Citizen in Space

by Robert Sheckley

  He just stared. And, in another moment, he vanished.

  When he opened his eyes, Collins found himself standing in front of a desk. On the other side was the large, red-faced man who had originally tried to break into his room. The man didn’t appear angry. Rather, he appeared resigned, even melancholy.

  Collins stood for a moment in silence, sorry that the whole thing was over. The owner and the A’s had finally caught him. But it had been glorious while it lasted.

  “Well,” Collins said directly, “you’ve got your machine back. Now, what else do you want?”

  “My machine?” the red-faced man said, looking up incredulously. “It’s not my machine, sir. Not at all.”

  Collins stared at him. “Don’t try to kid me, mister. You A-ratings want to protect your monopoly, don’t you?”

  The red-faced man put down his paper. “Mr. Collins,” he said stiffly, “my name is Flign. I am an agent for the Citizens Protective Union, a nonprofit organization, whose aim is to protect individuals such as yourself from errors of judgment.”

  “You mean you’re not one of the A’s?”

  “You are laboring under a misapprehension, sir,” Flign said with quiet dignity. “The A-rating does not represent a social group, as you seem to believe. It is merely a credit rating.”

  “A what?” Collins asked slowly.

  “A credit rating.” Flign glanced at his watch. “We haven’t much time, so I’ll make this as brief as possible. Ours is a decentralized age, Mr. Collins. Our businesses, industries and services are scattered through an appreciable portion of space and time. The utilization corporation is an essential link. It provides for the transfer of goods and services from point to point. Do you understand?”

  Collins nodded.

  “Credit is, of course, an automatic privilege. But, eventually, everything must be paid for.”

  Collins didn’t like the sound of that. Pay? This place wasn’t as civilized as he had thought No one had mentioned paying. Why did they bring it up now?

  “Why didn’t someone stop me?” he asked desperately. “They must have known I didn’t have a proper rating.”

  Flign shook his head. “The credit ratings are suggestions, not laws. In a civilized world, an individual has the right to his own decisions. I’m very sorry, sir.” He glanced at his watch again and handed Collins the paper he had been reading. “Would you just glance at this bill and tell me whether it’s in order?”

  Collins took the paper and read:

  One Palace, with Accessories - Cr. 450,000,000

  Services of Maxima Olph Movers - 111,000

  122 Dancing Girls - 122,000,000

  Perfect Health - 888,234,031

  He scanned the rest of the list quickly. The total came to slightly better than eighteen billion Credits.

  “Wait a minute!” Collins shouted. “I can’t be held to this! The Utilizer just dropped into my room by accident!”

  “That’s the very fact I’m going to bring to their attention,” Flign said. “Who knows? Perhaps they will be reasonable. It does no harm to try.”

  Collins felt the room sway. Flign’s face began to melt before him.

  “Time’s up,” Flign said. “Good luck.”

  Collins closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again, he was standing on a bleak plain, facing a range of stubby mountains. A cold wind lashed his face and the sky was the color of steel.

  A raggedly dressed man was standing beside him. “Here,” the man said and handed Collins a pick.

  “What’s this?”

  “This is a pick,” the man said patiently. “And over there is a quarry, where you and I and a number of others will cut marble.”

  “Marble?”

  “Sure. There’s always some idiot who wants a palace,” the man said with a wry grin. “You can call me Jang. We’ll be together for some time.”

  Collins blinked stupidly. “How long?”

  “You work it out,” Jang said. “The rate is fifty credits a month until your debt is paid off.”

  The pick dropped from Collins’ hand. They couldn’t do this to him! The Utilization Corporation must realize its mistake by now! They had been at fault, letting the machine slip into the past. Didn’t they realize that?

  “It’s all a mistake!” Collins said.

  “No mistake,” Jang said. “They’re very short of labor. Have to go recruiting all over for it Come on. After the first thousand years you won’t mind it.”

  Collins started to follow Jang toward the quarry. He stopped.

  “The first thousand years? I won’t live that long!”

  “Sure you will,” Jang assured him. “You got immortality, didn’t you?”

