The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister

by Banister, Manly

  Spliid grunted. “Another act in the play?”

  “Yes, and badly directed. The director didn’t understand death as we do.”

  Spliid shook himself. “Now, wait…!”

  “Honest and truly. How do we think of death—most of us? We believe in somehow living on after death takes place—immortality of the soul. Can you visualize how a stage director who didn’t understand that concept would cast it?”

  “What do you think I am, a percie? Get on with it.”

  “Consider this, then. I gambled with my emotional adjustment conditioning. There was one angle I hadn’t exploited, because of that conditioning. Sex.”

  “If you are trying to tell me you unloaded the conditioning we give you,” Spliid interrupted, “I won’t believe it.”

  “No—I wouldn’t. But, in the interest of ethnological investigation, I could grab a kiss. So I did.”

  “I see,” drily.

  “Not yet, you don’t. I got no reaction. Like embracing a tree. Anyway, I kissed her. Somehow…” He hesitated. “Her garment …”

  “No wonder you made no report,” growled Spliid. “Believe me, Cliff, I’m going to have that conditioning process looked into!”

  Rowley laughed, briefly. “No need for that. It’s sound. You’ll be interested in what that slipping garment revealed.”

  “Another time, another place …”

  “I saw a perfect, living statue!”

  Spliid’s eyes alerted. “A what?”

  Spliid relaxed. “I think I know what you mean. Go on.”

  Rowley drew heavily on his pipe. A brooding look shadowed his lean face.

  “I learned about Yanek then. I learned about Tsu and Smarm and Torl and all the rest of them. If we weren’t such damned prudes, Commander, and I had flipped a sarong sooner, we’d have found everything out long ago. You’ve heard about the sinner who was told he could remain in Heaven only on condition he could pick Adam out of the crowd? He chose the only man he could find…without a navel.”

  “Maybe they lay eggs,” Spliid suggested. “Oviparous.”

  Rowley gave him a look of humorous scorn. “Do statues lay eggs?”

  Spliid’s expression cleared. “By God! Now I really understand you!”

  “The natives of Hume couldn’t reproduce in any manner. Naturally, I wanted to know why. And the answer came to me—protective coloration…camouflage!”

  “Apparent. Camouflage for what?”

  “You’ve heard the expression, if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em…?”

  “Sure, but …”

  “But suppose you can’t join ’em, either?” Rowley laughed, excitedly. “You make like something they want to protect!… Know anything about dryads, Commander?”

  Spliid snorted. “Supernatural creatures that live in trees? Dryads don’t exist!”

  “Neither do the people of Hume.”

  Spliid looked at him in such a way Rowley felt his sanity was being weighed.

  “Suppose you were a native of Hume, and some alien beings came along. You could read their minds. You’d know right off they wouldn’t recognize you as a life-form like themselves. They might move right in and destroy you without knowing it, and you would be unable to defend yourself. That was actually the situation on Hume, and we were the aliens. So the natives pretended they were a type of life-form we want to protect.”

  “How was it done?” Spliid wanted to know.

  “Mental projection. After the directors of the play read our minds, they tried to reproduce what they found there. They slipped on the points I mentioned, because those things meant little or nothing to them. But they were enough to rob the play of its semblance of reality.

  “Tsu, Smarin, Torl…even the village itself…were all imaginary—not something we thought we saw, but solidified mental projections of the thoughts the natives had gleaned from our minds.”

  “I’m just beginning to see the real value of your talents, Cliff.”

  “Thanks,” Rowley acknowledged briefly. “If we have the right to exclude inferior cultures from contact with us, a superior culture must certainly have an equal right to exclude us from contact with theirs.”

  Spliid wagged his head, half smiling. His pipe had gone out and he puffed at it without effect.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to tell me who these ‘directors’ are,” he said.

