On the Planet of Bottled Brains

by Harry Harrison

  "I don't know what's the matter with those people," Ham said. Chewgumma gestured urgently at the radiotelephone. The red light was glowing, showing that call-holding was holding a call.

  Duo punched the receive key and snapped, "Whoever it is, make it snappy. We're right in the middle of an escape."

  "Is Bill there?" a well-modulated feminine voice said in the unmistakable intonations of Illyria, the plucky backwoods nurse who had helped Bill at considerable discomfort and even danger to herself.

  "I got no time for personal calls," Duo said.

  "Bill's there, isn't he? I just want you to give him a message."

  "Hey," Bill cried, "give me that. It's Illyria!"

  "I got no time for this," Duo grated.

  "— bad boy, bad boy —"

  "Illyria!" Bill cried, lunging for the radiotelephone as Ham Duo was in the act of hanging it up.

  "Bill my precious! Is it really you?"

  The Swinglis* by now had reached the spaceship and formed a ring around it. They shook their fists at the ship and made other threatening gestures. The bulldozer had been out to work nearby. It was beginning to dig a vast pit. You didn't need a computer to figure out that the Swinglis* meant to tip Duo's spaceship into the pit, and probably cover it up with the remaining dirt. And although this was no real threat to the ship constructed as it was out of 5.1 asteroid crystalline steel, and with force fields as well, it was well known that Ham Duo hated to get his ship all mucked up. Since there are no abrasives in space, except for very large ones like meteors, and these are worthless for cleansing purposes, it meant he would have to fly around with a filthy spaceship and endure the taunts of his fellow space pirates. Now, for the first time, Ham could see what embarrassment meant to a Swingli*. His fingers danced on the computer keyboard, trying to get the systems fired up before the Swinglis* could carry out their threat.

  He noticed that another mob of Swinglis* was dragging a hose out from the city. Were they going to wash his ship down?

  Duo doubted it. They had some nasty scheme in their pointy little heads.

  "Sweetheart, where are you?" Illyria asked.

  "— bad boy, bad boy —"

  "On the planet Rathbone," Bill roared.

  "You don't have to scream at me."

  "Sorry. It's because this reprimand is talking so loud I can't hear anything."

  "Did you say reprimand? What is a reprimand doing in your ear?"

  "It's a little difficult for me to explain just now," Bill said. "Illyria, where are you? How can I find you? Are you all right"

  "I'm fine, Bill," Illyria said. "It's a good thing that secret agent, CIA, thought of the Jansenite Maneuver. There was no psychic breathing space for the two of us in that tiny Chinger control room."

  Ham Duo scowled ferociously as the power dials flipped up and down erratically. "Can't you get me steady power on this thing?" he shouted. The Kookie howled back something about pinpoint erosion factors and a lack of platinum rebreathers. "Try to fake it," Ham told him. "I can't get any life like this."

  Bill said to Illyria, "What planet was that?"

  "Royo. Meet me there, Bill. I have some wonderful surprises for you."

  "Booze?" Bill asked hopefully.

  "And sex."

  "Wow!" said Bill. "The big two of the pleasure principle! How do you know that, Illyria?"

  "I know, don't ask questions, trust me."

  "But explain it to me."

  "—o time," Illyria said. "Can't you hear how our transmission is fading? I have no time to go into the plans of the Alien Historian, or to tell you how I came to learn them. Just get away from there, Bill!"

  "How am I supposed to do that? Build my own spaceship?"

  "You must use the Disruptor," she said.

  "How can I be expected to learn how to use a gadget like that in the probably damned little time available to me? Illyria, can't the computer help?"

  "Believe me," she said, "the computer has its own problems."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Your friend Splock. You should see what a mess he's made."

  "What's going on? Tell me what's happening?"

  "All right," Illyria said, "you want conversation, you get conversation. When Captain Dirk brought the starship Gumption back to normal space, there was, as you'd expect, a showdown between him and the Counter-Dirk. Only it didn't go as you'd expect."

  "How am I supposed to suspect it would go?"

