The Best of Jack Williamson

by Jack Williamson

  He was a peddler, and not quite ethical, and didn’t quite understand Earth—which had never contacted the Galactic Empire knowingly. And most particularly, he didn’t know what his nose knew . …

  • • •

  The peddler came to Earth, across the empty immensities of space, after whisky. He knew the planet was under quarantine, but his blunders had left him at the mercy of his thirst. Ultimately, the root of that merciless thirst was his nose.

  He was a thin, tiny man, and his crooked nose enormous. The handicap could have been corrected, but he was born on a frontier world where the difficult dilemmas of freedom and responsibility had not yet been solved, and he was allowed to grow tip twisted with the knowledge of his ugliness.

  Damned by genetic accident, he spent his life in flight from salvation. By the time his deformity had made a petty criminal of him, he had come to defend it as the most tender part of himself. When he was ordered to a clinic for the removal of his social maladjustments and the excess nasal tissue that lay beneath them, he escaped rehabilitation and drifted out to the fringes of civilization, where the law was less efficient.

  Never bold, he settled at last into the shabby occupation of vending cheap novelty toys. Even that humble calling had its risks. He had been forced to make his pitch without a vendor’s license, on the last world behind, and he had to leave it in such haste that he had no time to buy his usual supplies.

  His nerves were not so good as they had been. Aboard the flier, he had to gulp down three stiff drinks before his hands were steady enough to set the automatic pilot. And the raw alcohol seemed to hit him more swiftly than common, so that his vision began to blur and double before he had finished the adjustments.

  In his frightened befuddlement, he mistook an 8 for a 3, and overlooked a decimal point, and turned the planet selector dial one space too far. His intended goal had been another frontier world, a few light-years away, where immigration was still unrestricted and the pioneers still hardy enough to let their children buy his toys. His errors, however, made Earth his destination.

  The robot pilot warned him instantly. Although the flier had been battered and abused by several generations of outlaws bolder than himself, it had saved him many times from destruction, and it was still a sturdy, spaceworthy neutrionic craft. A gong crashed. A red light flickered above the competent mechanism, and it spoke to him sternly:

  “Caution! Do not take off. Destination dialed is far beyond normal operating range. Caution! Check charts and dials for possible error. Caution!”

  He was normally cautious enough, but those three -drinks had magnified his panic. Already too far gone to understand the warning, he stabbed a shaky finger at the button that canceled it. Before he could find the take-off lever, however, the signals rang and flashed again.

  “Caution!” rapped that hard mechanical voice. “Do not take off. Destination dialed is under quarantine. All contact prohibited—”

  Impatiently, too drunk to think of anything except escape, he pulled the take-off lever. The signals stopped, and the flier took him to Earth, across a distance in light-centuries that might have staggered a sober man.

  Human civilization was an expanding globe, spreading out through the galaxy at almost half the speed of light, as the colonists hopped from star to star; and that long flight took him from what was then the outside of it, back toward the half-forgotten center.

  The voyage wasn’t long to him, however, and the flier required no more attention. It caught the invisible winds of radiant neutrinos that rise out of the novae to. blow forever through the galaxies, and it was. swept away at such a speed that time was slowed almost to a stop for everything aboard, through the working of relativity.

  The peddler drank and slept and dreamed uneasy dreams of men with scalpels who wanted to remove his nose. He woke and slept and drank again, until his inadequate supplies were gone.

  As originally built, the flier would have identified itself to the destination port authority, waited for orders, and obeyed them automatically. Previous owners had changed the operating circuits, however, so that it slipped down (lark toward the night side of Earth, with all signals dead except a gong to arouse its master.

  The peddler awoke unhappy. Even the dimmed lights in his untidy little cabin seemed intolerably bright, and the gong was bursting his head. He shuffled hastily to stop it and then stumbled through the flier in search of something to drink.

  There should have been another bottle cached somewhere, against such emergencies, behind his berth or in his portable sales case or perhaps in the empty medical cabinet—he had long ago bartered its contents for whisky.

