Turn Left at Thursday (1961) SSC

by Frederik Pohl

  "I remember the w-words," Dunlop said, and quoted from the conclusion. He didn't stutter at all:

  "'It is therefore to be inferred that the Martian paraprimates at one time possessed a mature culture comparable to the most sophisticated milieux of our own planet. The artifacts and structural remains were not created by another race. Perhaps there is a correlation with the so-called Shternweiser Anomaly, when conjecturally an explosion of planetary proportions depleted the Martian water supply.'"

  LaFitte interrupted: "Shternweiser! You know, I had forgotten his name. It's been a long time. But Shternweiser's paper suggested that Mars might have lost its water in our own historical times—and then the rest was easy!"

  Dunlop finished his quotation:

  "'In conjunction, these factors inescapably suggest a pattern. The Martian paraprimates require an aqueous phase for development from grub to imago, as in many terrestrial invertebrates. Yet there has not been sufficient free water on the surface of Mars since the time of the Shternweiser explosion theory. It seems likely, therefore, that the present examples surviving are mere sexed grubs and that the adult Martian paraprimate does not exist in vivo, though its historical existence is attested by the remarkable examples left of their work.'"

  "And then," finished Dunlop, "you b-began to realize what you had here. And you d-destroyed all the copies. All, th-that is, b-but one."

  It was working! It was all working the way it should!

  LaFitte would have thrown him out long ago, of course, if he had dared. He didn't dare. He knew that Dunlop had followed the long, crooked trail of evidence to its end.

  Every invention that bore the name LaFitte had come from a Martian mind.

  The fact that the paper was suppressed was the first clue. Why suppress it? The name attached to the paper was the second—though it had taken an effort of the imagination to connect a puny B.S. with the head of LaFitte Enterprises.

  And all the other clues had come painfully and laboriously along the trail that led past Miss Reidy's room at the Library, the Space Exploration wing of the Smithsonian, the Hall of Extraterrestrial Zoo-forms at the Museum of Natural History, and a thousand dusty chambers of learning all over the country.

  LaFitte sighed. "And so you know it all, Mr. Dunlop. You've come a long way."

  He poured himself a gentlemanly film of brandy in a large inhaler and warmed it with his breath. He said meditatively: "You did a lot of work, but, of course, I did more. I had to go to Mars, for one thing."

  "The S-Solar Argosy," Dunlop supplied promptly.

  LaFitte raised his eyebrows. "That thorough? I suppose you realize, then, that the crash of the Solar Argosy was not an accident. I had to cover up the fact that I was bringing a young Martian back to Earth. It wasn't easy. And even so, once I had him here, that was only half the battle. It is quite difficult to raise an exogenous life-form on Earth."

  He sipped a drop of the brandy and leaned forward earnestly. "I had to let a Martian develop. It meant giving him an aqueous environment, as close as I could manage to what must have been the conditions on Mars before the Shternweiser event. All guesswork, Mr. Dunlop! I can only say that luck was with me. And even then—why, think of yourself as a baby. Suppose your mother had abandoned you, kicking and wetting your diaper, on Jupiter. And suppose that some curious-shaped creature that resembled Mommy about as much as your mother resembled a tree then took over your raising."

  He shook his head solemnly. "Spock was no help at all. The problem of discipline! The toilet training! And then I had nothing but a naked mind, so to speak. The Martian adult mind is great, but it needs to be filled with knowledge before it can create, and that, Mr. Dunlop, in itself took me six difficult years."

  He stood up. "Well," he said, "suppose you tell me what you want."

  Dunlop, caught off base, stammered terribly: "I w-w-want half of the tuh-of the tub—"

  "You want half of the take?"

  "That's rah-that's—"

  "I understand. In order to keep my secret, you want me to give you half of everything I earn from my Martian's inventions. And if I don't agree?"

  Dunlop said, suddenly panicked: "But you must! If I t-t-tell your secret, anyone can do the same!"

  LaFitte said reasonably: "But I already have my money, Mr. Dunlop. No, that's not enough of an inducement . . . But," he said after a moment, "I doubt that such a consideration will persuade you to keep still. And, in fact, I do want this matter kept confidential. After all, six men died in the crash of theSolar Argosy, and on that sort of thing there is no statute of limitations."