  Yes, he had. He had wished for it, just before they took back the machine. Or had they taken back the machine after he wished for it?

  Collins remembered something. Strange, but he didn’t remember seeing immortality on the bill Flign had showed him.

  “How much did they charge me for immortality?” he asked.

  Jang looked at him and laughed. “Don’t be naive, pal. You should have figured it out by now.”

  He led Collins toward the quarry. “Naturally, they give that away for nothing.”

  A Ticket to Tranai

  One fine day in June, a tall, thin, intent, soberly dressed young man walked into the offices of the Transstellar Travel Agency. Without a glance, he marched past the gaudy travel poster depicting the Harvest Feast on Mars. The enormous photomural of dancing forests on Triganium didn’t catch his eye. He ignored the somewhat suggestive painting of dawn-rites on Opiuchus II, and arrived at the desk of the booking agent

  “I would like to book passage to Tranai,” the young man said.

  The agent closed his copy of Necessary Inventions and frowned. “Tranai? Tranai? Is that one of the moons of Kent IV?”

  “It is not,” the young man said. “Tranai is a planet, revolving around a sun of the same name. I want to book passage there.”

  “Never heard of it.” The agent pulled down a star catalog, a simplified star chart, and a copy of Lesser Space Routes.

  “Well now,” he said finally. “You learn something new every day. You want to book passage to Tranai, Mister—”

  “Goodman. Marvin Goodman.”

  “Goodman. Well, it seems that Tranai is about as far from Earth as one can get and still be in the Milky Way. Nobody goes there.”

  “I know. Can you arrange passage for me?” Goodman asked, with a hint of suppressed excitement in his voice.

  The agent shook his head. “Not a chance. Even the non-skeds don’t go that far.”

  “How close can you get me?”

  The agent gave him a winning smile. “Why bother? I can send you to a world that’ll have everything this Tranai place has, with the additional advantages of proximity, bargain rates, decent hotels, tours—”

  “I’m going to Tranai,” Goodman said grimly.

  “But there’s no way of getting there,” the agent explained patiently. “What is it you expected to find? Perhaps I could help.”

  “You can help by booking me as far as—”

  “Is it adventure?” the agent asked, quickly sizing up Goodman’s unathletic build and scholarly stoop. “Let me suggest Africanus II, a dawn-age world filled with savage tribes, sabertooths, man-eating ferns, quicksand, active volcanoes, pterodactyls and all the rest. Expeditions leave New York every five days and they combine the utmost in danger with absolute safety. A dinosaur head guaranteed or your money refunded.”

  “Tranai,” Goodman said.

  “Hmm.” The clerk looked appraisingly at Goodman’s set lips and uncompromising eyes. “Perhaps you are tired of the puritanical restrictions of Earth? Then let me suggest a trip to Almagordo III, the Pearl of the Southern Ridge Belt. Our ten day all-expense plan includes a trip through the mysterious Almagordian Casbah, visits to eight nightclubs (first drink on us), a trip to a zintal factory, where you can buy genuine zintal b
elts, shoes and pocketbooks at phenomenal savings, and a tour through two distilleries. The girls of Almagordo are beautiful, vivacious and refreshingly naive. They consider the Tourist the highest and most desirable type of human being. Also—”

  “Tranai,” Goodman said. “How close can you get me?”

  Sullenly the clerk extracted a strip of tickets. “You can take the Constellation Queen as far as Legis II and transfer to the Galactic Splendor; which will take you to Oume. Then you’ll have to board a local, which, after stopping at Machang, Inchang, Pankang, Lekung and Oyster, will leave you at Tung-Bradar IV, if it doesn’t break down en route. Then a non-sked will transport you past the Galactic Whirl (if it gets past) to Aloomsridgia, from which the mail ship will take you to Bellismoranti. I believe the mail ship is still functioning. That brings you about halfway. After that, you’re on your own.”

  “Fine,” Goodman said. “Can you have my forms made out by this afternoon?”

  The clerk nodded. “Mr. Goodman,” he asked in despair, “just what sort of place is this Tranai supposed to be?”

  Goodman smiled a beatific smile. “A utopia,” he said.

