The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack

by Robert Silverberg

  We did, too.

  By the time we’d got into space suits and through the bubble lock out into the ordinary landscape of Capella IV, Capella, the sun, was sinking rapidly.

  “We will just have time,” Aunt Mattie said crisply, through the intercom of our suits, “To set the pattern and get some idea of the sizes needed. Then tomorrow we can begin our work.”

  Through his face plate I got a look at Johnny’s wide, apprehensive eyes.

  “Ladies,” he said desperately. “I must warn you again. I’ve never tried to touch one of them. I don’t know what will happen. I can’t be held responsible.”

  “You have been most remiss, young man,” Aunt Mattie said sternly. “But then,” she added, as if remembering that he had gone to a proper school, “you’re young. No doubt overburdened by nonsensical red tape in your administrative duties. And—if you had done this already, there’d be no reason for my being here. I am always willing to help wherever I’m needed.”

  All five of us marched silently, and bravely, on after that. A hundred yards brought us to the first native. It lay there, spread eagled in eight directions, on the salt. In the center of the tentacles there arose a column of black rubbery flesh, topped by a rounded dome in the center of which was one huge liquid black eye. There was not a twitch of a tentacle as we came to a halt beside it.

  “Is this the one you talked to, Johnny?” I asked.

  “How should I know?” he asked bitterly. “I never knew if I talked to the same one twice.”

  “They’re much bigger than I thought,” Miss Point said with a little dismay in her voice.

  “Some of them are ten feet in diameter,” Johnny said, I thought with a bit of vindictiveness in his tone.

  “Never mind,” Aunt Mattie said. “We’ll simply sew three lengths of cloth together to get our square. I’m sure they won’t mind a neatly done seam.”

  She had a length of cloth in one arm of her space suit, and a pair of scissors in the mechanical claw of the other hand. With her eye she seemed to measure the diameter of the dome and, manipulating the scissors with the claw like an expert space mechanic, she cut a sizable hole in the center of the cloth.

  Entirely without fear or hesitation, she stepped into the triangle between two long black tentacles that lay on the salt and walked up to the erect column at the center. Expertly, she flipped the cloth so that the hole settled over the creature’s head, or whatever it was. Fore and aft, the cloth rippled out to cover the tentacles. The creature did not move.

  With an amazing speed, she took some bundles of cloth from the arms of Mrs. Waddle, and with even more amazing dexterity of the space claw, which showed she was no amateur, she basted a length of cloth on either side of the first strip. Then with her scissors, careful not to gouge his hide, she cut off the corners so that the eight tentacles barely peeped out from underneath the cloth.

  Somehow, it reminded me of a huge red flower with a black pistil laying there on the white salt.

  “There, sir,” my aunt said with satisfaction to the monster. “This will hide your nakedness, instill in you a sense of true modesty.” She turned to Johnny. “They must not only know what,” she instructed. “They must also know why.” She turned back and faced the monster again. “It is not your fault,” she said to it, “That you have been living in a state of sin. On Earth, where I come from, we have a code which must be followed. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I’m sure that if I lived in a state of ignorant sin, I would humbly appreciate the kindness of someone letting me know. I’m sure that, in time, you will also come to appreciate it.”

  It was quite a noble speech, and her two companions bowed their space suit helmets in acknowledgement. Johnny’s mouth and eyes were wide, and desperate. She stepped back then and we all stood there looking at the monster.

  The dome of its head began to tilt until the eye was fastened upon us. It swept over the three ladies, hesitated on Johnny as if recognizing him, but came to rest upon me. It stared at me for a full minute. I stared back. In some strange way I felt as if my psychiatrist were staring at me, as he often did.

  Then the great eye slowly closed, and opened again. As slowly, and somewhat to my amazement, I felt one of my eyes close and open. I winked at it.

  “That’s all for this evening,” Aunt Mattie said crisply. “Let it have its clothes, get used to them. I have the pattern in my mind. Tomorrow we will get out our sewing machines, and really get busy, girls.”