  He politely touched Dunlop's arm. "Come along. You deduced there was a Martian in this house? Let me show you how right you were."

  All the way down a long carpeted corridor, Dunlop kept hearing little clicks and rustles that seemed to come from the wall. "Are those your b-bodyguards, LaFitte? Don't try any tricks!"

  LaFitte shrugged. "Come on out, boys," he said without raising his voice; and a few feet ahead of them a panel opened and Death and Chlorophyll stepped through.

  "Sorry about that other business, Mr. Dunlop," said Chlorophyll.

  "No hard f-feelings," said Dunlop.

  LaFitte stopped before a door with double locks. He spun the tumblers and the door opened into a dark, dank room.

  "V-r-r-roooom, v-r-r-room." It sounded like a huge deep rumble from inside the room.

  Dunlop's pupils slowly expanded to admit more light, and he began to recognize shapes.

  In the room was a sort of palisade of steel bars. Behind them, chained to a stake, was—

  A Martian!

  Chained?

  Yes, it was chained and cuffed. What could only be the key hung where the Martian would be able to see it always but reach it never. Dunlop swallowed, staring. The Martians in Fortescue's photographs were slimy, ropy, ugly creatures like thinned-out sea anemones, man-tall and headless. The chained creature that thundered at him now was like those Martians only as a frog is like a tadpole. It possessed a head, round-domed, with staring eyes. It possessed a mouth that clacked open and shut on great square teeth.

  "V-r-r-room," it roared, and then Dunlop listened more closely. It was not a wordless lion's bellow. It was English! The creature was talking to them; it was only the Earth's thick atmosphere that made it boom. "Who are you?" it croaked in a slobbery-drunk Chaliapin's boom.

  Dunlop said faintly: "God b-bless." Inside that hideous skull was the brain that had created for LaFitte the Solar Transformer, the Ion-Exchange Self-Powered Water Still, the LaFitte Negative-Impedance Transducer, and a thousand other great inventions. It was not a Martian Dunlop was looking at; it was a magic lamp that would bring him endless fortune. But it was an ugly nightmare.

  "So," said LaFitte. "And what do you think now, Mr. Dunlop? Don't you think I did something great? Perhaps the Still and the Transducer were his invention, not mine. But I invented him."

  Dunlop pulled himself together. "Y-yes," he said, bobbing his head. He had a concept of LaFitte as a sort of storybook blackmail victim, who needed only a leer, a whisper and the Papers to start disgorging billions. It had not occurred to him that LaFitte would take honest pride in what he had done. Now, knowing it, Dunlop saw, or thought he saw, a better tactic.

  He said instantly: "Great? N-No, LaFitte, it's more than that. I am simply amazed that you brought him up without, say, r-rickets. Or juvenile delinquency. Or whatever Martians might get, lacking proper care."

  LaFitte looked pleased. "Well, let's get down to business. You want to become an equal partner in LaFitte Enterprises; is that what you're asking for?"

  Dunlop shrugged. He didn't have to answer. That was fortunate; in a situation as tense as this one, he couldn't have spoken at all.

  LaFitte said cheerfully: "Why not? Who needs all this? Besides, some new blood in the firm might perk things up." He gazed benevolently at the Martian, who quailed. "Our friend here has been lethargic lately. All right, I'll make you work for it, but you can have
half."

  "Th-Th-Thank—"

  "You're welcome, Dunlop. How shall we do it? I don't suppose you'd care to take my word—"

  Dunlop smiled.

  LaFitte was not offended. "Very well, we'll put it in writing. I'll have my attorneys draw something up. I suppose you have a lawyer for them to get in touch with?" He snapped his fingers. Death stepped brightly forward with a silver pencil and Chlorophyll with a pad.

  "G-G-Good," said Dunlop, terribly eager. "My l-lawyer is P. George Metzger, and he's in the Empire State Building, forty-first fl—"

  "Fool!" roared the Martian with terrible glee. LaFitte wrote quickly and folded the paper into a neat square. He handed it to the man who smelled of chlorophyll chewing gum.

  Dunlop said desperately: "That's not the s-same lawyer."

  LaFitte waited politely. "Not what lawyer?"