  Marvin Goodman had lived most of his life in Seakirk, New Jersey, a town controlled by one political boss or another for close to fifty years. Most of Seakirk’s inhabitants were indifferent to the spectacle of corruption in high places and low, the gambling, the gang wars, the teenage drinking. They were used to the sight of their roads crumbling, their ancient water mains bursting, their power plants breaking down, their decrepit old buildings falling apart, while the bosses built bigger homes, longer swimming pools and warmer stables. People were used to it But not Goodman.

  A natural-bom crusader, he wrote exposé articles that were never published, sent letters to Congress that were never read, stumped for honest candidates who were never elected, and organized the League for Civic Improvement, the People Against Gangsterism, the Citizen’s Union for an Honest Police Force, the Association Against Gambling, the Committee for Equal Job Opportunities for Women, and a dozen others.

  Nothing came of his efforts. The people were too apathetic to care. The politicos simply laughed at him, and Goodman couldn’t stand being laughed at. Then, to add to his troubles, his fiancée jilted him for a noisy young man in a loud sports jacket who had no redeeming feature other than a controlling interest in the Seakirk Construction Corporation.

  It was a shattering blow. The girl seemed unaffected by the fact that the SCC used disproportionate amounts of sand in their concrete and shaved whole inches from the width of their steel girders. As she put it, “Gee whiz, Marvie, so what? That’s how things are. You gotta be realistic.”

  Goodman had no intention of being realistic. He immediately repaired to Eddie’s Moonlight Bar, where, between drinks, he began to contemplate the attractions of a grass shack in the green hell of Venus.

  An erect, hawk-faced old man entered the bar. Goodman could tell he was a spacer by his gravity-bound gait, his pallor, his radiation scars and his far-piercing gray eyes.

  “A Tranai Special, Sam,” the old spacer told the bartender.

  “Coming right up, Captain Savage, sir,” the bartender said.

  “Tranai?” Goodman murmured involuntarily.

  “Tranai,” the captain said. “Never heard of it, did you, sonny?”

  “No, sir,” Goodman confessed.

  “Well, sonny,” Captain Savage said, “I’m feeling a mite wordy tonight, so I’ll tell you a tale of Tranai the Blessed, out past the Galactic Whirl.”

  The captain’s eyes grew misty and a smile softened the grim line of his lips.

  “We were iron men in steel ships in those days. Me and Johnny Cavanaugh and Frog Larsen would have blasted to hell itself for half a load of teiganium. Aye, and shanghaied Beelzebub for a wiper if we were short of men. Those were the days when space scurvy took every third man, and the ghost of Big Dan McClintock haunted the spaceways. Moll Gann still operated the Red Rooster Inn out on Asteroid M2-AA, asking five hundred Earth dollars for a glass of beer, and getting it too, there being no other place within ten billion miles. In those days, the Scarbies were still cutting up along Star Ridge and ships bound for Prodengum had to run the Swayback Gandet. So you can imagine how I felt, sonny, when one fine day I came upon Tranai.”

  Goodman listened as the old captain limned a picture of the great days, of frail ships against an iron sky, ships outward bound, forever outward, to the far limits of the Galaxy.

  And there, at the edge of the Great Nothing, was Tranai.

  Tranai, where The Way had been found and men were no longer bound to the Wheel! Tranai the Bountiful, a peaceful, creative, happy society, not saints or ascetics, not intellectuals, but ordinary people who had achieved Utopia.

  For an hour, Captain Savage spoke of the multiform marvels of Tranai. After finishing his story, he complained of a dry throat. Space throat, he called it, and Goodman ordered him another Tranai Special and one for himself. Sipping the exotic, green-gray mixture, Goodman too was lost in the dream.

  Finally, very gendy, he asked, “Why don’t you go back, Captain?”

  The old man shook his head. “Space gout. I’m grounded for good. We didn’t know much about modern medicine in those days. All I’m good for now is a landsman’s job.”

  “What job do you have?”

  “I’m a foreman for the Seakirk Construction Corporation,” the old man sighed “Me, that once commanded a fifty-tube clipper. The way those people make concrete…Shall we have another short one in honor of beautiful Tranai?”