  "Bill, try to join me, and hurry, hurry —" Illyria's voice had been growing increasingly faint. Now it shrank to a whisper, and then it faded entirely. Bill hung up. What Illyria had said was disturbing. It was true that he owed her his life, still she was getting more than a little pushy. She seemed to be taking a lot for granted for a woman who hadn't even shown herself yet in anything like human form. She said she loved him; but did she? The training sergeants back at base camp had warned about the danger of loving or being loved by an alien. "You can never tell if they mean it or not," old Sergeant Adler had told him. "They're wily, these aliens. And how do you know what they mean by love? At least six alien races consume their mate after copulation. So you may start out looking for love and end up as your girlfriend's breakfast. There ain't no future in that."

  Chewgumma, meanwhile, shouted to Duo that he had found the main problem in the ship's energy system.

  "That's really great, you furry moron," Duo thundered. "But if you can't do something about it pretty quick, it's all academic." For the Swinglis* had brought up the hose and begun spraying in a carefully-marked rectangle around the spaceship. Where they sprayed, a glittering white gas emerged and quickly hardened into a stone of about the weight of pumice. Duo could see that the Swinglis* were encasing the ship in this substance, building a building around them. And although it seemed ridiculous to think that the light stone could seriously impede the thruster jets of the spacecraft, still, they must have had something in mind. Aliens were notorious for having tricks up their sleeves. Those that had sleeves, that is. Or arms. And a race like the Swinglis*, who took to embarrassment so badly, could be counted upon to be as ingenious as they were vindictive.

  Then there was a sparkle of electrical sparks as Chewgumma plugged a 234V Thruster into the RUF socket. The dials on Ham's switchboard swung up into healthy readings and held steady. The ship lifted, and Ham Duo and Chewgumma let out a simultaneous cheer.

  Bill noticed at that moment that the Disruptor was not being watched by either Duo or Chewgumma. It occurred to him that this was a very good chance to get it, if he were planning to do that at any time in the near future at all. He edged closer, reasoning that he was going to have to act fast, because Duo was not apt to approve of Bill's taking the thing.

  As his hand closed on it, all hell broke loose.

  The Swinglis* had brought up several more hoses and a large machine with two U-shaped nozzles that Duo immediately recognized as a Mark IV Industrial Strength Stone Hardener. Duo's face hardened itself as he felt the ship's lift slackening, as it responded to the stone hardening around its basal jets. He threw in the emergency rocket control — it was vital not to get frozen in place — and the ship began to vibrate unpleasantly. The daylight entering through the perspex ports was dimming as the building was constructed about them.

  Bill lifted the Disruptor from its magnetic clamp and looked it over. Its lightweight steel cover slid open, revealing a small computer keyboard beneath. Aside from the regular QWERTY keyboard, there were a dozen special-function keys labeled F1 through F12, and several others marked DIN, DON, and RES. It seemed to have no power source, unless it ran on AA batteries. At that time Bill had not heard of SPT, Sympathetic Power Technology which enabled the Disruptor to slave to any power source that utilized the electromagnetic spectrum. He pressed F1 just to see if the little square screen would light up.

  The little machine began to vibrate in his hand. At the same time, the spaceship had begun lifting again, and was pushing through the hardening rock t
hat the Swinglis* were trying to encase it in. Duo looked up and noticed the Disruptor in Bill's hand. A high-pitched note was coming from it, and its screen threw out a dazzling light.

  "Put that down!" he commanded Bill.

  Bill would have been pleased to, because the sudden actions of the Disruptor had alarmed him. But the machine didn't want to be let loose of. When Bill put it down on a plotting table and tried to move away, the Disruptor moved along with him. It seemed to have its own form of propulsion, and it clung close, throwing off dazzling displays of light and making shrill metallic noises that might have been an attempt at speech.

  "Destination, please?" the Disruptor said.

  "Never mind, I've changed my mind," Bill told it.

  "Give destination at once!" the machine said, its voice loud, bullying, peremptory.