  Rowley grinned. “You won’t believe this. The directors needed something to keep their play actors busy…some logical occupation of their time. What could they find more logical—to them—than taking care of trees? Because the directors themselves are the trees—the living, intelligent forest of Hume. Fantastic, isn’t it?”

  Spliid sighed as if deeply gratified.

  “If it weren’t for one thing even more so, I’d say it was the most fantastic thing I ever heard of.”

  “What’s more fantastic than intelligent trees?”

  “Human beings,” said Spliid.

  PSI FOR PSURVIVAL

  Originally published in Saturn, July 1957.

  Seranimu fingered the book of matches and reflected upon its advertising message. Naturally, the matches bore advertising. They had come from Earth.

  Everybody in the galaxy made matches, but only the Earthmen made matches like these. Frail paper things, you could strike them under water. If you brought the match out quickly enough, it would continue to burn. Remarkable people, the Earthmen, and the artifacts of their culture were remarkable.

  The message, though, was even more remarkable than the matches. It was printed neatly, briefly, in the cramped space, in Morforese, the principal idiom of Zingu, Seranimu’s home world in the Galactic Federation.

  You can become a Mental Giant! Study at home for only 7 shrilr a month. Study, Learn the powers of Mind. Free sample Lesson; No cost, No obligation. Fill out coupon inside and return to Home Study Mind Power, Inc. Earth. (Send Cover Only—Not Matches!)

  Earth, a fabled place, thought Seranimu. If the galaxy weren’t so overpopulated that everyone’s place of residence was irrevocably fixed, he would change his to the planet Earth. There, better things were made in better ways, of better materials, by better workmen. Was it not all true, just as it said in the Earthmen’s ads? Of course it was. Just look at the refrigerator in his own kitchen—a Frigitemp from Earth. It was far and away superior to that fright Korisu had had reprofaxed in from Bolangus. Seranimu sneered.

  But that was Korisu. A trifle blunt, mentally. Could Korisu become a mental giant? Not likely. He would not be interested. Korisu was an ideal example of the devitalized culture of the Federation. He was happy on Zingu…happier than he should be, at any rate, even with such a lovely, personable wife as Anisel.

  Well, let Korisu be happy, poor fellow. He had not read and studied like Seranimu. He knew nothing about what life might be like if there were not so many people in the galaxy.

  Seranimu looked back at the matches in his hand. Free Yourself From the Shackles of Boredom, it said there. Well, he would. With a firm hand, he filled in the coupon, slipped it into an envelope and addressed it to the Earth corporation.

  Stepping across the room to the self-powered, apartment model reprofax, he dropped the envelope into the slot for mail and twisted a dial. There, it was gone. At this instant, within or without the province of Einsteinian simultaneity of events in the space-time continuum, the envelope and its contents were materializing on the planet Earth, three thousand light-years away. There would be an extra charge on his reprofax bill at the end of the month, in view of the long distance transmission.

  Reprofax was basic to galactic culture. It provided instantaneous communication between far-flung worlds; even allowed personal travel, if a man could afford it. Local transportation, however, was cheaply had by reprofax, and all
Seranimu had to do was stand on the platform on the other side to be whisked to his job in the government offices of Morfors, or to the market, or the theater, or wherever it was, locally, he desired to go.

  “There,” said Seranimu. “I have taken the first step toward becoming a Mental Giant!”

  “Becoming a what?” asked Pimo, Seranimu’s pretty wife, stepping in from the kitchen.

  “A Mental Giant,” said Seranimu, unconsciously capitalizing the words in imitation of the matchbook ad. “I have answered an ad of the Earthmen. They teach you, like school, but at home.”

  “If Earthmen are behind it,” sniffed Pimo, “it costs money. What do they teach you at home?”

  “How to become a mental giant,” repeated Seranimu. Furthermore, they do it very Cheaply—only seven shrilr a month.”

  “Seven shrilr! My God and Zingu, Seranimu, are you made of money?”

