Another World

by Gardner Duzois

  “I know you,” maintained the Pilgrim mountainously. “You are ignorant Children who have abused the Afternoon given to you on Earth. You have marred and ruined and warped everything you have touched.”

  “No, no,” Ralpha protested—as he set in new bones for his old damaged ones—“You do not understand. We have advanced you a thousand of your years in one of our afternoons. Consider the Centuries we have saved you! It’s as though we had increased your life by that thousand years.”

  “We have all the time there is,” said the Pilgrim solidly. “We were well and seriously along our road, and it was not so crooked as the one you have brought us over. You have broken our sequence with your meddling. You’ve set us back more ways than you’ve advanced us. You’ve shattered our Unity.”

  “Pigs have unity!” Joan shouted. “We’ve brought you diversity. Think deep. Consider all the machines we have showed you, the building and the technique. I can name you a thousand things we’ve given you. You will never be the same again.”

  “True. We will never be the same,” said the Pilgrim. “You may not be an unmixed curse. I’m a plain man and I don’t know. Surety is one of the things you’ve lost us. But you befouled us. You played the game of Immoralities and taught it to us earthlings.”

  “You had it already,” Laurie insisted. “We only brought elegance instead of piggishness to its practice.” Immoralities was Laurie’s own game, and she didn’t like to hear it slighted.

  “You have killed many thousands of us in your battles,” said the Pilgrim. “You’re a bitter fruit—sweet at the first taste only.”

  “You would yourselves have killed the same numbers in battles, and the battles wouldn’t have been so good,” said Michael. “Do you not realize that we are the higher race? We have roots of great antiquity.”

  “We have roots older than antiquity,” averred the Pilgrim. “You are wicked Children without compassion.”

  “Compassion? For the Eretzi?” shouted Lonnie in disbelief.

  “Do you have compassion for mice?” demanded Ralpha.

  “Yes. I have compassion for mice,” the Pilgrim said softly.

  “I make a guess,” Ralpha shot in shrewdly after they had all repaired their damaged bodies. “You travel as a Pilgrim, and Pilgrims sometimes come from very far away. You are not Eretzi. You are one of the Fathers from Home going in the guise of an Eretzi Pilgrim. You have this routine so that sometimes one of you comes to this world—and to every world—to see how it goes. You may have come to investigate an event said to have happened on Eretz a day ago.”

  Ralpha did not mean an Eretzi day ago, but a day ago at Home. The High Road they were on was in Coele-Syria not far from where the Event was thought to have happened, and Ralpha pursued his point:

  “You are no Eretzi, or you would not dare to confront us, knowing what we are.”

  “You guess wrong in this and in everything,” said the Pilgrim. “I am of this Earth, earthly. And I will not be intimidated by a gangle of children of whatever species! You’re a weaker flesh than ourselves. You hide in other bodies, and you get earthlings to do your slaughter. And you cannot stand up to my staff!”

  “Go home, you witless weanlings!” and he raised his terrible staff again.

  “Our time is nearly up. We will be gone soon,” said Joan softly.

  The last game they played? They played Saints—for the Evil they had done in playing Bodies wrongly, and in playing Wars with live soldiers. But they repented of the things only after they had enjoyed them for the Long Afternoon. They played Saints in hairshirt and ashes, and revived that affair among the Eretzi.

  And finally they all assembled and took off from the high hill between Prato and Firenze in Italy. The rocks flowed like water where they left, and now there would be a double scarp formation.

  They were gone, and that was the end of them here.

  There is a theory, however, that one of the Hobbles remained and is with us yet. Hobble and his creature could not be told apart and could not finally tell themselves apart. They flipped an Eretzi coin, Emperors or Shields, to see which one would go and which one would stay. One went and one stayed. One is still here.

  But, after all, Hobble was only concerned with the sick toys, the mechanical things, the material inventions. Would it have been better if Ralpha or Joan stayed with us? They’d have burned us crisp by now! They were damnable and irresponsible children.

  This short Historical Monograph was not assembled for a distraction or an amusement. We consider the evidence that Children have spent their short vacations here more than once and in both hemispheres. We set out the theses in ordered parallels and we discover that we have begun to tremble unaccountably.

