Monsters in Orbit

by Jack Vance

  One last possibility. Duress. Marriage or death. She considered poisons and antidotes, diseases and cures, a straightforward gun in the ribs…

  Jean angrily tossed the empty cocoa bulb into the waste hopper. Trickery, sex lure, flattery, browbeating, revenge, fear—which was the most far-fetched? All were ridiculous.

  She decided she needed more time, more information. Perhaps Earl had a weak spot she could work on. If they had a community of interests, she’d be much farther advanced. Examination of his study might give her a few hints.

  A bell chimed, a number dropped on a call-board and a voice said, “Pleasuance.”

  Mrs. Blaiskell appeared. “That’s you, miss. Now go in, nice as you please, and ask Mrs. Clara what it is that’s wanted, and then you can go off duty till three.”

  VI

  Mrs. Clara Abercrombie, however, was not present The Pleasuance was occupied by twenty or thirty young folk, talking and arguing with rather giddy enthusiasm. The girls wore pastel sarins, velvets, gauzes, tight around their rotund pink bodies, with frothing little ruffles and anklets, while the young men affected elegant dark grays and blues and tawny beiges, with military trim of white and scarlet.

  Ranged along a wall were a dozen stage settings in miniature. Above, a ribbon of paper bore the words “Tandora in Elis. Libretto by A. Percy Stevanic, music by Colleen O’Casey.”

  Jean looked around the room to see who had summoned her. Earl raised his finger peremptorily. Jean walked on her magnetic shoes to where he floated near one of the miniature stage sets. He turned to a mess of cocoa and whipped cream, clinging like a tumor to the side of the set —evidently a broken bulb.

  “Clean up that spill,” said Earl in a flinty voice.

  Jean thought, he half-wants to rub it in, half-wants to act as if he doesn’t recognize me. She nodded dutifully. “Ill get a container and a sponge.”

  When she returned, Earl was across the room, talking earnestly to a girl whose globular body was encased in a gown of brilliant rose velvet. She wore rose-buds over each ear and played with a ridiculous little white dog while she listened to Earl with a half-hearted affectation of interest.

  Jean worked as slowly as possible, watching from the comers of her eyes. Snatches of conversation reached her: “Lapwill’s done simply a marvelous job on the editing, but I don’t see that he’s given Myras the same scope—”

  “—if the pageant grosses ten thousand dollars, Mrs. Clara says she’ll put another ten thousand toward the construction fund. Think of it!—A Little Theater all our own!” Excited and conspiratorial whispers ran through the Pleasaunce, “—and for the water scene why not have the chorus float across the sky as moons?”

  Jean watched Earl. He hung on the fat girl’s words, and spoke with a pathetic attempt at intimate comradeship and jocularity. The girl nodded politely, twisted her features into a smile. Jean noticed her eyes followed a hearty youth whose physique bulged out his plum-colored breeches like wind bellying a spinnaker. Earl perceived the girl’s inattention. Jean saw him falter momentarily, then work even harder at his badinage. The fat girl licked her lips, swung her ridiculous little dog on its leash, and glanced over to where the purple-trousered youth bellowed with laughter.

  A sudden idea caused Jean to hasten her work. Earl no doubt would be occupied here until lunch time—two hours away. And Mrs. Blaiskell had relieved her from duty till three.

  She took herself from the hall, disposed of the cleaning equipment, dove up the corridor to Earl’s private chambers.

  At Mrs. Clara’s suite she paused, listening at the door. Snores I

  Another fifty feet to Earl’s chambers. She looked quickly up and down the corridor, slid back the door and slipped cautiously inside.

  The room was silent as Jean made a quick survey. Closet, dressing room to one side, sun-flooded bathroom to the other.

  Across the room was the tall gray door into the study. A sign hung across the door, apparently freshly made.

  PRIVATE.

  DANGER.

  DO NOT ENTER.

  Jean paused to consider. What kind of danger? Earl might have set devious safeguards over his private chamber.

  She examined the door-slide button. It was overhung by an apparently innocent guard—which might or might not control an alarm circuit. She pressed her belt-buckle against the shutter in such a way as to maintain an electrical circuit, then moved the guard aside, pressed the button with her fingernail—gingerly. She knew of buttons which darted out hypodermics when pressed.