  "I don't know how to express it in proper coordinates," Bill said.

  "Stop crapping about, and just do the best you can," the Disruptor ordered.

  "— Bad boy, bad boy —" the voice of the reprimand was shrieking in his head. Not only couldn't he give any instructions, he doubted he'd be able to tie his shoelaces properly with that racket going on in his ear.

  Abruptly the noise stopped.

  "Is that better?" the Disruptor asked.

  "It's gone!" Bill cried. "What did you do?"

  "I terminated it," the Disruptor said. "Time and space aren't the only things I can vanquish. Ha-Ha-Ha!"

  "What an improvement! It's really great, I don't know how to thank you..."

  "The thought is enough. Even a simple machine enjoys a kind word."

  The Disruptor had forgotten its anger, was almost smarmy now, and insisted in explaining, at great length, how it had acted within its design limits by terminating the reprimand. Because when one travels by disruption-power, one needs all of one's wits about one.

  "I didn't know that," Bill said. "Illyria made it sound pretty easy."

  "Oh, it's not difficult," the Disruptor said. "It's easy enough. But accidents can happen, that's the problem, you see."

  "Actually," Bill said, "I hadn't quite made up my mind about going just at this time."

  "Is that a fact?" the Disruptor said, with what sounded suspiciously like sarcasm.

  "Yes, it is," Bill said quickly, not wanting to get this electronic pain-in-the-ass irritated again. "Why don't I just turn you off until I'm ready." He turned the Disruptor upside down and examined all its surfaces. There was no sign of a turn off button.

  "That's right," the Disruptor said. "I'm like the three wishes. Once you get started on the wishes you got to finish them. Same with me. Now stop crapping around and tell me where you want to go. Now."

  "It wouldn't be right. Ham Duo found you. You belong to him. He must issue the orders."

  "Listen, boychick," the Disruptor said in a slightly accented voice, "there's no question of ownership here. What we're talking about here is a matter of power. And power belongs to him who has it in his hand."

  The machine sizzled angrily and began to glow with an unearthly green glow. Bill panicked and tried to put down the Disruptor but it stuck to his hand like he was a magnet.

  "Captain Duo!" Bill shrieked in fear. "This Disruptor is acting very strangely!"

  The Disruptor chuckled mechanically. When Bill looked over to Duo, he saw that the dashing pirate commander was frozen in mid-gesture, and looked like a wax figure except that he had slightly better coloring. His Kookie friend Chewgumma, still with a hand on the energy controls, looked like a fur rug that had spent a brief time in animation and was now resting.

  Looking through a porthole, Bill could see that the ship had been arrested in mid-flight. It hung in the air about fifty feet off the ground. Down below, the mob of Swinglis* were frozen too, most of them with their bony fists raised.

  Even the double sun, setting toward Rathbone's southwestern horizon, was stopped in mid-flight.

  Only Bill was free of the thrall of frozen time. And he couldn't get the Disruptor out of his hand.

  "All right," Bill said. "I don't know what you did, but please turn it all back on again."

  "I haven't actually turned anything off, dummy," the Disruptor said. "But your act of turning me on projected us both into waiting-space. You need to tell me where you're going so I can find an appropriate time channel in which to insert us."

  "Oh, I didn't know it was as simple as that," Bill said.

  "Disruptor technology is so new that the scientists haven't had a chance to complicate it yet. Now look, I lifted your reprimand, didn't I?"

  "Yes, you did," Bill said.

  "So you maybe owe me a little favor, no?"

  "I suppose so," Bill said. "But tell me something, why do you speak with an accent?"

  "I'll tell you that," the Disruptor said, "as soon as you tell me your destination."

  Bill decided he was being silly, not taking advantage of this ingenious and obliging transportation device. And besides, he wanted to know how come the accent.

  "You know a planet named Royo?"

  The Disruptor accessed its files in a few nanoseconds and said, "Sure. Which one do you want?"

  "How many Royos are there?"

  "Five, as far as I've searched. There may be some updates coming in on my transmission line any time. I'll search those, too."