  "My other lawyer is the one that has the p-p-papers."

  LaFitte shook his head and smiled.

  Dunlop sobbed. He couldn't help it. Before his eyes a billion dollars had vanished, and the premium on his life-insurance policy had run out. They had Metzger's name. They knew where to find the fat manila envelope that contained the sum of eight years' work.

  Chlorophyll, or Death, or any of LaFitte's hundreds of confidential helpers, would go to Metzger's office, and perhaps present phony court orders or bull a way through, a handkerchief over the face and a gun in the hand. One way or another they would find the papers. The sort of organization that LaFitte owned would surely not be baffled by the office safe of a recent ex-law clerk, now in his first practice.

  Dunlop sobbed again, wishing he had not economized on lawyers; but it really made no difference. LaFitte knew where the papers were kept and he would get them. It remained only for him to erase the last copy of the information—that is, the copy in the head of Hector Dunlop.

  Chlorophyll tucked the note in his pocket and left. Death patted the bulge under his arm and looked at LaFitte.

  "Not here," said LaFitte.

  Dunlop took a deep breath.

  "G-Good-bye, Martian," he said sadly, and turned toward the door. Behind him the thick, hateful voice laughed.

  "You're taking this very well," LaFitte said in surprise.

  Dunlop shrugged and stepped aside to let LaFitte precede him through the doorway.

  "What else can I d-do?" he said. "You have me cold. Only—" The Death man was through the door, and so was LaFitte, half-turned politely to listen to Dunlop. Dunlop caught the edge of the door, hesitated, smiled and leaped back, slamming it. He found a lock and turned it. "Only you have to c-catch me first!" he yelled through the door.

  Behind him the Martian laughed like a wounded whale.

  "You were very good," complimented the thick, tolling voice.

  "It was a matter of s-simple s-self-defense," said Dunlop.

  He could hear noises in the corridor, but there was time. "N-Now! Come, Martian! We're going to get away from LaFitte. You're coming w-with me, because he won't dare shoot you and—and certainly you, with your great mind, can find a way for us both to escape."

  The Martian said in a thick sulky voice: "I've tried."

  "But I can help! Isn't that the k-k-key?"

  He clawed the bright bit of metal off the wall. There was a lock on the door of steel bars, but the key opened it. The Martian was just inside, ropy arms waving.

  "V-r-r-room," it rumbled, eyes like snake's eyes staring at Dunlop.

  "Speak more c-clearly," Dunlop requested impatiently, twisting the key out of the lock.

  "I said," repeated the thick drawl, "I've been waiting for you."

  "Of course. What a t-terrible life you've led!"

  Crash went the door behind him; Dunlop didn't dare look. And this key insisted on sticking in its lock! But he freed it and leaped to the Martian's side—at least there they would not dare fire, for fear of destroying their meal-ticket!

  "You c-can get us out of here," Dunlop panted, fumbling for the lock on the Martian's ankle cuff and gagging. (It was true. They did smell like rotting fish.) "B-but you must be strong! LaFitte has been a father to you, but what a f-false f-father! Feel no loyalty to him, Martian. He made you his slave, even if he d-did keep you healthy and s-sane."

  And behind him LaFitte cleared his throat. "But I didn't," he observed. "I didn't keep him sane."

  "No," rumbled the thick, slow Martian voice. "No, he didn't."

  The ropes that smelled like rotting fish closed lovingly and lethally around Dunlop.

  Third Offense

  Is this why history is so untidy .... it is being used as a social sewage system?

  One minute Roykin was in the Web and it was beginning to vibrate and get hot. And then red lightnings flashed and crashed, and then he was naked, on dusty ground, under a pale winter sun. The wind was knifely cold.

  Roykin stood up and looked angrily around.

  A hoarse voice shouted at him, a voice like Grillard’s voice, in a language he didn’t understand. Grillard had all of stuffy male wrath in his voice when he talked to Roykin, and so had this voice.

  But it was not Grillard. It was sobering. Roykin’s anger chilled as quickly as his body, for this was no place for anger. He looked around him and what he saw made him momentarily afraid.

  Bare dirt was underfoot.

  A frozen sky was overhead.

  Low wooden barracks surrounded him.