  They had several short ones. When Goodman left the bar, his mind was made up. Somewhere in the Universe, the modus vivendi had been found, the working solution to Man’s old dream of perfection.

  He could settle for nothing less.

  The next day he quit his job as designer at the East Coast Robot Works and drew his life savings out of the bank.

  He was going to Tranai.

  He boarded the Constellation Queen for Legis II and took the Galactic Splendor to Oume. After stopping at Machang, Inchang, Pankang, Lekung, and Oyster—dreary little places—he reached Tung-Bradar IV. Without incident, he passed the Galactic Whirl and finally reached Bellismoranti, where the influence of Terra ended.

  For an exorbitant fee, a local spaceline took him to Dvasta II. From there, a freighter transported him past Seves, Olgo and Mi, to the double planet Mvanti. There he was bogged down for three months and used the time to take a hypnopedic course in the Tranaian language. At last he hired a bush pilot to take him to Ding.

  On Ding, he was arrested as a Higastomeritreian spy, but managed to escape in the cargo of an ore rocket bound for g’Moree. At g’Moree, he was treated for frostbite, heat poisoning and superficial radiation burns, and at last arranged passage to Tranai.

  He could hardly believe it when the ship slipped past the moons Doe and Ri, to land at Port Tranai.

  After the airlocks opened, Goodman found himself in a state of profound depression. Part of it was plain letdown, inevitable after a journey such as his. But more than that, he was suddenly terrified that Tranai might turn out to be a fraud.

  He had crossed the Galaxy on the basis of an old spaceman’s yam. But now it all seemed less likely. Eldorado was a more probable place than the Tranai he expected to find.

  He disembarked. Port Tranai seemed a pleasant enough town. The streets were filled with people and the shops were piled high with goods. The men he passed looked much like humans anywhere. The women were quite attractive.

  But there was something strange here, something subtly yet definitely wrong, something alien. It took a moment before he could puzzle it out.

  Then he realized that there were at least ten men for every woman in sight And stranger still, practically all the women he saw apparently were under eighteen or over thirty-five.

  What had happened to the nineteen-to-thirty-five age group? Was there a taboo on their appearing in public? Had a plague struck them?


  He would just have to wait and find out.

  He went to the Idrig Building, where all Tranai’s governmental functions were carried out, and presented himself at the office of the Extraterrestrials Minister. He was admitted at once.

  The office was small and cluttered, with strange blue blotches on the wallpaper. What struck Goodman at once was a high-powered rifle complete with silencer and telescopic sight, hanging ominously from one wall. He had no time to speculate on this, for the minister bounded out of his chair and vigorously shook Goodman’s hand.

  The minister was a stout, jolly man of about fifty. Around his neck he wore a small medallion stamped with the Tranaian seal—a bolt of lightning splitting an ear of corn. Goodman assumed, correcdy, that this was an official seal of office.

  “Welcome to Tranai,” the minister said heartily. He pushed a pile of papers from a chair and motioned Goodman to sit down.

  “Mister Minister—” Goodman began, in formal Tranaian.

  “Den Melith is the name. Call me Den. We’re all quite informal around here. Put your feet up on the desk and make yourself at home. Cigar?”

  “No, thank you,” Goodman said, somewhat taken back. “Mister—ah—Den, I have come from Terra, a planet you may have heard of.”

  “Sure I have,” said Melith. “Nervous, hustling sort of place, isn’t it? No offense intended, of course.”

  “Of course. That’s exactly how I feel about it. The reason I came here—” Goodman hesitated, hoping he wouldn’t sound too ridiculous. “Well, I heard certain stories about Tranai. Thinking them over now, they seem preposterous. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you—”

  “Ask anything,” Melith said expansively. “You’ll get a straight answer.”

  “Thank you. I heard that there has been no war of any sort on Tranai for four hundred years.”

  “Six hundred,” Melith corrected. “And none in sight.”

  “Someone told me that there is no crime on Tranai.”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “And therefore no police force or courts, no judges, sheriffs, marshals, executioners, truant officers or government investigators. No prisons, reformatories or other places of detention.”