  "But how am I supposed to know which Royo it is?"

  "My dear young man, how would I know which Royo you're searching for?"

  "That accent!" Bill said. "Why?"

  "First let's figure out which Royo. Do you know anything at all about it?"

  "It's got a breathable oxygen atmosphere," Bill said, thinking, it had better have or he wasn't going there.

  "Good. That eliminates one of them."

  "I think it's got a pretty nice climate for humans," Bill said.

  "A little feeble. But I think we can cross out Royo Terminosus and Royo Vulcanische. Too cold and too hot respectively."

  "How many does that leave?" Bill asked.

  "Just a minute, let me count them again — Two! We're practically there. I speak to some degree metaphorically, of course. We haven't actually started yet."

  "I thought not," Bill said, since he could still see the same frozen figures around him, Duo, Chewgumma, and all the rest. "What do you suggest?"

  "The reason I speak with an accent," the Disruptor said, "is because I am part of a special commemorative series of automata whose voice tapes were made to sound like famous Earth scientists of the past. I have the voice of a twenty-first century Hungarian psycho-physicist named Raimundo Szekeley."

  "That explains it," Bill said. "But why are you telling me this now?"

  "Because we're going to visit both Royos and find out which one is the one you want."

  "Oh," Bill said. "But isn't that apt to be —"

  He had no time to say "dangerous". At that instant, the Disruptor started the journey.

  Chapter 9

  Many learned papers have been written on how it feels to travel by Disruptor. They are all conjecture because in our day and age the device has been banned. It was fast and efficient, but subject to unexpected side effects. Also, the transition between where you were and where you wanted to be was so sudden that it had the effect of causing time to stumble, forcing you to spend a certain amount of time in lapse-space, also known as stasis, to allow your body and internal organs to catch up with your head trip. Some people came through the Disruptor journey with a curious sensation of having left a part of themselves behind. Which was usually true. And there were many sudden screams of pain when they discovered which part it was. It has been conjectured that Disruptor travel was so rapid, it gave the self no time to gather in its various extensions in time and space. In Bill's case this was no problem, luckily, because Bill was not subject to flights of fancy.

  "Where are we?" Bill asked.

  "This is the first Royo on our list. Does it look like the right one to you?"

  Bill looked out. They were st
anding on a little promontory. Below them lay a vast city, all composed out of blue material of many shades and hues. There were steeples of many churches, and Bill could see broad boulevards and vehicles moving on the motorways. There was a single sun, and it was low in the horizon, banked in purple clouds. People moved in the streets. And big birds flapped overhead. As Bill watched, one of the birds banked and dived, plucking a person off the street and carrying him away with broad strokes of his wings. The other people paid it no attention. They kept on moving. Bill followed the direction of their movement. He saw that several of the giant birds had carried a huge trough to a plaza in the center of the city. They set it down, and Bill could see that it was filled with some greenish material.

  "What do you think?" the Disruptor asked. "This is reputed to be the brightest bird planet in the galaxy. Those aren't really people they're feeding on. They're protoplasmic robots who come in a variety of flavors. Those look like sausagemen to me, though you can't be entirely sure at this distance."

  "I don't think this is the right one," Bill said.

  In that instant Bill was aware that he was no longer there, and an instant later he knew he was somewhere else. It was true that travel by Disruptor was disrupting.

  The next planet had all browns and oranges in its landscape. There were a lot of black silhouette shapes, too, and no matter how they turned they never seemed to have any depth. There were strange sounds like voices, but Bill couldn't see who they belonged to. There was a race of cats that prowled the ancient ruins on low sea-beaches and disdained to notice the man with the machine in his hand watching them.

  "I don't think it's this one, either," Bill said. "Hell, it's not either of them! What do we do now?"

  "Courage, mon enfant," the Disruptor said. "There is always the other alternative."

  "What's that?"

  "If the answer is neither one nor two, it's bound to be three."

  "But there was no third alternative!" Bill cried.

  "There is now," the Disruptor told him.

  And just like that, Bill found himself somewhere else.