Well, that clinched it. How could I guess the consequences? How could I know that his aid would lead me into a situation in which I must not lesnerize?
"What about that flowerpot?" I asked.
"It will be dropped on the corner of Tenth Street and McAdams Boulevard at eight-thirty tomorrow morning."
"Tenth and McAdams? Where's that?"
"In Jersey City," he answered promptly.
"But I've never been to Jersey City in my life! Why warn me about that?"
"I don't know where you will or won't go," the derg said. "I merely perceive dangers to you wherever they may occur."
"What should I do now?"
"Anything you wish," he told me. "Just lead your normal life."
Normal life. Hah!
It started out well enough. I attended classes at Columbia, did homework, saw movies, went on dates, played table tennis and chess, all as before. At no time did I let on that I was under the direct protection of a validusian derg.
Once or twice a day, the derg would come to me. He would say something like, "Loose grating on West End Avenue between 66th and 67th Streets. Don't walk on it."
And of course I wouldn't. But someone else would. I often saw these items in the newspapers.
Once I got used to it, it gave me quite a feeling of security. An alien was scurrying around twenty-four hours a day and all he wanted out of life was to protect me. A supernormal bodyguard! The thought gave me a enormous amount of confidence.
My social life, during this period, couldn't have been improved upon.
But the derg soon became overzealous in my behalf. He began finding more and more dangers, most of which had no real bearing on my life in New York—things I should avoid in Mexico City, Toronto, Omaha, Papeete.
I finally asked him if he was planning on reporting every potential danger on Earth.
"These are the few, the very few, that you are or may be affected by," he told me.
"In Mexico City? And Papeete? Why not confine yourself to the local picture? Greater New York, say."
"Locale means nothing to me," the derg replied stubbornly. "My perceptions are temporal, not spatial. I must protect you from everything!"
It was rather touching, in a way, and there was nothing I could do about it. I simply had to discard from his reports the various dangers in Hoboken, Thailand, Kansas City, Angkor Wat (collapsing statue), Paris, and Sarasota. Then I would reach the local stuff. I would ignore, for the most part, the dangers awaiting me in Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, and Brooklyn, and concentrate on Manhattan.
These were often worth waiting for, however. The derg saved me from some pretty nasty experiences—a holdup on Cathedral Parkway, for example, a teen-age mugging, a fire.
But he kept stepping up the pace. It had started as a report or two a day. Within a month, he was warning me five or six times a day. And at last his warnings, local, national, and international, flowed in a continual stream.
I was facing too many dangers, beyond all reasonable probability.
On a typical day:
"Tainted food in Baker's Cafeteria. Don't eat there tonight."
"Amsterdam Bus 312 has bad brakes. Don't ride it."
"Mellen's Tailor Shop has a leaking gas line. Explosion due. Better have your clothes dry-cleaned elsewhere."
"Rabid mongrel on the prowl between Riverside Drive and Central Park West. Take a taxi."
Soon I was spending most of my time not doing things, and avoiding places. Danger seemed to be lurking behind every lamp post, waiting for me.
I suspected the derg of padding his report. It seemed the only possible explanation. After all, I had lived this long before meeting him, with no supernormal assistance whatsoever, and had gotten by nicely. Why should the risks increase now?
I asked him that one evening.
"All my reports are perfectly genuine," he said, obviously a little hurt. "If you don't believe me, try turning on the lights in your psychology class tomorrow."
"Why?"
"Defective wiring."
"I don't doubt your warnings," I assured him. "I just know that life was never this dangerous before you came along."
"Of course it wasn't. Surely you know that if you accept protection, you must accept the drawbacks of protection as well."
"Drawbacks like what?"
The derg hesitated. "Protection begets the need of further protection. That is a universal constant."
"Come again?" I asked in bewilderment.
"Before you met me, you were like everyone else and you ran such risks as your situation offered. But with my coming, your immediate environment has changed. And your position in it has changed, too."
"Changed? Why?"
"Because it has me in it. To some extent now, you partake of my environment, just as I partake of yours. And, of course, it is well known that the avoidance of one danger opens the path to others."
"Are you trying to tell me," I said, very slowly, "that my risks have increased because of your help?"
"It was unavoidable," he sighed.
I could have cheerfully strangled the derg at that moment, if he hadn't been invisible and impalpable. I had the angry feeling that I had been conned, taken by an extraterrestrial trickster.
"All right," I said, controlling myself. "Thanks for everything. See you on Mars or wherever you hang out."
"You don't want any further protection?"
"You guessed it. Don't slam the door on your way out."
"But what's wrong?" The derg seemed genuinely puzzled. "There are increased risks in your life, true, but what of it? It is a glory and an honor to face danger and emerge victorious. The greater the peril, the greater the joy of evading it."
For the first time, I saw how alien this alien was.
"Not for me," I said. "Scram."
"Your risks have increased," the derg argued, "but my capacity for detection is more than ample to cope with it. I am happy to cope with it. So it still represents a net gain in protection for you."
I shook my head. "I know what happens next. My risks just keep on increasing, don't they?"
"Not at all. As far as accidents are concerned, you have reached the quantitative limit."
