by Ray Bradbury
‘While you have the contact through to Earth—’ said Helen.
‘What? Sam – What?’ He turned to glare at Helen.
‘While you’ve the contact through,’ said Helen, holding his elbow urgently, ‘let me call my beauty operator, I want an appointment for Monday. My hair’s a mess.’
‘I’m trying to talk to Sam Norman,’ John objected. To Sam he said: ‘What did you say?’ To Helen: ‘Go away.’
‘But I want to talk—’
‘You can when I’m finished!’ He talked with Sam for five minutes, very loud, and then hung up.
‘Oh.’ Helen gasped.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, tiredly. ‘Call Earth back yourself and get your fool hairdresser.’ He lighted another cigarette while she dialed and called into the speaker.
He looked at Alice who was emptying her fourth cocktail glass. ‘Alice, you know, Lisabeth’s not really insane.’
Helen, who was calling Earth, said ‘Shh!’ then turned to her brother blankly. ‘Not insane?’ To the space phone: ‘Hold on a minute, there.’ To her brother: ‘What do you mean, not insane?’
‘It’s relative. She is insane to us. She wants to be Catherine of Russia. That’s illogical, to us. To her it is logical in the extreme. We are now taking her to a planet where it will be logic itself.’
He got up, walked to the door and looked in at the lovely pale recumbent Catherine the Great. He put his hand to the bars, the cigarette tremoring out nervous smoke. He spoke quietly:
‘Some times, I envy her. I’ll envy her even more every hour. She’ll stay and be happy. And we? We’ll go back, back to New York, back to big roulettes and big dice.’ He looked at Helen. ‘Back to hairdressers and men.’ He looked at Alice, ‘Back to cocktails and straight gin.’
‘I don’t like insults,’ cried Alice.
‘I wasn’t insulting anybody,’ he replied.
‘Just a moment!’ said Helen. ‘New York?’
John sat wearily down. ‘Anyway, it’s all relative. These asteroids are amazing places; all kinds of cultures. You know that.’
Lisabeth leaned against the cell door which swayed ever so quietly outward. It was unlocked. Her gaze dropped to the catch and her eyes widened. Escape. These talking fools, who didn’t understand, were trying to kill her. She might run out of the cell quickly, across the room and into the other little room, where there were all kinds of weird mechanisms. If she managed to reach that room, she could smash and tangle wires and boxes with her hands!
‘I don’t even know what insanity is,’ said Alice, far away.
‘It’s a rebellion. Against the mores or ethical setup in a society. That’s what it is,’ said the man.
Lisabeth opened the door slowly, gathering herself.
Helen was still on the phone, her back turned.
Lisabeth ran, laughing. The three people looked up and cried out as she darted by them. She was across the room and into the automatic pilot room in an instant, lightly. There was a hammer and she snatched it up, shouting against all of them, and crashed it down upon the wires and the mechanisms. There were explosions, dancing lights, the shuddering of the ship in space, a revolving, a flying free. The man rushed into the room as she hammered and rehammered the controls into dented masses of fusing metal!
‘Lisabeth!’ a woman screamed.
‘Lisabeth!’ The man struck at her, missed, then struck again. The hammer flew from her fingers. She collapsed into dizziness. In the darkness, in the pain, she felt him groping with the controls, trying to make amends.
He was babbling hysterically.
‘Ah! The control!’
Alice and Helen were swaying against the wildly rocking walls of the ship. Gravity suddenly went insane and shot them against the ceiling.
‘Down!’ cried the man. ‘Strap yourselves. We’re crashing! There’s a planetoid!’
A dark shape ran up onto the port of the ship, black and swift. The two women were sobbing hysterically, calling out to him to do something.
‘Shut up, shut up, and let me think!’ he cried. He did something with a control, the ship righted itself.
‘We’ll be killed, we’ll be killed!’ wailed the sisters. ‘No, no,’ he said, and before the planetoid loomed too close he threw his whole body against the one metal rod that was stuck and would not give. But it gave now, with a shudder of grating metal, as he fell forward.
The ship blacked out, something hit, struck, twisted, turning, shook them around. Lisabeth felt herself lifted, whirled, and brought down with stunning force upon the floor. That was all. She remembered no more.…
A voice was saying, ‘Where are we, where are we – where?’