  When last came such visitors here? What thing has beset us during the last long Eretzi lifetime?

  We consider a new period—and it impinges on the Present—with aspects so different from anything that went before that we can only gasp aghast and gasp in sick wonder:

  “Is it ourselves who behave so?

  “Is it beings of another sort, or have we become those beings?

  “Arc we ourselves? Are these our deeds?”

  There are great deep faces looking over our shoulder, there are cold voices of ancient Children jeering “Compassion? For Earthlings?”, there is nasty frozen laughter that does not belong to our species.

  MAN IN

  THE JAR

  Damon Knight

  Damon Knight is so well-known these days as a critic, editor, and anthologist—author of the Hugo-winning book of criticism, In Search of Wonder; editor of the award-winning Orbit series and a score of other excellent anthologies—that it is sometimes forgotten that he is also one of the very finest short-story writers ever to work in the genre.

  Proof of that is the following sly and deceptively simple tale of intrigue and confrontation on a far world; of a young alien boy who must somehow deal with that most dangerous of all dangerous creatures—the man who knows he is right.

  THE HOTEL ROOM on the planet Meng was small and crowded. Blue-tinged sunlight from the window fell on a soiled gray carpet, a massive sandbox dotted with cigarette butts, a clutter of bottles. One corner of the room was piled high with baggage and curios. The occupant, a Mr. R. C. Vane of Earth, was sitting near the door: a man about fifty, clean shaven, with bristling iron-gray hair. He was quietly, murderously drunk.

  There was a tap on the door and the bellhop slipped in—a native, tall and brown, with greenish black hair cut too long in the back. He looked about nineteen. He had one green eye and one blue.

  “Set it there,” said Vane.

  The bellhop put his tray down. “Yes, sir.” He took the unopened bottle of Ten Star off the tray, and the ice bucket, and the seltzer bottle, crowding them in carefully among the things already on the table. Then he put the empty bottles and ice bucket back on the tray. His hands were big and knob-jointed; he seemed too long and wide-shouldered for his tight green uniform.

  “So this is Meng City,” said Vane, watching the bellhop. Vane was sitting erect and unrumpled in his chair, with his striped moth-wing jacket on and his string tie tied. He might have been sober, except for the deliberate way he spoke, and the redness of his eyes.

  “Yes, sir,” said the bellhop, straightening up with the tray in his hands. “This your first time here, sir?”

  “I came through two weeks ago,” Vane told him. “I did not like it then, and I do not like it now. Also, I do not like this room.”

  “Management is sorry if you don’t like the room, sir. Very good view from this room.”

  “It’s dirty and small,” said Vane, “but it doesn’t matter. I’m checking out this afternoon. Leaving on the afternoon rocket. I wasted two weeks upcountry, investigating Marack stories. Nothing to it—just native talk. Miserable little planet.” He sniffed, eyed the bellhop. “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Jimmy Rocksha, sir.”

  “Well, Jimmy Rocks in the Head, look at that pile of
stuff.” Tourist goods, scarves and tapestries, rugs, blankets and other things were mounded over the piled suitcases. It looked like an explosion in a curio shop. “There’s about forty pounds of it I have no room for, not counting that knocked-down jar. Any suggestions?”

  The bellhop thought about it slowly. “Sir, if I might suggest, you might put the scarves and things inside the jar.”

  Vane said grudgingly, “That might work. You know how to put those things together?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Well, let us see you try. Go on, don’t stand there.”

  The bellhop set his tray down again and crossed the room. A big bundle of gray pottery pieces, tied together with twine, had been stowed on top of Vane’s wardrobe trunk, a little above the bellhop’s head. Rocksha carefully removed his shoes and climbed on a chair. His brown feet were bare and clean. He lifted the bundle without effort, got down, set the bundle on the floor, and put his shoes back on.

  Vane took a long swallow of his lukewarm highball, finishing it. He closed his eyes while he drank, and nodded over the glass for a moment afterward, as if listening to something inside him. “All right,” he said, getting up, “let us see.”