  There was no whisper of machinery. The door remained in place.

  Jean blew fretfully between her teeth. No keyhole, no buttons to play a combination on…Mrs. Blaiskell had found no trouble. Jean tried to reconstruct her motions. She moved to the slide, set her head to where she could see the reflection of the light from the wall…There was a smudge on the gloss. She looked closely and a tell-tale glint indicated a photo-electric eye.

  She put her finger on the eye, pressed the slide-button. The door slipped open. In spite of having been fore-warned, Jean recoiled from the horrid black shape which hung forward as if to grapple her.

  She waited. After a moment the door fell gently back into place.

  Jean returned to the outer corridor, stationed herself where she could duck into Mrs. Clara’s apartments if a suspicious shape came looming up the corridor. Earl might not have contented himself with the protection of a secret electric lock.

  Five minutes passed. Mrs. Clara’s personal maid passed by, a globular little Chinese, eyes like two shiny black beetles, but no one else.

  Jean pushed herself back to Earl’s room, crossed to the study door. Once more she read the sign:

  PRIVATE.

  DANGER.

  DO NOT ENTER.

  She hesitated. “I’m sixteen years old. Going on seventeen. Too young to die. It’s just like that odd creature to furnish his study with evil tricks.” She shrugged off the notion. “What a person won’t do for money.”

  She opened the door, slipped through.

  The door closed behind her. Quickly she moved out from under the poised demon-shape and turned to examine Earl’s sanctum. She looked right, left, up, down.

  “There’s a lot to see here,” she muttered. “I hope Earl doesn’t run out of sheep’s-eyes for his fat girl, or decide he wants a particular newspaper clipping…”

  She turned power into her slipper magnets, and wondered where to begin. The room was more like a warehouse or museum than a study, and gave the impression of wild confusion arranged, sorted, and filed by an extraordinary finicky mind.

  After a fashion, it was a beautiful room, imbued with an atmosphere of erudition in its dark wood-tones. The far wall glowed molten with rich color—a rose window from the old Chartres cathedral, in full effulgence under the glare of free-space sunlight.

  “Too bad Earl ran out of outside wall,” said Jean. “A collection of stained glass windows runs into a lot of wall space, and one is hardly a collection…Perhaps there’s another room…” For the study, large as it was, apparently occupied only half the space permitted by the dimensions of Earl’s suite. “But—for the moment—I’ve got enough here to look at.”

  Racks, cases, files, walnut and leaded-glass cabinets surfaced the walls; glass-topped displays occupied the floor. To her left was a battery of tanks. In the first series swam eels, hundreds of eels: Earth eels, eels from the outer worlds. She opened a cabinet. Chinese coins hung on pegs, each documented with crabbed boyish hand-writing.

  She circled the room, marvelling at the profusion.

  There were rock crystals from forty-two separate planets, all of which appeared identical to Jean’s unpracticed eye.

  There were papyrus scrolls, Mayan codices, medieval parchments illuminated with gold and Tyrian purple, Ogham runes on mouldering sheepskin, clay cylinders incised with cuneiform.

  Intricate wood-carvings—fancy chains, cages within cages, • amazing interlocking spheres, seven vested Brah
min temples.

  Centimeter cubes containing samples of every known element. Thousands of postage stamps, mounted on leaves, swung out of a circular cabinet.

  There were volumes of autographs of famous criminals, together with their photographs and Bertillon and Pevetsky measurements. From one corner came the rich aromas of perfumes—a thousand little flagons minutely described and coded, together with the index and code explanation, and these again had their origin on a multitude of worlds. There were specimens of fungus growths from all over the universe, and there were racks of miniature phonograph records, an inch across, micro-formed from the original pressings.

