Shards of Space

by Robert Sheckley

  Perhaps he was sent out as a teacher. Earth’s last gesture, to instruct some inhabited planet in the ways of peace and cooperation.

  Why send a doctor on a job like that? Besides, it was illogical. People learn over millennia, not in a few years. And it just didn’t fit the mood of the two messages. Both the man in the film and the note-writer had seemed practical men. It was impossible to think of either of them as altruists.

  A fourth planet came into range, was checked and left behind.

  And what, he wondered, was the “great discovery”? If not the faster-than-light drive, what could it be? More than likely a philosophical discovery. The way man could live in peace, or something like that.

  Then why wasn’t he supposed to mention it?

  A screen flashed, showing the oxygen content of the fifth planet. Ellis ignored it, then looked up as generators deep in the body of the ship hummed into life.

  Prepare for landing, the screen told him.

  His heart leaped convulsively, and Ellis had a momentary difficulty breathing.

  This was it. A terror filled him as gravitation tugged at the ship. He fought it, but the terror increased. He screamed and tore at his straps as the ship started to go perceptibly down.

  On the big screen was the blue and green of an oxygen planet.

  Then Ellis remembered something. “The emergence from deep space into a planetary system is analogous to the emergent birth-trauma.” A common reaction, he told himself, but an easily controllable one for a psychiatrist—

  A psychiatrist!

  Dr. Randolph Ellis, psychiatrist. He knew what kind of doctor he was. He searched his mind for more information, fruitlessly. That was as far as it went.

  Why had Earth sent a psychiatrist into space?

  He blacked out as the ship screamed into the atmosphere.

  Ellis recovered almost at once as the ship landed itself. Unstrapping, he switched on the vision-ports. There were vehicles coming toward the ship, filled with people.

  Human-appearing people.

  He had to make a decision now, one that would affect the rest of his time on this planet. What was he going to do? What would his course of action be?

  Ellis thought for a moment, then decided he would have to play by ear. He would extemporize. No communication would be possible until he had learned the language. After that, he would say that he was sent from Earth to...to....

  What?

  He would decide when the time came. Glancing at the screens, he saw that the atmosphere was breathable.

  The side of the ship swung open, and Ellis walked out.

  He had landed on a subcontinent called Kreld, and the inhabitants were Kreldans. Politically, the planet had reached the world-government stage, but so recently that the inhabitants still were identified with the older political divisions.

  With his photographic memory Ellis found no difficulty learning the Kreldan language, once a common basis had been established for key words. The people, of the common root Man, seemed no more foreign than some members of his own race. Ellis knew that this eventuality had been predicted. The ship would have rejected any other. The more he thought of it, the more he was certain that the mission depended on this similarity.

  Ellis learned and observed, and thought. He was due, as soon as he had mastered the tongue sufficiently, to meet the ruling council. This was a meeting he dreaded, and put off as long as he could.

  Nevertheless, the time came.

  He was ushered through the halls of the Council Building, to the door of the Main Council Room. He walked in with the projector under his arm.

  “You are most welcome, sir,” the leader of the council said. Ellis returned the salutation and presented his films. There was no discussion until everyone had seen them.

  “Then you are the last representative of your race?” the council leader asked. Ellis nodded, looking at the kindly, seamed old face.

  “Why did your people send only you?” another council member asked. “Why weren’t a man and woman sent9” The same question, Ellis thought, that I’ve been asking myself.

  “It would be impossible,” he told them, “for me to explain the psychology of my race in a few words. Our decision was contained in our very sense of being.” A meaningless lie, he thought to himself. But what else could he say?

  “You will have to explain the psychology of your race sometime,” the man said.

  Ellis nodded, looking over the faces of the council. He was able to estimate the effect of the beautifully prepared film on them; they were going to be pleasant to this last representative of a great race.

  “We are very interested in your faster-than-light drive,” another council member said. “Could you help us attain that?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Ellis said. From what he had learned, he knew that their technology was pre-atomic, several centuries behind Earth’s.

  “I am not a scientist. I have no knowledge of the drive. It was a late development.”

  “We could examine it ourselves,” a man said.

  “I don’t think that would be wise,” Ellis told him. “My people consider it inadvisable to give a planet technological products beyond their level of attainment.” So much for theory. “The engines will overload if tampered with.”

  “You say you are not a scientist,” the old leader asked pleasantly, changing the subject. “If I may ask, what are you?”

  “A psychiatrist,” Ellis said.

  They talked for hours. Ellis dodged and faked and invented, trying to fill the gaps in his knowledge. The council wanted to know about all phases of life on Earth, all the details of technological and social advances. They wondered about Earth’s method of pre-nova detection. And why had he decided to come here? And finally, in view of coming alone, was his race suicidally inclined?

  “We will wish to ask you more in the future,” the old council leader said, ending the session.

  “I shall be happy to answer anything in my power,” Ellis said.

  “That doesn’t seem to be much,” a member said.

  “Now Elgg—remember the shock this man has been through,” the council leader said. “His entire race has been destroyed. I do not believe we are being hospitable.” He turned to Ellis.