Dimly, Lisabeth heard the voice. There was a smell of alien atmosphere. Words came in over a muffled phone: ‘Planetoid One-Oh-One. Planetoid One-Oh-One. Calling crashed ship Earth Two! Crash ship Earth Two! Can you give us a bearing on you? We’ll try to send a rescue craft along.’
‘Hello, hello, Planetoid One-Oh-One, Radio.’ Lisabeth opened her eyes. John and the two women were huddled about the radio set, working it in the dim light. Through the port she could see the bleak and cold asteroid plain.
‘You’d better try to get up from there,’ said the radio voice. ‘That’s bad territory you’re in.’
‘What does he mean?’ asked Alice, leaning down over the man.
‘This is killing land.’
‘Killing?’
‘Killers, from Earth. Insane killers. Brought here. Dropped off to spend the rest of their lives, killing. They’re happy that way.’
‘You’re – you’re joking.’
‘Oh, am I?’
The radio voice said. ‘We’ll run through as soon as possible. Don’t go outside, whatever you do. There’s an atmosphere, yes, but there’s likely to be some of the Inmates, too.’
Alice ran to the port. ‘John!’ She pointed down. ‘Down there! There are some men out there now!’
Helen seized John’s arm. ‘Get us out of here, get us out of here!’
‘They can’t hurt us. Let go of me, for Pete’s sake! They can’t get inside.’ John stood staring moodily out the port.
Lisabeth lay easily, luxuriating in the nearness of death. Outside the ship. Killing Land. Killers. Her men, of course. Catherine of Russia’s bodyguard! Come to rescue her!
She arose. Silently she tiptoed across the room. The man and the two women still stared fascinated out the port. They did not hear her. What would it be like to go below, to open the air lock wide to the terrible killers outside? Wouldn’t that be fine? Let them in to kill, to destroy, to annihilate her captors! How wonderful, how simple.
Where was the air lock? Below somewhere. She was out of the room with no sound. She slipped through the lounge on the soft blue carpeting, came to the spiral ladder and descended it, smiling quietly to herself. She reached the lower deck. The air lock stood shining there.
She stabbed her hands at all kinds of red buttons, trying to find the one that yanked the lock open.
Above, she heard a frantic, surprised voice: ‘Where’s Lisabeth?’
‘Below!’ Feet began running. ‘Lisabeth!’
‘Quick!’ cried Lisabeth to her hands. ‘Quick!’
Click! A hiss. The air lock groaned open.
Behind her, on the ladder, John leaped down. ‘Lisabeth!’
The lock was open. The smell of an alien world came in.
The men who had been waiting outside rushed forward, silently. They filled the lock, ten, twelve of them! They were pale and thin and trembling.
Lisabeth smiled, jerking her hand at John and crying out to the alien men.
‘This man held me prisoner!’ she said. ‘Kill him!’
The alien men seemed stupefied. They stood. Their full eyes only gazed at Lisabeth and John.
‘No,’ one of them said, at last, as John waited for them to rush forward in the silent room. ‘No,’ the alien man said, dully. ‘We do not kill. We are the ones who are killed. We d
ie. We wish to die. We do not care to live anymore, ever.’
There was a silence.
‘You heard what I said!’ cried Lisabeth.
‘No,’ the men replied. They stod, swaying in the silence.
John fell back against a wall, sighing. Then, after a time he began to laugh with exhausted moves of his body. ‘Ah-ha! I see. I see!’
The men blinked in bewilderment at him.
Lisabeth’s eyes flashed. She made a helpless gesture.
John recovered. He slapped his hands together and made a pushing motion, talking as a man does to a pack of dogs.
‘Go on, now,’ he said, quietly. ‘Get out.’ He waved to the men. ‘Go on, move!’
The men did not believe him at first and then, reluctantly, whimpering in their throats, they walked from the rocket. Several of them turned and pleaded with their eyes.
‘No,’ said John coldly. ‘Move out. We won’t have anything to do with you.’
He shut the air lock door on them.
Taking Lisabeth’s pale hand John said, ‘It didn’t work. Come along. Upstairs with you, scheming lady.’