  She found photographs of Earl’s every day life, together with his weight, height and girth measurement in crabbed handwriting, and each picture bore a colored star, a colored square, and either a red or blue disk. By this time Jean knew the flavor of Earl’s personality. Near at hand there would be an index and explanation. She found it, near the camera which took the pictures. The disks referred to bodily functions; the stars, by a complicated system she could not quite comprehend, described Earl’s morale, his frame of mind. The colored squares recorded his love life. Jean’s mouth twisted in a wry grin. She wandered aimlessly on, fingering the physiographic globes of a hundred planets and examining maps and charts.

  The cruder aspects of Earl’s personality were represented in a collection of pornographic photographs, and near at hand an easel and canvas where Earl was composing a lewd study of his own. Jean pursed her mouth primly. The prospect of marrying Earl was becoming infinitely less enchanting.

  She found an alcove filled with little chess-boards, each set-up in a game. A numbered card and record of moves was attached to each board. Jean picked up the inevitable index book, and glanced through. Earl played postcard chess with opponents all over the Universe. She found his record of wins and losses. He was slightly but not markedly a winner. One man, William Angelo of Toronto, beat him consistently. Jean memorized the address, reflecting that if Earl ever took up her challenge to play chess, now she knew how to beat him. She would embroil Angelo in a game, and send Earl’s moves to Angelo as her own and play Angelo’s return moves against Earl. It would be somewhat circuitous and tedious, but fool-proof—almost.

  She continued her tour of the study. Sea-shells, moths, dragon-flies, fossil trilobites, opals, torture implements, shrunken human heads. If the collection represented bona fide learning, thought Jean, it would have taxed the time and ability of any four Earth geniuses. But the hoard was essentially mindless and mechanical, nothing more than a boy’s collection of college pennants or signs or match-box covers on a vaster scale.

  One of the walls opened out into an ell, and here was communication via a freight hatch to outside space. Unopened boxes, crates, cases, bundles—apparently material as yet to be filed in Earl’s rookery—filled the room. At the corner another grotesque and monumental creature hung poised, as if to clutch at her, and Jean felt strangely hesitant to wander within its reach. This one stood about eight feet tall. It wore the shaggy coat of a bear and vaguely resembled a gorilla, although the face was long and pointed, peering out from under the fur like that of a French poodle’s.

  Jean thought of Fotheringay’s reference to Earl as an “eminent zoologist.” She looked around the room. The stuffed animals, the tanks of eels, Earth tropical fish and Maniacan polywriggles were the only zoological specimens in sight. Hardly enough to qualify Earl as a zoologist. Of course, there was an annex to the room…She heard a sound. A click at the outer door.

  Jean dove behind the stuffed animal, heart thudding in her throat. With exasperation she told herself, “He’s an eighteen-year-old boy…If I can’t face him down, out-argue, out-think, out-fight him, and come out on top generally, then it’s time for me to start crocheting table-mats for a living.” Nevertheless, she remained hidden.

  Earl stood quietly in the doorway. The door swung shut behind him. His face was flushed and damp, as if he had just recovered from anger or embarrassment. His delft-blue eyes gazed unseeingly down the roof, gradually came into focus.

  He frowned, glanced suspiciously right and left, sniffed. Jean made herself small behind the shaggy fur. Could he smell her?

  He coiled up his legs, kicked against the wall, dove directly toward her. Under the creature’s arm she saw him approaching, bigger, bigger, bigger, arms at his sides, head turned up like a diver. He thumped against the hairy chest, put his feet to the ground, stood not six feet distant.

  He was muttering under his breath. She heard him plainly. “Damnable insult…If she only knew! Hah!” He laughed a loud scornful bark. “Hah!”

  Jean relaxed with a near-audible sigh. Earl had not seen her, and did not suspect her presence.

  He whisted aimlessly between his teeth, indecisively. At last he walked to the wall, reached behind a bit of ornate fretwork. A panel swung aside, a flood of bright sunlight poured through the opening into the study.

  Earl was whistling a tuneless cadence. He entered the room but did not shut the door. Jean darted from behind her hiding place, looked in, swept the room with her eyes. Possibly she gasped.

  Earl was standing six feet away, reading from a list. He looked up suddenly, and Jean felt the brush of his eyes.

  He did not move…Had he seen her?

  For a moment he made no sound, no stir. Then he came to the door, stood staring up the study, and held this position for ten or fifteen seconds. From behind the stuffed gorilla-thing Jean saw his lips move, as if he were silently calculating.