  “Sir, you have helped us immeasurably as it is. For example, now we know the possibility of controlled atomic power, we can direct research toward that goal. Of course, you will be reimbursed by the state. What would you like to do?”

  Ellis hesitated, wondering what he should say.

  “Would you like to head a museum project for Earth? A monument to your great people?”

  Was that his mission, Ellis wondered? He shook his head.

  “I am a doctor, sir. A psychiatrist. Perhaps I could help in that respect.”

  “But you don’t know our people,” the old leader said concernedly. “It would take you a lifetime to learn the nature of our tensions and problems. To learn them in sufficient intimacy to enable you to practice.”

  “True,” Ellis said. “But our races are alike. Our civilizations have taken like courses. Since I represent a more advanced psychological tradition, my methods might be of help to your doctors—”

  “Of course, Dr. Ellis. I must not make the mistake of underestimating a species that has crossed the stars.” The old leader smiled ruefully. “I myself will introduce you to the head of one of our hospitals.” The leader stood up.

  “If you will come with me.”

  Ellis followed, with his heart pounding. His mission must have something to do with psychiatry. Why else send a psychiatrist?

  But he still didn’t know what he was supposed to do.

  And to make it worse, he could remember practically none of his psychiatric background.

  “I think that takes care of all the testing apparatus,” the doctor said, looking at Ellis from behind steel-rimmed glasses. He was young, moon-faced, and eager to learn from the older civilization of Earth.

  “Can you suggest
any improvements?” he asked.

  “I’ll have to look over the setup more closely,” Ellis said, following the doctor down a long, pale-blue corridor. The testing apparatus had struck a complete blank.

  “I don’t have to tell you how eager I am for this opportunity,” the doctor said. “I have no doubt that you Terrans were able to discover many of the secrets of the mind.”

  “Oh, yes,” Ellis said.

  “Down this way we have the wards,” the doctor said. “Would you care to see them?”

  “Fine.” Ellis followed the doctor, biting his lip angrily. His memory was still gone. He had no more psychiatric knowledge than a poorly informed layman. Unless something happened soon, he would be forced to admit his amnesia.

  “In this room,” the doctor said, “we have several quiet cases.” Ellis followed him in, and looked at the dull, lifeless faces of three patients.

  “Catatonic,” the doctor said, pointing to the first man. “I don’t suppose you have a cure for that’“ He smiled good-naturedly.

  Ellis didn’t answer. Another memory had popped into his mind. It was just a few lines of conversation.

  “But it is ethical?” he had asked. In a room like this, on Earth.

  “Of course,” someone had answered. “We won’t tamper with the normals. But the idiots, the criminally insane—the psychotics who could never use their minds anyhow—it isn’t as though we were robbing them of anything. It’s a mercy, really—”

  Just that much. He didn’t know to whom he had been talking. Another doctor, probably. They had been discussing some new method of dealing with defectives. A new cure? It seemed possible. A drastic one, from the content.

  “Have you found a cure for it?” the moon-faced doctor asked again.

  “Yes. Yes, we have,” Ellis said, taking his nerve in both hands. The doctor stepped back and stared.

  “But you couldn’t! You can’t repair a brain where there’s organic damage—deterioration, or lack of development—” He checked himself.

  “But listen to me, telling you. Go ahead, doctor.”

  Ellis looked at the man in the first bed. “Get me some assistants, doctor.” The doctor hesitated, then hurried out of the room.

  Ellis bent over the catatonic and looked at his face. He wasn’t sure of what he was doing, but he reached out and touched the man’s forehead with his finger.

  Something in Ellis’s mind clicked.

  The catatonic collapsed.

  Ellis waited, but nothing seemed to be happening. He walked over to the second patient and repeated the operation.

  That one collapsed also, and the one after him.

  The doctor came back, with two wide-eyed helpers. “What’s happening here?” he asked. “What have you done?”

  “I don’t know if our methods will work on your people,” Ellis bluffed. “Please leave me alone—completely alone for a little while. The concentration necessary—”

  The doctor started to say something, changed his mind and left quietly, taking the assistants with him.

  Sweating, Ellis examined the pulse of the first man. It was still beating. He straightened and started to pace the room.

  He had a power of some sort. He could knock a psychotic flat on his back. Fine. Nerves—connections. He wished he could remember how many nerve connections there were in the human brain. Some fantastic number-, ten to the twenty-fifth to the tenth? No, that didn’t seem right. But a fantastic number.

  What did it matter? It mattered, he was certain.

  The first man groaned and sat up. Ellis walked over to him. The man felt his head, and groaned again.

  His own personal shock therapy, Ellis thought. Perhaps Earth had discovered the answer to insanity. As a last gift to the universe, they had sent him out, to heal—

  “How do you feel?” he asked the patient.

  “Not bad,” the man answered—in English!

  “What did you say?” Ellis gasped. He wondered if there had been a thought-transfer of some sort. Had he given the man his own grasp of English? Let’s see, if you reshunted the load from the damaged nerves to unused ones—

  “I feel fine, Doc. Good work. We weren’t sure if that haywire and cardboard ship would hold together, but as I told you, it was the best we could do under the—”

  “Who are you?”