‘What happened?’ Alice and Helen waited as he brought Lisabeth up the ladder.
‘They wanted to die,’ John said, smiling tiredly. ‘They weren’t Killers, but the Ones to Be Killed. I see it all now.’ He laughed sharply. ‘To make an insane killer happy, you have to provide him a culture where people like and approve of being killed. This is such a culture. Those men wanted to be shot.’
For a moment Helen stared at him. Then she said one word:
‘Wanted?’
‘Yes. I’ve read about it. They’re peculiar to this planetoid. After propagating, at the age of twenty-one, they have a death drive, just as many insects and fish do. To balance this drive, we bring in a bunch of insane murderers from Earth. In this culture, a killer becomes the norm, accepted, happy. Thus we transform insanity into sanity. Roughly, anyway. If you like that kind of sanity.’ He slapped his knee, went to the radio. ‘Hello, Planetoid One-Oh-One, Radio! A bit of trouble. All okay. We met the Ones Who Want to Die, rather than the Killers. Lucky, I’d say.’
‘Very,’ said the radio. ‘We’ve got your bearing. There should be a ship to you in an hour. Hold on.’
Helen was by the port, staring out. ‘Insane. Insane, all of them.’
‘To us, yes,’ said John. ‘To themselves no. Their culture is sane to itself and all inhabitants within it. That’s all that counts.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Take a man who wants eighty-nine wives. On Earth he goes insane because he can’t have them. He’s frustrated. Bring him out here to the asteroids, put him on a planet full of women where marriage in triplicate is okay, and he becomes the norm, becomes happy.’
‘Oh.’
‘On Earth we tend to try to fit square pegs in round holes. It doesn’t work. In the asteroids we’ve got a hole for every peg, no matter what shape. On Earth if pegs don’t fit we hammer them until they split. We can’t change our culture to fit them, that would be silly and inconvenient. But we can bring them out to the asteroids. There are cultures here, thousands of years old, convenient, preferable.’ He got up. ‘I need a drink. I feel terrible.’
The rescue ship arrived within the hour. It came down out of space and landed neatly on the asteroid plateau. ‘Hello there,’ the pilot said.
‘Hello yourself!’
They got aboard, Alice, John, Helen, and – Lisabeth.
Their ship was to be towed into a repair port and returned to them later, on Earth.
‘I want to call Chicago,’ said Helen, instantly, when they reached port.
John sighed. ‘We have us a close shave and all you want to do is call Chicago. William, again?’
‘Suppose it is?’ she snapped.
‘Nothing. Go ahead. I suppose they’ll let you use the space phone.’ He nodded at the captain of the rescue ship, who said, ‘Certainly. Right over here.’
Lisabeth did not move. They had taken her to a little room and locked her in once more. There would be no more mistakenly unlocked doors. It was all over. Now there was nothing.
‘Hello, Chicago. William? This is Helen!’ Laughter.
A pouring of drinks. ‘I,’ said Alice, ‘am going,’ she lifted the glass, ‘to,’ she went on, ‘get very drunk.’
The captain of the ship came in. ‘We’ll be landing on Thirty-six in about ten minutes. You’ve had bad luck.’
‘It’s all right now. A bit thick for me.’ John nodded at Helen cooing and stroking the phone, at Alice mixing a drink, and at Lisabeth standing, white and silent, in her little cell.
The captain raised his brows and nodded, wryly.
John lighted a cigarette and moved forward. ‘Suppose I thought I was Christ, captain? Would you take me to a planetoid where everybody thought they were saviors of the world?’
‘Heavens, no.’ The captain laughed. ‘You’d kill each other off as “impostors.” No, we’d take you to a culture prepared to accept and take you in as the only world savior.’
‘One that would lie to me, say they believed I was a savior?’
‘No. No lies. Only the truth. The people must really believe in order that you, as a messiah, may be happy. The entire idea of sending insane people out here to various planets is to be sure they’ll live happily the rest of their lives. So such a complex must live in a culture where people actually think he is a savior.’
‘It must be difficult to find enough room on your planets for all those who think they’re saviors, mustn’t it?’