  All the way back to the entrance of the bubble, I felt that huge eye upon me, following me.

  Why me?

  * * * *

  The girls did not need to get busy the next morning.

  I was awakened by a shout, there was the sound of running feet in the hall, and a pounding on my door. Sleepy eyed, for I had dreamed of the monster’s eye all night long, I opened the door as soon as I had found a robe to cover my own nakedness. It was Johnny, of course.

  “Most amazing thing,” he rushed in and collapsed into a sitting position on the side of my bed. “Absolutely amazing. You should see them.”

  “What?” I asked.

  The rumpus must have disturbed the ladies, too, for there came another knock on my door, and when I opened it all three of them stood there fully dressed. Apparently they had arisen at the crack of dawn to get busy with their sewing. Miss Point and Mrs. Waddle averted their eyes modestly from the V neck of my robe and my bare legs. Aunt Mattie was used to my shameless ways.

  “What is it?” Aunt Mattie asked crisply.

  Johnny leaped to his feet again.

  “Amazing,” he said again. “I’ll have to show you. You’ll never believe it.”

  “Young man,” Aunt Mattie said sharply. “No one has accused you of untruthfulness, and you are hardly a judge of what we are capable of believing.”

  He stood looking at her with his mouth open.

  “Now ladies,” I said, and started closing the door. “If you’ll excuse me for two minutes I’ll dress and we’ll go see what Mr. McCabe wants to show us.”

  The door clicked on my last words, and I hastily doffed the robe and slid into pants and a shirt. Oddly enough, I knew what he was going to show us. I just knew. I slipped on some shoes without bothering about socks.

  “All right,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  They had started down the hall, and we quickly overtook them. Johnny went ahead, led us out of the hotel, around its side, and when we came around the corner of the outbuilding which obscured the view, there before us, through the bubble wall, we saw what I had expected.

  As far as the eye could see, dotted here and there like poppies on snow, the natives lay in the early sun, each dressed in flaring cloth like that Aunt Mattie had designed the night before.

  “You see?” Johnny cried out. “It’s the same as with the lighter. One liked it, so they all have it!”

  By now we were up against the plastic barrier. The two subordinates were gasping such words as “Fantastic, amazing, astounding, incredible, wondrous, weird”.

  Aunt Mattie took it all in, and her face lit into a beatific smile.

  “You see, young man,” she said to Johnny. “They needed only to be shown right from wrong. Let this be a lesson to you.”

  “But how did they do it?” Mrs. Waddle gasped.

  “Give them some credit for diligence and ingenuity,” Aunt Mattie almost snapped at her assistant. “I always say we underrate the intelligence and ingenuity of the lesser orders, and that it saps their strengths if we are overprotective. I admire self-reliance, and these have shown they have it. So we will not have to do the sewing after all. Come girls, we must pack and be on our way back to Earth. Our mission here is accomplished.”

  The two ladies obeyed their leader without question. The three of them, in their sturdy walking shoes and their tweed suits, crunched off across the salt back to their rooms to start packing.

  Johnny and I walked along more slowly behind.

  “The incr
edible Matthewa H. Tombs!” he breathed. “She’s a legend, you know, Hap. But I never believed it before.” Then, in a complete and sudden change of mood he snickered. Or, at least, it was the nearest thing to a small boy snicker I’d heard since prep school. The snicker turned into a roar of laughter, a grown man’s laughter. “If they only knew!” he shouted, apparently feeling secure because they’d turned the corner and gone out of sight.

  “Knew what?” I asked.

  “Why,” he said, and doubled up with laughter again. “They’ve covered up all the innocent parts and left the reprehensible part, which is right behind the eye, fully exposed.”

  “Johnny, my boy,” I said with a chuckle. “Do you really believe there are innocent parts and reprehensible parts of any creature in the universe?”

  He stood stock still and stared at me.