  The bellhop loosened the twine. There were six long, thick, curving pieces, shaped a little like giant shoehorns. Then there were two round ones. One was bigger; that was the bottom. The other had a handle; that was the lid. The bellhop began to separate the pieces carefully, laying them out on the carpet.

  “Watch out how you touch those together,” Vane grunted, coming up behind him. “I wouldn’t know how to get them apart again.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s an antique which I got upcountry. They used to be used for storing grain and oil. The natives claim the Maracks had the secret of making them stick the way they do. Ever heard that?”

  “Upcountry boys tell a lot of fine stories, sir,” said the bellhop. He had the six long pieces arranged, well separated, in a kind of petal pattern around the big flat piece. They took up most of the free space; the jar would be chest-high when it was assembled.

  Standing up, the bellhop took two of the long curved pieces and carefully brought the sides closer together. They seemed to jump the last fraction of an inch, like magnets, and merged into one smooth piece. Peering, Vane could barely make out the join.

  In the same way, the bellhop added another piece to the first two. Now he had half the jar assembled. Carefully he lowered this half jar toward the edge of the big flat piece. The pieces clicked together. The bellhop stooped for another side piece.

  “Hold on a minute,” said Vane suddenly. “Got an idea. Instead of putting that thing all together, then trying to stuff things into it, use your brain. Put the things in, then put the rest of the side on.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the bellhop. He laid the piece of crockery down again and picked up some light blankets, which he dropped on the bottom of the jar.

  “Not that way, dummy,” said Vane impatiently. “Get in there—pack them down tight.”

  The bellhop hesitated. “Yes, sir.” He stepped delicately over the remaining unassembled pieces and knelt on the bottom of the jar, rolling the blankets and pressing them snugly in.

  Behind him, Vane moved on tiptoe like a dancer, putting two long pieces quietly together—tic!—then a third—tic!—and then as he lifted them, tic, clack! the sides merged into the bottom and the top. The jar was complete.

  The bellhop was inside.

  Vane breathed hard through flared nostrils. He took a cigar out of a green-lizard pocket case, cut it with a lapel knife, and lit it. Breathing smoke, he leaned over and looked down into the jar.

  Except for a moan of surprise when the jar closed, the bellhop had not made a sound. Looking down, Vane saw his brown face looking up. “Let me out of this jar, please, sir,” said the bellhop.

  “Can’t do that,” said Vane. “They didn’t tell me how, upcountry.”

  The bellhop moistened his lips. “Upcountry, they use a kind of tree grease,” he said. “It creeps between the pieces, and they fall apart.”

  “They didn’t give me anything like that,” said Vane indifferently.

  “Then please, sir, you break this jar and let me come out.”

  Vane picked a bit of tobacco off his tongue. He looked at it curiously and then flicked it away. “I spotted you,” he said, “in the lobby the minute I came in this morning. Tall and thin. Too strong for a native. One green eye, one blue. Two weeks I spent, upcountry, looking; and there you were in the lobby.”

  “Sir—?”

  “You’re a Marack,” said Vane flatly.

  The bellhop did not answer for a moment. “But sir,” he said incredulously, “Maracks are legends, sir. Nobody believes that anymore. There are no Maracks.”

  “You lifted that jar down like nothing,” said Vane. “Two boys put it up there. You’ve got the hollow temples. You’ve got the long jaw and the hunched shoulders.” Frowning, he took a billfold out of his pocket and took out a yellowed card. He showed it to the bellhop. “Look at that.”

  It was a faded photograph of a skeleton in a glass case. There was something disturbing about the skeleton. It was too long and thin; the shoulders seemed hunched, the skull was narrow and hollow-templed. Under it, the printing said, ABORIGINE OF NEW CLEVELAND, MENG (SIGMA LYRAE II) and in smaller letters, Newbold Anthropological Museum, Ten Eyck, Queensland, N. T.

  “Found it between the pages of a book two hundred years old,” said Vane, carefully putting it back. “It was mailed as a postcard to an ancestor of mine. A year later, I happened to be on Nova Terra. Now get this. The museum is still there, but that skeleton is not. They deny it ever was there. Curator seemed to think it was a fake. None of the native races on Meng have skeletons like that, he said.”