  But the caches had all been raided before. Muttering bitterly, shaken with a thirst that refused to wait, he staggered back to the cockpit and touched a dial to find out where he was.

  Sol Three—he bad never heard of that. He shook his throbbing head, and squinted at the hooded screen to read his position. The coordinates took his breath. He was two thousand light-years from the last world he remembered, somewhere near the dead center of civilization.

  He felt shocked for an instant at the vastness of his blunder. Yet there was no harm done. That was the unique advantage of his nomadic existence. No matter how many outraged citizens wanted to remodel his nose and extirpate his thirst, the flier had always carried him safely beyond their reach, across space and trackless time.

  He leaned hopefully to read the screen again. Sol Three was a minor member of an undistinguished planetary system, it told him, with nothing to interest either tourist or trader. The inhabitants were human, but their culture was primitive. Although long settled, the planet was historically unimportant. A footnote caught his eye:

  The planet was once believed to have been the site of Atlantis, the half legendary cradle of civilization, from which the interstellar migrations began. Although the comparative biology of the indigenous fauna supports this idea, no. actual historical proof has yet been found, and the low cultural level of the present inhabitants leaves it open to question—

  He wasn’t concerned with the elaborate quarrels of the historians. All he wanted was a drink. Just one stiff jolt, to cut the foul taste out of his mouth and sweep the pain from bis head and quiet his trembling limbs. Even this planet couldn’t be too backward, he thought, to distill alcohol.

  Thirstily, he touched the landing key.

  The gong rang instantly, painful as a hammer on his head. The red light flickered, and the loud recorded voice of the automatic pilot rang grimly:

  “Warning! Do not attempt to land. This planet is quarantined, under the Covenants of Non-Contact. All communication is absolutely prohibited, and violators will be subject to full rehabilitation. Warning—”

  Cringing from the voice and the gong, he stabbed frantically at the cancellation button. Because primitive worlds offered the easiest market for his goods, he had run into the Covenants before. He knew they were intended to prevent the damaging clash of peoples at discrepant levels of social evolution, but he was not interested in theories of cultural impact.

  What he wanted was a drink, and he should find it here. Although he had never heard of Sol Three, he knew his trade and he was well enough equipped. One quick stand ought to bring the price of what he needed for the long flight back to the frontier worlds where he felt at home. Even if something aroused the quarantine officials, their threat of full rehabilitation was unlikely to pursue him quite that far.

  He pushed the landing key. The flier slipped down silently, before dawn, to the dark slope of a wooded hill three miles from a feeble energy source that should be a small settlement. He inflated the covering membrane that gave the craft the look of an innocent boulder, and started walking toward the settlement with his sales equipment.

  The cool air had a refreshing scent of things growing. The feel of the grass was good underfoot, and the Voices of small wild creatures made an elusive music. No wilderness had ever seemed so friendly. He thought this planet had really been t
he birthplace of mankind, and he felt happy for a moment with a mystical sense of return.

  But he hadn’t come for communion with the mother world, and that brief elation slipped away as he began to worry about meeting some primitive taboo against the use of alcohol.

  Frowning with anxiety, he came to an empty road at the foot of the hill and tramped along it with an apprehensive haste toward a rude concrete bridge across a shallow stream. The sun was rising now, not much different from any other star. It showed him a wide green valley where a herd of black-and-white domestic animals grazed peacefully and a man in blue drove a crude traction plow.

  The peddler paused for a moment, feeling a puzzled contempt for the stupid yokels who lived their small lives rooted here, as ignorant of the great world outside as their fat cattle were. If envy lay beneath his scorn, he didn’t know it.

  The sunlight had begun to hurt his eyes and his thirst shook him again with a dry paroxysm. He limped grimly on. Beyond the bridge, he found crude two-dimensional signs set up along the road. He had no equipment to read their silent legends, but even the flat pictures of sealed bottles and dew-wet glasses spoke to him with a maddening eloquence.

