of their voyage, damn it, they had become a team, damn it, a unit, while his back was turned, damn it, some kind of stupid tribe. His shipmates were in trouble out there, damn it, and he was the only one in the universe who could help.

  Except, of course, that he couldn’t. What was there to do? Forty colonists had spent four years trying to solve this problem, without success. How could he hope to do anything but keep the interior of the ship free of impostors by banning everything?

  There’s something comforting about despair. When Kybee realized that there truly was no way out, that they were all stuck on Matrix for the rest of their lives, himself inside the ship and the rest of the crew outside amid the crowds of ersatz, A kind of peace descended on him. There’s nothing to be done; doom is at hand; no point struggling. Yawning, easy at last in his mind, warmed by the hopelessness of their situation, Kybee left the view screens and went to bed.

  It was dark.

  He was suddenly wide awake. Sitting up, he spoke into the black room. “It isn’t the same. The colonists had to live here, somehow, live with those creatures forever. All I have to do is find the right five people and get them on the ship. That’s all.”

  It was light. Kybee drank nearcoffee and brooded at the viewscreens. More of them were out there today. A couple of thousand by now. Food would become a problem soon. And as for finding the right Pam, the right Billy . . .

  No. It was still impossible.

  Nevertheless, the comfort of despair had been wrested from him. He had no choice. The task might be impossible, but he was going to have to try it, anyway. “The tape,” he told himself. “I’ll watch it again. I’ll watch it a hundred times if I have to. Maybe there’s a clue in it, maybe there’s something. . .”

  He sighed and finished his nearcoffee and went off to watch again the final testament of Hafter Kass.

  Kybee was slapping Hesters. His hand had begun to sting as he left reddened cheek after reddened cheek in his wake, but he persisted. “Kybee!” the Hesters cried, blinking, putting their hands up to their slapped faces. “What are you doing?” they cried, or, “What was that for?” or, “What’s the big idea?”

  He didn’t answer, not a one of the stinking worms. He’d left the ship, sealing the entrance behind him, carrying the only electronic key that would work with the combination he’d just created, and now he was moving among the crowd, slapping and slapping.

  What a mob there was, more than ever, and how they liked to mill around. Kybee shoved Billys and Ensign Bensons out of his way, seeking out the Hesters, slapping them, slapping them, and at last, one of the Hesters yelled, “What the hell was that for?” and slugged him back.

  Seated at the viewscreens, Hester watched Kybee rove through the crowd, tweaking councilmen’s noses. “The bastard’s enjoying himself,” she told the air, watching Luthguster after Luthguster recoil, fat hands flailing the air, piggy eyes filling with tears, noses reddening.

  Her own cheek still stung from that hefty wallop the bastard had given her. Having now watched that poor doomed fellow, Hafter Kass, on the tape, and having had Kybee point out to her that Kass described the worms as nonviolent, she could understand that violence was the only way to find the real wolf when surrounded by sheep in wolf’s clothing, but that still didn’t excuse him for hitting so hard. It’s because he was enjoying it, that’s all.

  Still, being rescued from the legion of look-alikes was worth it, no matter what the cost. It had been really frightening down there for a while, not knowing who anybody was, surrounded by piss-poor imitations of herself – why couldn’t Kybee simply have noticed that the fake Hesters were dumpier and uglier than the original? – and never knowing if the ship would up and leave, abandoning her to an entire population of Captain Standforths and Councilman Luthgusters and second-rate Hesters for the rest of her life.

  (The true long-range horror hadn’t occurred to her while she was out there and probably hadn’t yet occurred to the rest of the Earthlings still trapped out there, but now that she’d seen Hafter Kass’s description of life on Matrix, she knew just how horrible it would have been and how lucky she was not to be nonviolent.)

  Outside, Kybee moved off the edge of one viewscreen’s range and was picked up by another, tweaking Luthgusters left and right. All reacted in the same roly-poly fashion, pained and astonished, waving arms and legs, and Kybee kept moving. And then one Luthguster, after Kybee turned his back, yanked off a shoe, ran up behind him and whammed him over the head with the heel.

  “Now,” said Hester, smiling, “why didn’t I think of that?”

  Out there, Luthguster kept swinging the shoe, shouting in rage, letting out all the mad emotions created by their mad situation, while the surrounding throng backed away, like cattle slightly disturbed at their feeding. Kybee went down under the rain of blows, huddling to the ground, and the councilman started kicking the fallen social engineer with his shod foot. Kybee rolled away, tumbling a nearby Billy and a Hester like ninepins, and Councilman Luthguster pursued him, hopping on one foot, that massive belly, like Falstaff’s flacon of sack, blooping over the ground. Kybee managed to scramble to his feet and come running toward the ship, Luthguster and his furious paunch bounding along in his wake.

  “There you go, Kybee,” Hester said, nodding. “That’s the way to bring him home.”

  The ship’s entryway controls were at her fingertips. Across the viewscreens came Kybee at a dead run, bowling a path through the shoals of Pams and pseudo ensigns, the councilman following, bobbing like an escaped grapefruit. Up the ramp came Kybee, heelmarks on his forehead and cheeks, eyes wild, voice echoing from the intercom, “Hester! Open up! Open up!”

  Her fingers hovered on the controls. Luthguster came panting up the ramp, looking now more like a lobster than a grapefruit, and gave Kybee just one more whop. Then Hester opened up.

  It was breasts he tweaked on Pam. In the first place, he simply couldn’t bring himself
to behave harshly toward that beautiful face or harm that beautiful nose. And in the second place, when would he ever again get the opportunity to cop a feel in a noble cause?

  “Kybee! Stop that!” Pam after Pam threw up protective arms, and when he reached for the second breast, back-pedaled in horror and shame. Exactly like Pam, of course, but not good enough. On he went.

  If this doesn’t work, he told himself, clutching breast after breast, I’ll just have to escalate. The thought was not untinged with a kind of anticipation.

  “Kybee! Stop that! What’s got into you?”

  “It’s what’s getting into you, baby,” Kybee leered, and lunged for the other breast, and this Pam slapped feebly at his lupine fingers.

  Slapped? Was that meaningful? To be certain, Kybee aimed for target number three.

  “I’m sorry I gave you a bloody nose, Kybee,” Pam said.

  “Dad’s all wry,” Kybee told her, tilting his head back, holding many blobs of absorbent cottonique to his nose while Hester held an ice pack to the back of his neck. Councilman Luthguster stood off to one side, looking, Kybee knew, pleased with this turn of events.

  “Now that I know there was nothing personal in it,” Pam went on, “I’m not upset anymore.”

  Kybee rolled his eyes. Some problems remain insoluble, no matter what.

  “I think it’s stopped bleeding,” Hester said, stepping back, giving him a critical look.

  Kybee lowered the bloody rags from his nose, straightened, breathed experimentally and said, “OK. Back into the fray.”

  “Gee whiz!” said all the Billys.

  “Kybee? Did I have a fly on my nose?” asked all the captains.

  “The problem is.” Kybee said, back in the ship, in serious conclave with Hester, Pam and the councilman on the control deck, “the real Billy and the real captain are also nonviolent.”