"What does that mean?"
"It means there will be no further increase in the number of accidents you must avoid."
"Good. Now will you please get the hell out of here?"
"But I just explained—"
"Sure, no further increase, just more of the same. Look, if you leave me alone, my original environment will return, won't it? And, with it, my original risks?"
"Eventually," the derg agreed. "If you survive."
"I'll take that chance."
The derg was silent for a time. Finally he said, "You can't afford to send me away. Tomorrow—"
"Don't tell me. I'll avoid the accidents on my own."
"I wasn't thinking of accidents."
"What then?"
"I hardly know how to tell you." He sounded embarrassed. "I said there would be no further quantitative change. But I didn't mention a qualitative change."
"What are you talking about?" I shouted at him.
"I'm trying to say," the derg said, "that a gamper is after you."
"A what? What kind of gag is this?"
"A gamper is a creature from my environment. I suppose he was attracted by your increased potentiality for avoiding risk, due to my protection."
"To hell with the gamper and to hell with you."
"If he comes, try driving him off with mistletoe. Iron is often effective, if bonded to copper. Also—"
I threw myself on the bed and buried my head under the pillow. The derg took the hint. In a moment, I could sense that he was gone.
What an idiot I had been! We denizens of Earth have a common vice: we take what we're offered, whether we need it or not.
You can get into a lot of trouble that way.
But the derg was gone and the worst of my troubles were over. I'd
sit tight for a while, give things a chance to work themselves out. In a few weeks, perhaps, I'd.…
There seemed to be a humming in the air.
I sat upright on the bed. One corner of the room was curiously dark and I could feel a cold breeze on my face. The hum grew louder—not really a hum, but laughter, low and monotonous.
At that point, no one had to draw me a diagram.
"Derg!" I screamed. "Get me out of this!"
He was there. "Mistletoe! Just wave it at the gamper."
"Where in blazes would I get mistletoe?"
"Iron and copper then!"
I leaped to my desk, grabbed a copper paperweight and looked wildly for some iron to bond it to. The paperweight was pulled out of my hand. I caught it before it fell. Then I saw my fountain pen and brought the point against the paperweight.
The darkness vanished. The cold disappeared.
I guess I passed out.
The derg said triumphantly, an hour later, "You see? You need my protection."
"I suppose I do," I answered dully.
"You will need some things," the derg said. "Wolfsbane, amarinth, garlic, graveyard mold—"
"But the gamper is gone."
"Yes. However, the grailers remain. And you need safeguards against the leeps, the feegs, and the melgerizer."
So I wrote down his list of herbs, essences, and specifics. I didn't bother asking him about this link between supernatural and supernormal. My comprehension was now full and complete.
Ghosts and spirits? Or extraterrestrials? All the same, he said, and I saw what he meant. They leave us alone, for the most part. We are on different levels of perception, of existence, even. Until a human is foolish enough to attract attention to himself.
Now I was in their game. Some wanted to kill me, some to protect me, but none care for me, not even the derg. They were interested solely in my value to the game, if that's what it was.
And the situation was my own fault. At the beginning, I had had the accumulated wisdom of the human race at my disposal, that tremendous racial hatred of witches and ghosts, the irrational fear of alien life. For my adventure has been played out a thousand times and the story is told again and again—how a man dabbles in strange arts and calls to himself a spirit. By so doing, he attracts attention to himself—the worst thing of all.
So I was welded inseparably to the derg and the derg to me. Until yesterday, that is. Now I am on my own again.
Things had been quiet for a few weeks. I had held off the feegs by the simple expedient of keeping my closet doors closed. The leeps were more menacing, but the eye of a toad seemed to stop them. And the melgerizer was dangerous only in the full of the Moon.
"You are in danger," the derg said yesterday.
"Again?" I asked, yawning.
"It is the thrang who pursues us."
"Us?"
"Yes, myself as well as you, for even a derg must run risk and danger."
"Is this thrang particularly dangerous?"
"Very."
"Well, what do I do? Snakeskin over the door? A pentagon?"
"None of those," the derg said. "The thrang must be dealt with negatively, by the avoidance of certain actions."
By now, there were so many restrictions on me, I didn't think another would matter. "What shouldn't I do?"
"You must not lesnerize," the derg said.
"Lesnerize?" I frowned. "What's that?"
"Surely you know. It is a simple, everyday human action."
"I probably know it under a different name. Explain."
"Very well. To lesnerize is to—" He stopped abruptly.
"What?"
"It is here! The thrang!"
I backed up against a wall. I thought I could detect a faint stirring of dust, but that might have been no more than overwrought nerves.
"Derg!" I shouted. "Where are you? What should I do?"
I heard a shriek and the unmistakable sound of jaws snapping.
The derg cried, "It has me!"
"What should I do?" I cried again.
There was a horrible noise of teeth grinding. Very faintly, I heard the derg say, "Don't lesnerize!"
And then there was silence.
So I'm sitting tight now. There'll be an airplane crash in Burma next week, but it shouldn't affect me here in New York. And the feegs certainly can't harm me. Not with all my closet doors closed.