‘We’ve a Charting Committee for that. Nine thousand Earthmen, hopelessly insane, beyond treatment on Earth, think they’re messiahs. That means a waiting list. There are only forty-seven thousand available cultures on forty-seven thousand planetoids between here and Saturn, and in the other sun systems. And only two thousand of these cultures are gullible enough to accept a false redeemer. Therefore, there’s a long list of such applicants waiting to travel to some culture when an older savior dies. We couldn’t possibly introduce two self-deluded Gautama Buddhas into one culture simultaneously. Oh! what dissension that would cause! But in event of one John, the Baptist, for instance, we could, at the same time, accommodate one Caesar, one Pontius Pilate, one Matthew, one Mark, one Luke, one John, along with him. You see?’
‘I think so.’
‘When you put one Mohammed into juxtaposition with one pseudo-contempory of ancient times, history repeats itself. All the drama of ancient times is being re-enacted here on these planetoids. Everybody’s happy, insanity is banished, drama lives.’
‘Sounds faintly blasphemous.’
‘Hardly. They’re happy, normal, to themselves. See that planet, there? Somewhere on it is a Joan of Arc listening for angel voices. Over there, see! A Mecca waits for a Mohammed to appear so they may finish out their acts.’
‘It’s frightening.’
‘Somewhat.’ The captain walked off, away. Lisabeth watched him go.
Asteroid Number Thirty-six swung up and under the ship!
Other planetoids whirled by. Lisabeth watched them from her cell. They moved on the deep ocean blackness, full of some hidden drama and tragedy she could not fathom.
‘There’s Othello’s planet!’ cried John. ‘I read about that one.’
‘Oh.’ Alice was drinking steadily. She sat in a rubberoid chair, her eyes glazed. ‘Oh. Well, well. Isn’t that nice, isn’t it?’
‘Othello and Desdemona and Iago! Warriors and banners and trumpets. Gosh, what it must be like down there.’
More planetoids, more, more. Lisabeth counted them with her simple, moving, pink lips. Moving, moving. More. There, and there!
‘Down there somewhere is a man who thinks he’s Shakespeare!’
‘Good for him, good,’ murmured Alice, putting down her drink, lazily.
‘Stratford on Avon’s down there, and strolling minstrels. All you do is bring some crazy fellow from Maine who thinks
he’s Shakespeare up here and there’s the culture waiting for him, to really make him into Shakespeare! And do you know, Alice – Alice, are you listening?’ John breathed swiftly. ‘They live and die just as the famous men lived and died. They die the same deaths, in imitation. A woman who thinks she is Cleopatra puts an asp to her flesh. A man, who thinks he is Socrates, quaffs the hemlock! They live out old lives and die the old deaths. What an immensely beautiful insanity it is.’
‘William, the things you say!’ cooed Helen into the space phone. ‘I’ll be in Chicago next week, William. Yes, I’m all right. I’ll see you then, sweets.’
‘Oh, pish,’ said Alice.
‘This is the best thing for Lizabeth,’ John said. ‘We shouldn’t feel badly.’
‘We certainly had to wait long enough.’ Alice dropped her glass. ‘Put in application six months ago.’
‘There were one thousand Catherines of Russia. One died yesterday. Lisabeth will fill her position. She’ll rule unwisely and not too well, but happily.’
Helen kissed her lips in front of the phone, pouting her red moist lips. ‘You know I do,’ she said, eyes shut. ‘Love you, William, love you.’ She was speaking softly over a few million miles of space.
‘Time!’ shouted the audio in the room. ‘Landing time!’
John got up and smoked a last cigarette nervously, his face wincing.
Catherine of Russia looked out at the three people. She saw Alice drink quietly and stupidly and John standing in a litter of cigarette butts under his shoes. And Helen was lying full length on a rubberoid couch, murmuring softly into the phone, stroking it.
Now John came to the window of the cell. She did not answer when he said hello. He did not believe in her.
‘Sometimes I wonder where we’ll all wind up,’ he said, simply, looking at Catherine. ‘Myself on a planetoid where I can burn gambling machines all day? First chop them with axes, then pour kerosene on them, then burn them? And what about Alice? Will she wind up on a planetoid where oceans of gin and canals of sherry are the rule? And Helen? Will she land on a place full of handsome men, thousands of them? And nobody to reprimand her?’