  “It takes a nasty, salacious mind to make that kind of separation,” I said.

  “But your aun…the Daughters of.…”

  “I know my aunt and the Daughters of Terra,” I said. “I’ve lived with them for years. I know their kind of mind. Who would know it better?”

  “But you.…”

  “The human race,” I said, “is very young. It’s only in the last few thousand years that it has discovered sex as a concept. So like little kids in kindergarten it goes around being embarrassed and snickering. But we’ll grow up. Give us time.”

  “But you.…” he said again. “But they.… That’s the kind of organization that keeps us from growing up, Hap. Don’t you see that? They’ve kept us mentally retarded for generations, centuries. How can we make progress when.…”

  “What’s the hurry, Johnny? We’ve got millions of years, billions, eternity.”

  He looked at me again, sharply, shrewdly.

  “I’ve underestimated you, Hap,” he said. “I’m afraid I always did. I had no idea you.…”

  I shrugged and passed it off. I’d had no idea either, not until this morning, last night, yesterday evening when that eye had turned on me—and I’d winked back.

  I didn’t know how to tell him, or any reason why I should, that there couldn’t be anything right or wrong, good or bad; that nothing could happen, nothing at all, excepting through the working of the law of nature. Could one say that water running down hill is good, and water being pumped up hill is bad? Both are operating within known physical laws. With millions of years to go, wasn’t it likely we would go on discovering the laws governing how things worked? Until one by one we had to give up all notion of good and bad happenings? Understood them as only the operation of natural law? In all the universe, how could there be any such thing as unnatural happenings?

  “Don’t worry about it, Johnny,” I said as we started walking again. “And don’t worry about your career, either. Aunt Mattie likes you, and she’s mighty pleased with the results of her work out here. Certain people in the State Department may consider her a bit of a meddlesome pest, but make no mistake about it, every politician in the universe trembles in his boots at the very mention of the D.T.’s. And she likes you, Johnny.”

  “Thanks, Hap,” he said as we came to a stop before the doorway of the hotel. “I’ll see you before your ship takes off. Oh—ah—you won’t tell her she covered up the wrong—well what she would think was the wrong part?”

  “I could have told her that last night,” I said.

  He walked away with that startled, incredulous look he’d worn ever since our arrival.

  * * * *

  On Earth Aunt Mattie had to rush off to a convention of D.T.’s, where I had no doubt her latest exploit in combating ignorance and sin would be the main topic of conversation and add to the triumph of her lionization. To give her credit, I think this lionization bothered her, embarrassed her a little, and she probably wondered at times if it were all sincere. But I also think she would have been lonely and disappointed without it. When one is doing all he can to make the universe we have inherited a better place for our posterity to inherit one likes it to be appreciated.

  For two or three weeks after she came back home, she was immersed in administrative duties for the D.T., setting wheels in motion to carry out all the promises she’d made at the convention.

  I spent the time in my own suite in the south wing of our house. Mostly, I just sat. No one bothered me except the servants necessary to eating, dressing, sleeping, and they were all but mute about it. My psychiatrist called once, but I sent word that I didn’t need any today. I called none of my regular friends and did not answer their messages.

  I did send to the Library of Science in Washington for the original science survey report on Capella IV. It told me little, but allowed me to surmise some things. Apparently the original scientists were singularly uncurious about the octopoids, perhaps because they didn’t have five years to hang around and wait for one to blink an eye, as Johnny had. As always, they were overworked and understaffed, they did their quick survey and rushed on to some new planet job. If one hoped that someday somebody might go back and take another look at the octopoids I found no burning yearning for it in the dry reports.

  As far as they went, their surmise was accurate. Some millions, many millions of years ago, the planet had lost the last of its ocean water. Apparently, as they failed to adapt to the increasing salinity of the little left, one by one the original life forms died out. Something in the octopoid metabolism (or mentality?) allowed them to survive, to become land instead of water animals. Something in their metabolism (or mentality?) allowed them to subsist on the air and sunlight. (Really now? Did they even need these?) That was as far as the reports went.

