The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  He held the vial close to his middle red eye and shook it to make the purple come to it. “The end of their whole way of life,” he said, and he laughed.

  Then suddenly he was quiet. “I must find a suitable subject,” he muttered, “one worthy of the experiment. And I must find a control a suitable subject and a suitable control, and females are the most suitable, of course.”

  He took down a dirty, inconspicuous orange drape and threw it over his hips. And he took, out of his left hand, top bureau drawer, a weapon a small but deadly thrum. This was proof of what he was, for though all Itchwhittlians were free, they were not free to carry any weapons, and most especially; not the deadly thrum.

  He went out into the dingy street then, curling his tentacles inwards, and facing towards the back to avoid recognition. He took only dark alleys and kept close to the walls. “I think I know a good place to find those suitable subjects,” he said.

  The next night Igh stood before Lish’s door and squared his hips even squarer, took a breath even bigger and stiffened his tentacles even stiffer, but it was all for nothing. No one came to the door at all. By the fifth knock he began to feel very angry, for after all, he had the signed license and right there in blue and red (which was the same as black and white in Itchwhittle) it said that tonight was his “big night” with Lish.

  Igh was a good boy; but he thought that, under the circumstances, he could open the door and look in, and this he did.

  He went into the vestibule, the main room, the eating room and then, even, into the bedroom. And after that he looked in all the closets and under the bed.

  Then he got even more angry and went back to the main room and got out Lish’s bottle of H2O. A half an hour later Igh’s six short legs went out, three on each side; he went down on his hard, rounded stomach, and there, right in front of his middle eye, he saw a piece of torn, dirty, smelly, orange cloth.

  Igh blinked his middle eye, then squinted it and shut the other two. This seems to be, he thought, the kind of cloth from the sort of drape that Itchwhittlians of the very lowest type wear—down in the dank and dingy part of town.

  Then he closed all his eyes, because squinted the other two. But what, he mused, is it doing here on lovely Lish’s main room floor?

  Then he closed all his eyes because the effort to answer the question was too much for him. His mind wandered for a minute to Optch, and he thought again that her skin wasn’t one bit like shining gold at all. He thought of the wonderful working of H2O; and, then, suddenly, he staggered to his feet because it had come to him what had happened.

  Dizzily he reached for the piece of orange cloth. It isn’t much to go on, he thought, but at least I know I must look in the dank and dingy part of town.

  It was discouraging, and Igh wasn’t thinking too clearly. He went up and down the dark alleys, staggering only slightly, thanks to his low center of gravity, but it was getting late and he was getting nowhere at all. He kept thinking that here the night was already half over and it was supposed to be a “big night;” and all it was was this running around in the unpleasant dank and dingy part of town. Every time he thought this, which was frequently, tears of self-pity came to his three eyes.

  Then he came to the very dankest and dingiest part of town, but he was too full of H2O to know it. He sat down on some dirty steps. I may never have a “big night” with lovely Lish, at all, he thought, I hope nothing’s happened to her. Then he let the tears flow down and make grayish clean spots in the soot.

  Just then, the door opened from the cellar below him; and someone—someone female, that is—said, “Oh,” in a very startled voice

  Igh looked down and there stood a dream—a real dream, more lovely than Lish could ever hope to be even if she grew younger every day.

  Such hips, all six of them superb. Such rosy eyes; such a deep-pooled complexion with odd gold glints.

  Well, Igh thought, time enough to search for Lish and Optch later. Tomorrow is another day. He fumbled for his license. A simple matter to change the names. Igh was a good boy, always did things in the legal, Itchwhittlian way.

  She led him back inside to a dank and dingy room and Igh had his “big night” after all.

  He was awakened by the sound of laughter and someone cried in a high voice, “Success, success at last.”

  Just the sort of sounds one hears in a dank and dingy place like this, Igh thought and rolled over.