  At the summit of a gentle hill, he came upon a wooden hut enveloped in a thin but tantalizing fragrance of alcohol. The sign above the door convinced him that it was a public place, and a faded poster on the wall showed a plump native girl sipping a drink seductively.

  He tried the door eagerly, but it was locked. The teasing odor tempted him to break in, but he shrank from the impulse fearfully. Running the quarantine was crime enough. He didn’t want to be rehabilitated, and he thought the place would surely open by the time he could supply himself with the local medium of exchange.

  Already perspiring, he went on down the hill toward the village. It lay along a bend of the quiet stream he had passed: a scattered group of rude brick and stucco family huts standing in a grove of trees. It looked so different from the brawl and glitter of the raw pioneer cities he had known that he halted uncertainly.

  He wasn’t used to dealing with such simple races. But then his novelties would certainly be new to their children, and the occasional discarded cans and bottles beside the road assured him that alcohol was abundant. That was really all that mattered. He mopped his face and swung the sales case to his left hand and staggered on again.

  “Mornin’ to you, mister.”

  Startled by that unexpected hail, he darted to the side of the road. A clumsy primitive vehicle had come up behind him. It was driven by some kind of crude heat engine, which gave off a faint reek of burning petroleum. A large man sat at the control wheel, watching him with a disturbing curiosity.

  “Lookin’ for somebody in Chatsworth?”

  The man spoke a harsh-sounding tongue he had never heard before, but the psionic translator, a tiny device no more, conspicuous than the native’s hearing aid, brought the meaning to him instantly.

  “Mornin’ to you, mister.” He lifted his arm a little, murmuring toward the microphone hidden in his sleeve, and his translated reply came from the tiny speaker under his clothing, uttered in a nasal drawl that matched the native’s.

  “Thanks,” he said, “but I’m just passing through.”

  “Then hop in.” The native leaned to open the door of the vehicle. “I’ll give you a lift out to my place, a mile across the town.”

  He got in gratefully, but in a moment he was sorry for his eagerness.

  “Welcome to Chatsworth,” the grinning yokel went on. “Population three hundred and four, in the richest little valley in the state. Guess I’ve got the right to make you welcome.” The tall man chuckled. “I’m Jud Hankins. The constable.”

  Now sweat broke out on the peddler’s dusty face. His head throbbed unbearably, and his gnarled old hands began trembling so violently that he had to grip the handle of his case to keep the officer from noticing his agitation.

  In a moment, however, he saw that this unfortunate chance encounter with the law? had not yet been disastrous. Jud Hankins was unlikely to be concerned with enforcing the Covenants—if he ever knew that they existed.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Hankins,” the peddler answered hastily, grateful that the translator failed to reproduce the apprehensive tremor in his voice. “My name’s Gray.”

  He noticed the constable looking at his sales case.

  “A fertile valley, indeed!” he said hurriedly. “Do you produce grain for the distilling industry?”

  “Mostly for hogs.” The constable glanced at the case again. “You a salesman, Mr. Gray?”

  Uneasily, he said he was.

  “What’s your line, if you don’t mind?”

  “Toys,” he said. “Novelty toys.”

  “I was just afraid you had fireworks.” The constable seemed faintly relieved. “I thought I ought to warn you.”

  “Fireworks?” The peddler repeated the term in a puzzled voice, because the translation had not been entirely clear.

  “The Fourth will soon be coming up, you know,” the constable explained. “We’ve got to protect the children.” He grinned proudly. “I’ve four fine little rascals of my own.”

  The peddler still wasn’t sure about fireworks. The Fourth was obviously some sort of barbaric ceremonial at which children were sacrificed, and fireworks were probably paraphernalia for the witch doctors. Anyhow, it didn’t matter.

  “These toys are all I sell,” he insisted. “They’re highly educational. Designed and recommended by child training experts, to instruct while they amuse. Safe enough for children in the proper age groups.”