  They did not draw the picture of highly developed mentalities who lay there for millions of years and thought about the nature of being. Such things as how mental manipulation of force fields can provide each of them with a cigarette lighter that burns without any fluid in it and any oxygen around its wick, or such things as mother hubbards which had caught their fancy, or perhaps gave them some kind of sensual kick caused by heat filtering through red cloth.

  But mostly I just sat.

  I went to see Aunt Mattie when she came back from the convention, of course. She had the west wing where her sitting room looked out upon her flora collection—and the gardeners who were supposed to keep busy. Our greeting was fond, but brief. She did look at me rather quizzically, rather shrewdly, but she made no comment. She did not return my visit.

  This was not unusual. She never visited my suite. When I was twenty-one she took me into the south wing and said, “Choose your own suite, Hapland. You are a man now, and I understand about young men.” If she had in mind what I thought she had it was a mighty big concession to reality, although, of course, she was five years late in coming around to it.

  This older generation—so wise, so naive. She probably resolutely refrained from imagining far worse things than really went on.

  About two weeks after she’d come back from the convention, a month since we returned from Capella IV, there was an interruption, an excited one. For once in his life the butler forgot to touch my door with feather fingertips and cough discreetly. Instead he knocked two sharp raps, and opened the door without invitation.

  “Come quickly, Master Hapland,” he chittered urgently. “There are creatures on our private landing field.”

  There were, too.

  When I got there in my garden scooter, and pushed my way through the crowd of gardeners who were clustered on the path and around the gate to the landing field, I saw them. At least a dozen of the Capella IV octopoids were spread eagled, their tentacles out flat on the hot cement of the runway. Their eye stared unblinking into the sun. Over their spread of tentacles, like inverted hibiscus blossoms, they wore their mother hubbards.

  Behind them, over at the far edge of the field, was an exact duplicate of our own space yacht. I wondered, rather hysterically perhaps, if each of them on Capella IV now had one. I suspected the yacht was simply there for show, that they hadn’t needed it, not
any more than they needed the mother hubbards.

  There was the hiss of another scooter, and I turned around to see Aunt Mattie come to a stop. She stepped out and came over to me.

  “Our social call on Capella IV is being returned,” I said with a grin and twinkle at her.

  She took in the sight with only one blink.

  “Very well,” she answered. “I shall receive them, of course.” Somebody once said that the most snobbish thing about the whole tribe of Tombs was that they’d never learned the meaning of the word, or had to. But I did wonder what the servants would think when the creatures started slithering into our drawing room.

  There was a gasp and a low rumble of protesting voices from the gardeners as Aunt Mattie opened the gate and walked through it. I followed, of course. We walked up to the nearest monster and came to stop at the edge of its skirt.

  “I’m deeply honored,” Aunt Mattie said with more cordiality than I’d seen her use on a Secretary of State. “What can I do to make your visit to Earth more comfortable?”

  There was no reply, not even the flicker of a tentacle.

  They were even more unusual than one might expect. Aunt Mattie resolutely went to each of the dozen and gave the same greeting. She felt her duty as a hostess required it, although I knew that a greeting to one was a greeting to all. Not one of them responded. It seemed rather ridiculous. They’d come all this way to see us, then didn’t bother to acknowledge that we were there.

  We spent more than an hour waiting for some kind of a response. None came. Aunt Mattie showed no sign of impatience, which I thought was rather praiseworthy, all things considered. But finally we left. She didn’t show what she felt, perhaps felt only that one had to be patient with the lack of manners in the lower orders.

  I was more interested in another kind of feeling, the one we left behind. What was it? I couldn’t put my finger on it. Sadness? Regret? Distaste? Pity? Magnanimity? Give a basket of goodies to the poor at Christmas? Give them some clothes to cover their nakedness? Teach them a sense of shame?