  Then he heard the door burst open and slam against the wall. He opened one eye and found himself looking up into a deadly thrum. Warily he opened another eye, to find the lovely lady of last night seated on the couch smiling. This was puzzling, but somewhat reassuring, also. Then he opened the third eye and saw the scientist holding the deadly thrum; the smile on his face wasn’t reassuring at all.

  “I fooled you,” he shouted, waving the thrum crazily. “And if I can fool you, I can fool the whole world (meaning Chim, naturally).” He laughed and leaned close to Igh. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “I’ve just had a wonderful ‘big night,’” Igh said. “And if it’s your daughter, why it’s all been perfectly legal, I have the papers right here. I wouldn’t ever do anything wrong.” Igh raised himself cautiously. “You’ll excuse me,” he said politely. “I just remembered I must look for lovely Lish and Optch today. If I find them in time, before the office closes, that is, I may have a chance to get a license for a ‘big night’ tonight, too.”

  Igh stood up and edged towards the door. The scientist waved the deadly thrum. “Wait,” he cried, and Igh waited. “You have found Lish and Optch already, and…” the scientist grinned, “you have had a ‘big night’ with Optch!”

  “Don’t be silly,” Igh said. He turned toward the lovely lady and, come to think of it, she did look just like Optch—only purple. “Don’t be silly,” Igh said again. “Optch is yellow.”

  “Was, you mean.” The scientist pulled out a vial of the gray liquid. “With this I can make any yellow into a purple, permanently.”

  “I don’t believe it…I won’t believe it,” Igh said, “not even if it’s true.”

  “I’ve done it with Optch. Don’t you think she makes a nice purple? And there will be others. I’ll change them all, all the yellows into purples until everyone’s the same.” He laughed his mad laughter again then. “And that will show the world (meaning Chim, naturally).”

  Igh grew pink with fear and shame; for though he wouldn’t believe it, he felt it was true, and he had always been a good boy, up to now.

  Then all the terrible implications came to him; and he saw that it was not just his problem, but that the whole Itchwhittlian way of life was threatened. He thought of how it would be when everyone was purple, no matter what color they had been born. How would we know, he wondered, the better Itchwhittlians from the worse; or the high class from the low; or the elite from the dirty; or the beautiful form the ugly? Why, there would be no way to tell at all. His own terrible mistake with Optch proved that.

  Here he was with the scientist and the purple Optch. It was all up to him and he knew it. He was the only one who could save the world (meaning Chim, of course), and he would not let the world down, not Igh.

  Bravely, he squared his hips. Proudly he raised his tentacles. He even smiled. “I don’t believe any of it,” he said. “How in the world, meaning Chim, have you done such work in such a place? I won’t believe it until I see it.”

  The scientist lowered the thrum just a bit. “It took me fifteen rotations (red sun rotations) to do it.” He motioned towards the door. “I suppose you might as well see my laboratory, since you’re right here anyway.

  Actually the scientist was delighted to have the chance to show someone around. It reminded him of the days when he had had eager pupils admiring him and hanging on his words.

  He led the way to his laboratory, walking backwards, eyes behind. At the door he paused and prodded Igh with the deadly thrum. “I will defend my discovery with my life,” he said, “and I�
��ll have one tentacle on this all the time, and one eye on you.”

  Of course he did no such thing; for, although he was very clever, the scientist was as absent-minded as any professor especially since he had been one for twenty rotations. He even laid down the deadly thrum to free all his tentacles for a demonstration of his centrifuge.

  Igh drew himself up to his full height. “Aghachagh,” he cried, which was “Geronimo” in Itchwhittlian. Bravely he snatched up the deadly thrum and, in the name of humanity, Itchwhittlian humanity, he thrummed the scientist until that creature fell on the floor and died a terribly painful death, as he deserved.