  He squinted sharply at the amiable constable.

  “But I’m not sure about offering them here,” he added uneasily; “In so small a place, it might not pay me to buy a license;”

  “You don’t need one.” The constable chuckled disarmingly. “You see, we aren’t incorporated! Another point of our sort, of town. Go ahead and sell your toys—just so they’re nothing that will hurt the children.” lie slowed the vehicle to call a genial greeting to a group of children playing ball on a vacant lot, and stopped in the village to. let a boy and his dog cross the street ahead. The peddler thanked him, and got out hastily.

  “Wait, Mr. Gray,” he protested. “You had breakfast?”

  The peddler said, he hadn’t., “Then jump in again,” the jovial native urged. “Mamie has plenty on the table—she cooks it tip while I do the chores out on the farm. Seeing you’re doing business in town, I want you to come out and eat with us.”

  “Thanks,” he said, “but all I want is something to drink.”

  “I guess you are dry, walking in this dust.” The native nodded sympathetically. “Come on out, and we’ll give you a drink.”

  Tempted by that promise and afraid of offending the law, he got back in the machine. The constable drove on to a neat, white-painted hut at the edge of the village. Four noisy children ran out to welcome them, and a clean, plump-faced woman met them at the door.;

  “My wife,” the constable drawled jovially. “Mr. Gray. A sort of early bird Santa Claus, he says, with toys for the kiddies. He’d like a drink.” The peddler came into the kitchen section of the hut, which looked surprisingly clean. He reached with a trembling anxiety for the drink the woman brought him. It had the bright clear color of grain alcohol, and he almost strangled, in his bitter surprise, when he found that it was only cold water.

  He thanked the woman as civilly as he could manage, and said he had to go. The children were clamoring to see his toys, however, and the constable urged him to stay for breakfast. He sat down reluctantly and sipped at a cup of hot bitter liquid called coffee, which really seemed to help his headache.

  Still afraid of the friendly constable, he made excuses not to show the toys until the children had to leave for school. The smallest girl began to sneeze and sniffle, as the mother herded them toward the door, and he inquired with some alarm what was wrong.

  “Just a cold,” the woman said. “Nothing ser
ious.”

  That puzzled him for an instant, because the weather seemed quite warm. Probably another error in translation, but nothing to alarm him. He was rising to follow the children outside, but the woman turned back to him.

  “Don’t go yet, Mr. Gray.” She smiled kindly. “I’m afraid you aren’t well. You hardly touched your ham and eggs. Let me get you another cup of coffee.”

  He sat down again unwillingly. Perhaps he wasn’t well, but he expected to feel worse until he had a drink of something better than cold water.

  “Can’t we do something for him, Jud?” The woman had turned to her husband. “He doesn’t look able to be out on the road alone, without a soul to do for him. Can’t you think of something?”

  “Well—” The constable set fire to the end of a small white tube, and inhaled the smoke with a reflective expression. “We still don’t have a janitor at the school. I’m a trustee, and I’ll say a word to the principal if you want the job.”

  “And you could stay here with us,” the woman added eagerly. “There’s a nice clean bed in the attic. Your board won’t cost a cent, so long as you’re willing to do a few odd jobs around the place. Would you like that?”

  He squinted at her uncertainly. To his own surprise, he wanted to stay. He wasn’t used to kindness, and it filled his eyes with tears. The infinite chasm of open space seemed suddenly even more dark and cold and dreadful than it was, and for an instant he hungered fiercely for the quiet peace of this forgotten world. Perhaps its still spell would hold him and heal all his restless discontent.

  “You’re welcome here,” the constable was urging. “And if you’ve got a business head, you can find more than odd jobs to do. You’ll never find a likelier spot than Chatsworth, if you want to settle down.”

  “I don’t know.” He picked up his empty cup, absently. “I’m really glad you want me, but I’m afraid it’s been too long—”