  “It does not become a lady to curse,” said Seranimu firmly. He gazed fondly into Pimo’s dark, tip-tilted eyes from his eight-foot height. “Wouldn’t you like to have a mental giant for a husband?”

  “I certainly would,” she agreed, “except I already have you, lover.”

  “And soon,” replied Seranimu, “you shall also have the other!”

  * * * *

  A culture, roughly speaking, is an agglomeration of social groups, each with its own little ax to grind. Galactic culture fitted the definition, but all the axes were the same size, shape, and degree of temper. And the edges of all were dull. Earth, that remarkable planet, was the only exception. It was not a member of the Federation. It retained freedom and independence for its people. If anything big came to pass, you knew it had originated on Earth.

  To Seranimu, galactic culture, outside of Earth, represented a vast, wriggling blob of protoplasm, rather than a civilization. There was nothing attractive in being jammed nose-to-tail as they were in cramped living quarters, in swarming so thickly in their city streets that you brushed your way through traffic. There was nothing inspiring in being chained to a government job, a mere occupation designed to keep you out of mischief and nothing else.

  Take Seranimu’s job, for instance. He was a looker. That is, his job consisted purely and simply of looking. Every day, from eight to four-thirty, Seranimu looked, with that detached interest of a government employee out of love with his job. Once a week, he turned over to his superiors a written report on his looking. That is all there was to it. The theory behind the job was simple. If a man looked long enough and hard enough, you never could tell what he might see. And why did he look, day after day, year in and year out? Well, the government had a corps of experts who did nothing but look into that, and so far, they had come up with neither the head nor the tail of it. Seranimu suspected that they never would.

  Now, he thought, things would be different. Becoming a mental giant opened up a totally new kind of life, that might lead to…what?

  The free sample lesson, when it came, was a little disappointing. But what could you expect for nothing?

  “What is that, now?” asked Pimo, over his shoulder. She had responded as soon as he to the buzz of the reprofax and the lighted screen announcing, Incoming Transmission.

  “It is my free lesson from Home Study Mind Power,” said Seranimu.

  “I know that, silly. I can read the return address on the envelope. Open it and see what’s inside.”

  Seranimu opened it and shook assorted papers into his broad palm.

  “A half a gram of iron filings, a magnet and a booklet of instructions,” he said, irritated with Pimo. “Also, an application for enrollment and an easy payment plan prospectus. What more do you want?”

  “Seven shrilr a month should buy more than that, Seranimu!”

  “I haven’t paid any seven shrilr! I haven’t even decided to take the course.”

  “Seven shrilr a month for how many months?” harped Pimo.

  “It doesn’t say.”

  “You had better find out,” Pimo warned darkly. “You know about the Earthmen!”

  “We Zinguans can still learn from them.” Seranimu returned loftily.

  “Such as how to become a mental giant,” encouraged Pimo, baiting him.

  “Exactly. What I shall do depends on the outcome of the experiment outlined here. So please stop bothering me.”

  “What are you supposed to do with that—if you don’t mind my saying so—junk?” asked Pimo.

  “Sprinkle the iron filings on a sheet of clean paper,” read Seranimu. “Hold the magnet under the paper and watch the filings arrange themselves along the lines of magnetic force as the paper is shaken lightly.”

  “That’s kid stuff,” scoffed Pimo. “Why don’t you do it?”

  “Because it says here that the magnet loses its magnetism going through the reprofax. I have to re-magnetize it first.”

  He followed directions, re-magnetized the magnet and held it under the paper, on which he had sprinkled the filings.

  “There,” he said. “Isn’t that pretty? Elementary, of course, but it illustrates quite well how a force can control matter.”

  “I hope,” sniffed Pimo, “you aren’t going to pay seven shrilr a month for that!”

  “Certainly not. There is more. It says, ‘As soon as the filings are arranged along the lines of magnetic flux, remove the magnet, straight downward.’ There, I’ve removed the magnet. See how the filings stay in place?”

  “Shake the paper,” sneered Pimo, “and they will not stay long.”