  Then Igh destroyed everything in the laboratory, pouring the gray liquid down the particular drain it most deserved to be poured down. Then he went to kill Optch. It was easy, using a tentacle as a noose. Naturally she had to die, under the circumstances; and, anyway, Igh thought, he hadn’t enjoyed the “big night” at all—not really, that is,

  Lovely Lish he found in an upper room, safe and sound. The gray liquid she had been forced to drink hadn’t affected her at all, and since it was still early, they had plenty of time to get a license for a “big night” with loads of females, all perfectly proper in the prescribed Itchwhittlian way. And he loved his mother; and he worshipped whatever it was right to worship at the rights times and in the right places; and he knew in his heart of hearts (Itchwhittlians had two hearts) that he had saved the Itchwhittlian way of life—which, considering its importance, was equivalent to saving the whole world, meaning Chim, naturally. But he never boasted about it because he was a good boy…in the Itchwhittlian way.

  Needless to say, he lived happily ever after, what with all those “big night” and all; but sometimes he wondered why in the world (meaning Chim, of course), he thought now and then of Optch.

  Science Fiction Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2, August 1957

  Baby

  THEY CALLED HIM Baby, he was six feet tall, lean, and had the look of a hungry hunting animal, but the robots called him Baby.

  Someone had once written in a neat script in a tome and on a white paper the carefully chosen name, Christopher John Correy, but there was no one left who could say that this particular name on this particular paper and in this particular book was the name of the man called Baby by robots.

  Until a few years ago the city had had all the food it takes to make a man full grown and to keep him sleek and healthy, but now Baby’s hip bones jutted forward from a concave stomach, his ribs arched above, and the strong muscles lay just beneath the skin and showed in lined bunches when he moved.

  He stood naked in the dining room, damp bare feet on the smooth black tile. He shut his eyes tight and said in a whisper, “Please, please and please, be meat.” Then he swallowed the saliva that came at the thought of food. He chewed on nothing and waited, hoping, but not expecting. “I said please,” he whispered.

  There was no one in the room but him and he watched with fox eyes on the kitchen door until it opened and a model B maid came in. The soup plates on her tray top held only brown powder. House 76 had lost its water pipes in the last freeze of the season because the heat had gone out.

  But Baby hadn’t come for soup. Sometimes 76 had meat and if not meat, usually an edible desert. Baby was hungry enough for anything at all.

  The model B put a soup plate in front of each empty chair around the table, and then it waited by the kitchen door, and Baby waited, and after a time the model B took the plates away. The next course was meat, or had been, but something had gone wrong and the roast was burned to a dry black lump.

  The Please is fooling me, Baby thought. It wants to make me angry.

  The meat was impossible to eat, but the model B cut it with knife fingers, not noticing how the black flaked off and fell to the floor. It served each plate with the dark, woody chunks and also with something unrecognizable, an over-cooked or spoiled vegetable or perhaps a moldy Salad. Then it waited again and after a while took the untouched plates away and came in with the dessert, chocolate pie with whipped cream. A dairy still came to 76 and with milk from one of the underground farms where the robots still tended cows. And the stove had timed just right this time.

  Baby glanced out the glass wall behind him. “Overseer, Rob 10, please not be there now, please.” He shut his eyes and whispered it. Then he moved fast, reaching under model B’s knives just before they came down to split the pie. Model B didn’t even notice its knives cut nothing. It was a poor automatic thing on a track and it had no eye. The stove ran it, adjusting it for each task as it loaded the tray. But overseer Rob was like the maid. His eye flickered red, observant. And his legs telescoped at the knees and could run faster than Baby.

  Baby ran across the hall balancing the pie. The walls at the end, still working smoothly, lifted to let him out into the back yard. 76’s walls were not discriminating anymore. They had opened and closed for Baby for a number of years now.

  “Overseer, Rob 10, please not be there now, please.”

  The overseer wasn’t.

  Baby climbed the artificial hill at the back of the house at a crouching run, and pushed through the overgrown hedge into the neglected yard of the house that had lost its overseer six years ago. He flopped down on his stomach behind the young trees and bushes. He pushed out his lips and sucked at the whipped cream on the top of the pie, not caring about the long scratches the hedge had made across his body.

  He would not have much time, here, so close to his own home, so he concentrated on eating rapidly and without relish. This was something just to fill his stomach. He was hungry now for meat or milk.