No, the problem is lesnerizing. I must not lesnerize. Absolutely not. If I can keep from lesnerizing, everything will pass and the chase will move elsewhere. It must! All I have to do is wait them out.
The trouble is, I don't have any idea what lesnerizing might be. A common human action, the derg had said. Well, for the time, I'm avoiding as many actions as possible.
I've caught up on some back sleep and nothing happened, so that's not lesnerizing. I went out and bought food, paid for it, cooked it, ate it. That wasn't lesnerizing. I wrote this report. That wasn't lesnerizing.
I'll come out of this yet.
I'm going to catch a nap. I think I have a cold coming on. Now I have to sneez
The End
© 1956 by Robert Sheckley. First published in Galaxy, April 1956.
More Spinned Against …
John Wyndham
One of the things about her husband that displeased Lydia Charters more as the years went by was the shape of him; another was his hobby. There were other displeasures, of course, but it was these in particular that aroused her sense of failure.
True, he had been much the same shape when she had married him, but she had looked for improvement. She had envisioned the development, under her domestic influence, of a more handsome, suaver, better filled type. Yet after nearly twelve years of her care and feeding there was scarcely any demonstrable improvement. The torso, the main man, looked a little more solid, and the scales endorsed that it was so, but unfortunately this simply seemed to emphasize the knobby, gangling, loosely-hinged effect of the rest.
Once, in a mood of more than usual dissatisfaction, Lydia had taken a pair of his trousers and measured them carefully. Inert and empty, they seemed all right—long in the leg, naturally, but not abnormally so, and the usual width that people wore—but put to use, they immediately achieved the effect of being too narrow and full of knobs, just as his sleeves did. After the failure of several ideas to soften this appearance, she had realized that she would have to put up with it. Reluctantly, she had told herself: "Well, I suppose it can't be helped. It must be just one of those things—like horsy women getting to look more like horses, I mean," and thereby managed a dig at the hobby, as well.
Hobbies are convenient in the child, but an irritant in the adult; which is why women are careful never to have them, but simply to be interested in this or that. It is perfectly natural for a woman—and Lydia was a comely demonstration of the art of being one—to take an interest in semi-precious and, when she can afford them, precious stones: Edward's hobby, on the other hand, was not really natural to anyone.
Lydia had known about the hobby before they were married, of course. No one could know Edward for long without being aware of the way his eyes hopefully roved the corners of any room he chanced to be in, or how, when he was out of doors, his attention would be suddenly snatched away from any matter in hand by the sight of a pile of dead leaves, or a piece of loose bark. It had been irritating at times, but she had not allowed it to weigh too much with her, since it would naturally wither from neglect later. For Lydia held the not uncommon opinion that though, of course, a married man should spend a certain amount of his time assuring an income, beyond that there ought to be only one interest in his life—from which it followed that the existence of any other must be slightly insulting to his wife, since everybody knows that a hobby is really just a form of sublimation.
The withering, however, had not taken place.
Disappointing as this was in itself, it would have been a lot more tolerable if Edward's hobby had been the collection of objects of sta
nding—say, old prints, or first editions, or oriental pottery. That kind of thing could not only be displayed for envy, it had value; and the collector himself had status. But no one achieved the status of being any more than a crank for having even a very extensive collection of spiders.
Even over butterflies or moths, Lydia felt without actually putting the matter to the test, one could perhaps have summoned up the appearance of some enthusiasm. There was a kind of nature's-living-jewels line that one could take if they were nicely mounted. But for spiders—a lot of nasty, creepy-crawly, leggy horrors, all getting gradually more pallid in tubes of alcohol—she could find nothing to be said at all.
In the early days of their marriage Edward had tried to give her some of his own enthusiasm, and Lydia had listened as tactfully as possible to his explanations of the complicated lives, customs, and mating habits of spiders, most of which seemed either disgusting, or very short on morals, or frequently both, and to his expatiations on the beauties of coloration and marking which her eye lacked the affection to detect. Luckily, however, it had gradually become apparent from some of her comments and questions that Edward was not awakening the sympathetic understanding he had hoped for, and when the attempt lapsed Lydia had been able to retreat gratefully to her former viewpoint that all spiders were undesirable, and the dead only slightly less horrible than the living.
Realizing that frontal opposition to spiders would be poor tactics, she had attempted a quiet and painless weaning. It had taken her two or three years to appreciate that this was not going to work; after that, the spiders had settled down to being one of those bits of the rough that the wise take with the smooth and leave unmentioned except on those occasions of extreme provocation when the whole catalog of one's dissatisfactions is reviewed.
Lydia entered Edward's spider room about once a week, partly to tidy and dust it, and partly to enjoy detesting its inhabitants in a pleasantly masochistic fashion. This she could do on at least two levels. There was the kind of generalized satisfaction that anyone might feel, in looking along the rows of test tubes, that at any rate here were a whole lot of displeasing creepies that would creep no more. And then there was the more personal sense of compensation in the reflection that though they had to some extent succeeded in diverting a married man's attention from its only proper target, they had had to die to do it.
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 2 Page 48