  “Must be a fake, sir,” the bellhop agreed.

  “I will tell you what I did next,” Vane went on. “I read all the contemporary accounts I could find of frontier days on this planet. A couple of centuries ago, nobody on Meng thought the Maracks were legends. They looked enough like the natives to pass, but they had certain special powers. They could turn one thing into another. They could influence your mind by telepathy, if you weren’t on your guard against them. I found this interesting. I next read all the export records back to a couple of centuries ago. Also, the geological charts in Planetary Survey. I discovered something. It just happens, there is no known source of natural diamonds anywhere on Meng.”

  “No, sir?” said the bellhop nervously.

  “Not one. No diamonds, and no place where they ever could have been mined. But until two hundred years ago, Meng exported one billion stellors’ worth of flawless diamonds every year. I ask, where did they come from? And why did they stop?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “The Maracks made them,” said Vane. “For a trader named Soong and his family. They died. After that, no more diamonds from Meng.” He opened a suitcase, rummaged inside it a moment, and took out two objects. One was a narrow oval bundle of something wrapped in stiff yellow plant fibers; the other was a shiny gray-black lump half the size of his fist.

  “Do you know what this is?” Vane asked, holding up the oval bundle.

  “No, sir.”

  “Air weed, they call it upcountry. One of the old men had this one buried under his hut, along with the jar. And this.” He held up the black lump. “Nothing special about it, would you say? Just a piece of graphite, probably from the old mine at Badlong. But graphite is pure carbon. And so is a diamond.”

  He put both objects carefully down on the nearby table, and wiped his hands. The graphite had left black smudges on them. “Think about it,” he said. “You’ve got exactly one hour, till three o’clock.” Delicately he tapped his cigar over the mouth of the jar. A few flakes of powdery ash floated down on the bellhop’s upturned face.

  Vane went back to his chair. He moved deliberately and a little stiffly, but did not stagger. He peeled the foil o
ff the bottle of Ten Star. He poured himself a substantial drink, added ice, splashed a little seltzer in. He took a long, slow swallow.

  “Sir,” said the bellhop finally, “you know I can’t make any diamonds out of black rock. What’s going to happen, when it comes three o’clock, and that rock is still just a piece of rock?”

  “I think,” said Vane, “I will just take the wrappings off that air weed and drop it in the jar with you. Air weed, I am told, will expand to hundreds of time its volume in air. When it fills the jar to the brim, I will put the lid on. And when we’re crossing that causeway to the spaceport, I think you may get tipped off the packrat into the bay. The bottom is deep silt, they tell me.” He took another long, unhurried swallow.

  “Think about it,” he said, staring at the jar with red eyes.

  Inside the jar, it was cool and dim. The bellhop had enough room to sit fairly comfortably with his legs crossed, or else he could kneel, but then his face came right up to the mouth of the jar. The opening was too small for his head. He could not straighten up any farther, or put his legs out. The bellhop was sweating in his tight uniform. He was afraid. He was only nineteen, and nothing like this had ever happened to him before.

  The clink of ice came from across the room. The bellhop said, “Sir?”

  The chair springs whined, and after a moment the Earth-man’s face appeared over the mouth of the jar. His chin was dimpled. There were gray hairs in his nostrils, and a few gray and black bristles in the creases of loose skin around his jaw. His red eyes were hooded and small. He looked down into the bellhop’s face without speaking.

  “Sir,” the bellhop said earnestly, “do you know how much they pay me here at this hotel?”

  “No.”

  “Twelve stellors a week, sir, and my meals. If I could make diamonds, sir, why would I be working here?”

  Vane’s expression did not change. “I will tell you that,” he said. “Soong must have been sweating you Maracks to get a billion stellors a year. There used to be thousands of you on this continent alone, but now there are so few that you can disappear among the natives. I would guess the diamonds took too much out of you. You’re close to extinction now. And you’re all scared. You’ve gone underground. You’ve still got your powers, but you don’t dare use them—unless there’s no other way to keep your secret. You were lords of this planet once, but you’d rather stay alive. Of course, all this is merely guesswork.”