  He was losing faith in Please. It didn’t work as often as it used to. And he was losing faith in Nursie too, but she could still catch him when he was close to his home like this. In spite of how she was now, her arms were still long enough, and her eye still saw. She was slower, but not too slow. She was strong, broad-bottomed with a caterpillar tread and she could still lift him. He was only really safe from her a couple of miles or so from his house. And even then it was usually only a matter of time for her to find him. Now he was behind 75 and his own home was just next door.

  “Baby, Baby, Come to Nursie, you scallywag.”

  Baby raised his head, mouth dripping chocolate, smears on nose and cheeks. He leaned over the pie like an animal over a fresh kill, wary and challenging.

  “Baby, come to Nursie. It’s time for your nap. Don’t make Nursie hunt all over, that’s a good Baby. I’ve milk and cookies.”

  I’d take a nap for milk and cookies, Baby thought, but the glass is always empty now and the cookies, when there are any, aren’t fit to eat. He bent to the pie again. His teeth scraped on the pan as he bit at the crust, tearing at it dog-like.

  He couldn’t get away now. She would find him and catch him, and take the pie away if he didn’t finish it fast. Pies are not for little babies, she would say.

  There was silence while she circled, slowly scanning, and he wolfed the last of the crust. At the half circle she caught the warmth, and with a wheeze, scratch, scratch, wheeze, scratch, scratch, she came after him. She sounded slower than she was. Baby didn’t try to get away. In a moment one of her long flexible arms reached out into the bushes and took him about the waist gently but firmly. He yielded to the pull, stood up and walked towards Nursie, leaning on her soft arm. He hadn’t tried to fight her for a long time now. It had always been useless.

  “There’s a good boy. Here’s milk and cookies, and then we’ll pop into bed for a nap.” She put the empty sip-glass into his hand. “Baby do it all by himself.”

  “There is no milk for Baby here. You never have milk for me anymore.”

  “Yes, it’s there. I got it from the dairy box just now. The milk-robs came, early, early, while you were still asleep, and they brought this good milk just for Baby.”

  A feeling came over him like getting into a warm bath only the warmth flowed inside him. For a moment he could say nothing at all, and then he said, “Where’s
my milk,” in a whisper. His arm muscles tightened and he clenched his fists against his stomach.

  There was something wrong with him lately, and it was getting worse. Something that gnawed at him and knotted his stomach like this. A great need, overpowering, for an unknown thing. It drove him to far wanderings about the city, to taking stupid risks, to fits of running after nothing in the empty streets, to staring at the sky, sometimes to a wild howling, and to climbing, climbing dizzily and trembling on narrow perches about the high buildings.

  “Where’s my milk?” He screamed it this time. “Ask Rob 6 if there is milk there.” The overseer will tell her and then she will doubt. She will no longer believe in Please nor in Central, and because she is so sure, her doubt will be devastating. He would see her fall on the ground and scream with horror of her lost belief.

  “Come, drink it up,” she said.

  “Central is stopped! There is no Please!” he shouted.

  Both soft mother-arms came out to embrace him. There was a place, a specially built place at her breast (or what stood for breast) to cradle a baby or pillow a young head, but it was too low for him now even when he knelt. Still, she pulled him to her.

  “Don’t worry, Baby. Don’t cry. There’s always milk for Baby. As much as you want. Come along and we’ll get some more.”

  “There isn’t any milk.” He was calm suddenly. “Please ask Rob 6. I said, please. Now ask Rob 6, please.”

  “Such a good, polite boy. All right, we’ll ask Rob 6 if you want. Yes. You said please, didn’t you. Yes you did.”

  There was a time a long time ago when Baby always answered eagerly and proudly, “Yes, I did, didn’t I,” but now he said nothing, his face as expressionless as Nursie’s flat tray of features always was.

  She took his strong hand, calloused form climbing, and led him across his own neat lawn to his home. The front wall panel rose to let them in as they neared.