  The man climbed out of bed and looked around.

  “Are the natives gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Haines, Representative of Earth. What’s the matter with you, Ellis?”

  The other men were reviving now.

  “And they—”

  “Dr. Clitell.”

  “Fred Anderson.”

  The man who called himself Haines looked over his body carefully. “You might have found a better host for me, Ellis. For old time’s sake. But no matter. What’s the matter, man?”

  Ellis explained about his amnesia.

  “Didn’t you get the note?”

  Ellis told them everything.

  “We’ll get your memory back, don’t worry,” Haines said. “It feels good to have a body again. Hold it.”

  The door opened and the young doctor peered in. He saw the patients and let out a shout.

  “You did it! You are able—”

  “Please, doctor,” Ellis snapped. “No sudden noises. I must ask not to be disturbed for at least another hour.”

  “Of course,” the doctor said respectfully, withdrew his face and closed the door.

  “How was it possible?” Ellis asked, looking at the three men. “I don’t understand—”

  “The great discovery,” Haines said. “Surely you remember that? You worked on it. No? Explain, Anderson.”

  The third man walked over slowly. Ellis noticed that the vacuous faces were beginning to tighten already, shaped by the minds in back of them.

  “Don’t you remember, Ellis, the research on personality factors?”

  Ellis shook his head.

  “You were looking for the lowest common denominator of human-life-and-personality. The source, if you wish. The research actually started about a hundred years ago, after Orgell found that personality was independent of body, although influenced and modified by it. Remember now?”

  “No. Go on.”

  “To keep it simple, you—and about thirty others—found that the lowest indivisible unit of personality was an independent non-material substance. You named it the M molecule. It is a complex mental pattern.”

  “Mental?”

  “Nonmaterial, then,” Anderson said. “It can be transferred from host to host.”

  “Sounds like possession,” Ellis said.

  Anderson, noticing a mirror in a comer of the room, walked over to examine his new face. He shuddered when he saw it, and wiped saliva from its lips.

  “The old myths of spirit-possession aren’t so far off,” Dr. Clitell said. He was the only one wearing his body with any sort of ease. “Some people have always been able to separate their minds from their bodies. Astral projection, and that sort of thing. It wasn’t until recently that the personality was localized and an invariant separation-resynthesis procedure adopted.”

  “Does that mean you’re immortal?” Ellis asked.

  “Oh, no!” Anderson said, walking over. He grimaced, trying to check his host’s unconscious drool. “The personality has a definite life span. It’s somewhat longer than the body’s, of course, but still definitely within limits.” He succeeded in stopping the flow. “However, it can be stored dormant almost indefinitely.”

  “And what better place,” Haines put in, “for storing a non-material molecule than your own mind? Your nerve connections have been harboring us all along, Ellis. There’s plenty of room there. The number of connections in a human brain have been calculated at ten to the—”

  “I remember that part,” Ellis said. “I’m beginning to understand.” He knew why he had been chosen. A psychiatrist would be needed for this job, to gain admittance to the hosts.
He had been especially trained. Of course the Kreldans couldn’t be told yet about the mission or the M molecule. They wouldn’t take kindly to their people—even the defectives—being possessed by Earthmen.

  “Look at this,” Haines said. Fascinated, he was bending his fingers backwards. He had discovered that his host was double-jointed. The other two men were trying out their bodies in the manner of a man testing a horse. They flexed their arms, bunched their muscles, practiced walking.

  “But,” Ellis asked, “how will the race...I mean, how about women?”

  “Get more hosts,” Haines told him, still trying out his fingers. “Male and female. You’re going to be the greatest doctor on this planet. Every defective will be brought to you for cure. Of course, we’re all in on the secret. No one’s going to spill before the right time.” He paused and grinned. “Ellis—do you realize what this means? Earth isn’t dead! She’ll live again.”

  Ellis nodded. He was having difficulty identifying the large, bland Haines in the film with the shrill-voiced scarecrow in front of him. It would take time for all of them, he knew, and a good deal of readjustment.

  “We’d better get to work,” Anderson said. “After you have the defectives on this planet serviced, we’ll refuel your ship and send you on.”

  “Where?” Ellis asked. “To another planet?”

  “Of course. There are probably only a few million hosts on this one, since we’re not touching normals.”

  “Only! But how many people have I stored?”

  There was the sound of voices in the hall.

  “You really are a case,” Haines said, amused. “Back into bed, men—I think I hear that doctor. How many? The population of Earth was about four billion. You have all of them.”

  FOOL’S MATE

  The players met, on the great, timeless board of space. The glittering dots that were the pieces swam in their separate patterns. In that configuration at the beginning, even before the first move was made, the outcome of the game was determined.

  Both players saw, and knew which had won. But they playedon.

  Because the game had to be played out.

  “Nielson!”

  Lieutenant Nielson sat in front of his gunfire board with an idyllic smile on his face. He didn’t look up.