  “That is just what I shall do. First, though, I have to look at the pattern and memorize it.”

  He did so, looking with the accomplished verve of a professional. When he had the location of every last particle firmly in mind, he shook the paper.

  “It says to lay the paper on a table.” He frowned. “They should know we don’t have tables on Zingu.”

  He moved over to his “desk,” which was a cleared space in a corner, with slots in the floor for paper, pencil and other bits of bookkeeping paraphernalia. He laid the paper carefully down and squatted beside it. Pimo watched without audible comment, but her expression needed no words.

  “So what do you do now, you mental giant, you?”

  “Now,” said Seranimu with a trace of annoyance, “I rearrange the particles with the power of mind into exactly the same pattern the magnet produced.”

  He read the instructions twice, carefully. Then he fixed his glance on the particles and concentrated. His head felt unaccustomedly queer. With a barely audible rustle, the particles moved, hurrying like so many microscopic black bugs, and arranged themselves exactly—or nearly so—as they had been.

  “You did that very well, lover,” Pimo observed with satisfaction. “Now that you have had your trouble’s worth, forget the whole business.”

  “Forget it? Why, this is marvelous! You saw what I did! I didn’t touch it or anything!”

  “Yes,” said Pimo. “I saw. It was interesting, but not seven shrilr a month interesting, if you understand me. I need a new dress, and our percolator hasn’t worked fright in ages, and—”

  “Telekinesis,” Seranimu interrupted gravely, “is worth seven shrilr a month. It is worth going without a new dress and living with a malfunctioning percolator.”

  “I go without! I live with!” complained Pimo bitterly.

  “This is only a free sample lesson,” he said severely. “This they teach me for nothing. How much more for seven shrilr a month? Use your imagination! Listen to what it says here. ‘If you do not at first succeed in making the particles move, do not worry. Further lessons in this course contain valuable information that will make the feat easy for you.’ They don’t expect me to do it right off, like I did. Wait till I tell them. I’ll write…”

  “Seven shrilr,” murmured Pimo sad
ly. “Seven shrilr a month!”

  Home Study Mind Power, Inc., Earth, in the person of Mr. Flanagan, Seranimu’s correspondence instructor, seemed unimpressed by the claim of success. Flanagan replied, writing with a note of weariness, urging Seranimu to study, to become adept, to let no amount of failure dismay him. He sounded, Seranimu thought, as if he had not even read the letter Seranimu wrote. He had noticed the, seven shrilr, though. The reply also brought Lesson Two.

  Months went by, and seven shrilr with each of them. Lesson followed lesson. Telepathy was the one that bothered Seranimu. Not that it was hard. It was very easy, but the course warned against using it. A good way to keep your friends, said the text, is not to practice this ability on them. In spite of the warning, Seranimu dared to read Pimo’s mind. After that, he kept his mindreading to himself, feeling somewhat injured. Pimo’s opinion of his investigations was bad enough when tempered with verbal expression.

  There were lessons in precognition, dowsing, crystal gazing, transmutation of elements, levitation and teleportation. Some were complex, tricky subjects, and had several lessons devoted to them.

  Seranimu not only studied, he learned. His studies opened up a whole new plane of existence. Flanagan of Home Study Mind Power, Inc., Earth, remained unimpressed, showered him with exhortations to study, learn, become adept in spite of all apparent failure.

  * * * *

  Seranimu’s friend Korisu lived across the hall in the communal pletsch that was home to thousands of their kind. Sometimes, Seranimu asked himself what he saw in Korisu. The man kept his eyes shut and his mind absolutely closed. Of course, he played a good hand of prej, and Anisel, Korisu’s wife, was no mean antagonist in the game, either. Moreover, Seranimu thought Anisel quite pretty. He enjoyed having her in their prej games.

  They played this time in Seranimu’s apartment. Korisu dealt out the plastic disks while Pimo marked up the preceding hand on the score sheet.