  Nearby was a clot of naked men with doomed and opaque faces. They were looking at him. An irregular crescent of men in brown uniforms, splashed jagged black-and-white at the shoulders, surrounded them all. The uniformed men were looking at him too.

  Roykin thought anxiously: Curse Grillard, what sort of place is this?

  It was a cold place that stank with a thick, pungent stink of sweat and sickness. It was a lot worse than the galleys, Roykin admitted, and at the. time he had thought that there would never be anything worse. But that had been his first offense. Naturally this would be worse; Roykin could trust Grillard to see to that...

  A man in a brown uniform stepped forward and struck him on the head with an eighteen-inch club.

  The blow floored Roykin.

  He climbed to his feet with the merely tiresome sensation of physical pain filling his skull like a breath swelling a balloon.

  The man was standing over him still. There was no passion in his face, Roykin noticed. He looked at Roykin as a carpenter might look at a nailhead. Perhaps the nailhead would need another blow and perhaps not, but he wasn’t angry at the nail.

  Hurriedly, Roykin scrambled over to the knot of naked men. They marched off in the shivering cold. The man with the club looked emptily after.

  The line of bareskinned men passed a sign, with lettering on it that was hooked curlicues and straggling lines. Roykin couldn’t read it very well, partly because it wasn’t in his own language and partly because, although the letters were Roykin’s familiar ABCs, they were more ornate than he was used to.

  But underneath the more complicated words was one simple one. He read it:

  BELSEN

  Roykin slept that night on a board floor, with cold air coming up between the cracks.

  The smell was appalling. It was a fetid slaughterhouse stench, like the hot steamy gusts from a rendering plant, but it wasn’t hot — it was cold as old ice. It was very difficult for Roykin to get to sleep, particularly because a baby was crying annoyingly near his ear. The baby wept and wept.

  Curse Grillard, Roykin thought in fatigue. His head still hurt badly and that was an inconvenience.

  Still... it wasn’t so bad. Roykin had always been able to adjust himself to whatever came along; it was the thing he prided himself on. At least he wasn’t pushing an eighteen-foot oar, as in the galleys;that was bad, but he had adjusted to that well enough, though it was work. Roykin didn’t like work. And they didn’t seem to care if the prisoners worked or not in this place, whatever this place was, and that in itself was an improvement. Roykin curled up an
d set his mind to trying to go to sleep; but the crying baby bothered him.

  Roykin propped himself up and looked around.

  There was no baby. It was a man, ancient as Methuselah’s father, with arms like pipestems and a face hacked out of dirty bone — no flesh, no softness, stretched rock-tight. And his eyes were closed and he was crying, crying.

  Roykin could think of nothing that he could do or wanted to do about it, and accordingly returned to the effort to go to sleep. But he remembered things drowsily: things from another place and time. Grillard, furiously angry, hissing into the microphone: “You don’t deserve another chance, Roykin. You’ve had chance after chance, and what do you make of them?”

  “I don’t like your chances,” said Roykin.

  “The world doesn’t like you, Roykin! You’re antisocial. You’ve stolen. You’ve hurt people. What are we to do? Corrective school?”

  “I don’t like your school.”

  “All right. That leaves only one thing.” Bang came the gavel, and the microphone enlarged the sound flatly. “Second offense, thirty days. Take him away.”

  And the greasy-feelered police, sparkling blue from the ends of their sensors, wrapped themselves around Roykin and rolled him away to the Web.

  Roykin, remembering, fell asleep to dream of Grillard and— with fond contempt —of Zenomia, who had watched at the Web as he went and would be waiting at the Web as he returned. Joke on her. Joke on Grillard — great joke!

  For this to Grillard was punishment, designed to correct, this Web-borne transference to a place of punishment and pain. But Roykin had never been afraid of pain; and to Roykin pain had never been punishment.

  There was no more parading around naked, though the filth that was in the clothing Roykin received was worse than bare skin. Roykin needed someone to talk to, and in time found someone —no, not one of his own people, but what was called a Spaniard. The language he spoke was not the inflected loan-worded Spanish Roykin was used to, but an earlier version; still, Roykin could make himself understood and could understand, though some of the words of the jailers were more familiar than the Spanish. And he had found out where he was.