  She licked her lips, thinking of the inner room.

  He went out into the alcove, among the unopened boxes and bales. He pulled up several floated them toward the open door, and they drifted into the flood of sunshine. He pushed other bundles aside, found what he was seeking, and sent another bundle after the rest.

  He pushed himself back to the door, where he stood suddenly tense, nose dilated, eyes keen, sharp. He sniffed the air. His eyes swung to the stuffed monster. He approached it slowly, arms hanging loose from his shoulders.

  He looked behind, expelled his breath in a long drawn hiss, grunted. From within the annex Jean thought. “He can either smell me or it’s telepathy!” She had darted into the room while Earl was fumbling among the crates, and ducked under a wide divan. Flat on her stomach she watched Earl’s inspection of the stuffed animal, and her skin tingled. “He smells me, he feels me, he senses me.”

  Earl stood in the doorway, looking up and down the study. Then he carefully, slowly, closed the door, threw a bolt home, turned to face into the inner room.

  For five minutes he busied himself with his crates, unbundling, arranging the contents, which seemed to be bottles of white powder, on shelves.

  Jean pushed herself clear of the floor, up against the under side of the divan, and moved to a position where she could see without, being seen. Now she understood why Fotheringay had spoken of Earl as an “eminent zoologist.”

  There was another word which would fit him better, an unfamiliar word which Jean could not immediately dredge out of her memory. Her vocabulary was no more extensive than any girl of her own age, but the word had made an impression.

  Teratology. That was the word. Earl was a teratologist.

  Like the objects in his other collections, the monsters were only such creatures as lent themselves to ready, almost haphazard, collecting. They were displayed in glass cabinets. Panels at the back screened off the sunlight, and at absolute zero, the things would remain preserved indefinitely, without taxidermy or embalming.

  They were a motley, though monstrous group. There were true human monsters, macro-and micro-cephalics, hermaphrodites, creatures with multiple limbs and with none, creatures sprouting tissues like buds on a yeast cell, twisted hoop-men, faceless things, things green, blue and gray.

  And then there were other specimens equally hideous, but possibly normal in their own environment: the miscellaneity of a hundred life-bearing planets.

  To Jean�
�s eyes, the ultimate travesty was a fat man, displayed in a place of prominence! Possibly he had gained the conspicuous position on his own merits. He was corpulent to a degree Jean had not considered possible. Beside him Webbard might show active and athletic. Take this creature to Earth, he would slup like a jelly-fish. Out here on Abercrombie he floated free, bloated and puffed like the throat of a singing frog! Jean looked at his face—looked again! Tight blond curls on his head…

  Earl yawned, stretched. He proceeded to remove his clothes. Stark naked he stood in the middle of the room. He looked slowly, sleepily along the ranks of his collection.

  He made a decision, moved languidly to one of the cubicles. He pulled a switch.

  Jean heard a faint musical hum, a hissing, smelled heady ozone. A moment passed. She heard a sigh of air. The inner door of a glass cubicle opened. The creature within, moving feebly, drifted out into the room…

  Jean pressed her lips tight together; after a moment looked away.

  Marry Earl? She winced. No, Mr. Fotheringay. You marry him yourself, you’re as able as I am…Two million dollars? She shuddered. Five million sounded better. For five million she might marry him. But that’s as far as it would go. She’d put on her own ring, there’d be no kissing of the bride. She was Jean Parlier, no plaster saint. But enough was enough, and this was too much.

  VII

  Presently Earl left the room. Jean lay still, listened. No sound came from outside. She must be careful. Earl would surely kill her if he found her here. She waited five minutes. No sound, no motion reached her. Cautiously she edged herself out from under the divan.

  The sunlight burnt her skin with a pleasant warmth, but she hardly felt it. Her skin seemed stained; the air seemed tainted and soiled her throat, her lungs. She wanted a bath…Five million dollars would buy lots of baths. Where was the index? Somewhere would be an index. There had to be an index…Yes. She found it, and quickly consulted the proper entry. It gave her much meat for thought.