Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by J F Bone

  “There’s always that chance,” I said as I looked past him at Vance. “Okay—let her go,” I said “loud and clear.”

  The opening bars of Raposnikov’s “Nine Worlds Symphony” crashed from the speakers.

  Instantly the vast mass of the hegemon rippled. Its crystals tinkled like fairy bells, turned a deep red, and shifted with a dazzling rapidity. Before we could move we were encased in a throbbing mass of pulsating ruby crystals that soared over us and around us to form a gigantic million faceted, acoustically perfect dome that changed shades of color to match each change in tempo of the music. Two hundred of Earth’s best musicians had poured their talents onto that tape and two million units of an utterly alien, life form absorbed that sound with an intensity no human audience could match. Bursts of scintillating colors flashed and rippled over the crystalline mass around us, and. the mass itself moved and rippled, approaching the stereo to catch the fainter parts, retreating from the full-throated crescendos, quivering to the glissades, and swaying with the rhythms of the melody. We were standing in the middle of a fantastic concert hall, a hall that lived with the music that filled it—that drank in greedily every note, every nuance of the contrapuntal passages, every chord and harmony.

  The Port Captain, the sound specialists from the Solar Union, Martinelli and myself were stunned. I hadn’t expected such a response even though I had known in a rough sort of way what would happen. The others, utterly unprepared, were struck dumb by the glittering fairyland that encased them.

  Finally it was over. The last notes died, and slowly, reluctantly; the hegemon withdrew to form a gigantic mass, a tower of piled crystals that pulsed with ruby color. And from the glowing crystals came a pure clean note of music, so sweet and piercing that our bodies shook to its vibration.

  “Record!” I snapped.

  Vance moved, snapping the switch of the recorder as the note augmented, strengthened, and grew as the whole hegemon combined its millions of vibrating crystals into a wave of gratitude. We stood there, quivering, as the sound went through us and slowly faded into silence. The crystals nearest our feet drew back and before us, on the dark ground, lay a mass of black glittering crystals.

  THE Port Captain took one stunned unbelieving look at the crystals and slowly sank to his knees. “Bort!” he gasped. “Industrial diamonds! Why, there must be fifty kilograms of them!”

  “The audience,” I said, “always pays for the concert. It appears that our music was appreciated.”

  “How much is that pile worth?” Martinelli asked.

  “About two and a half million credits,” I said, “figuring bort at ten credits a carat. That’s earthside prices of course. Your music has just shown its first profit.”

  “My God!” Martinelli’s voice was as shaken as the Port Captain’s.

  “Of course,” I continued, “there’s the ship’s share, the crew’s share, the Union’s share for taxes, and my share for showing you the secret. Figuring it out fairly, you’ll come out about a half million ahead, which isn’t too bad for fifteen minutes work.”

  “Look!” the Port Captain said. “The hegemon’s breaking up.”

  Masses of red-tinged crystals, humming with power, were darting up and away from the central mass which shrank visibly as we watched. Finally, the hegemon vanished.

  “What does it mean?” the Captain asked.

  “Simple,” I said. “The word’s going out. There’s a new day coming to Ganymede. You won’t find the hegemons ignoring you any more.”

  “I wonder if that’s an unmixed blessing.”

  “You never can tell. Maybe—maybe not. And incidentally, Isaac said that they like Bach best, although most symphonic music will do well until they tire of it. Bach, however, seems to have the best lasting qualities.”

  “Thanks,” the Port Captain said, “but it won’t do me any good. By the time the word gets out everybody will be milking this golden cow.”

  “Of course, they’ll never pay like that again,” I added, nodding at the heap of bort, “but a few classical tapes can be a profitable investment.”

  “But there isn’t a classical tape in the whole port! We haven’t a longhair in the station complement.”

  “Too bad,” I said, “but maybe you and I can do business. I have a pretty fair library aboard the “Queen.” For twenty-five percent I’ll let you have enough to make us both rich.”

  “You’re a profiteer and a pi-, rate,” Martinelli said. “The only thing that gripes me is that I didn’t bring any music besides the ‘Nine Worlds’, and I can’t part with that. There’s too much tied up in it.”

  “More than a few megacredits?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “You can keep sole Ganymedan rights,” I suggested, “as soon as you’ve produced the whole symphony. You can license it—or even work Ganymede yourself.”

  His face cleared. “Of course!” he said. “I’ll license it for this planet.”

  We went back to the ship and negotiated a contract with the Port Captain who was happily contemplating retiring and becoming a prospector. I didn’t tell him that he’d find it a lot harder than today’s stint. After all, a hegemon that’s waited for ten years would probably be more grateful than an ordinary native. And besides, it was probably paralyzed by the “Nine Worlds”. Its sense of values might have been distorted. But the young man would do all right—and I’d make a decent profit before Ganymede was glutted with music, and the hegemons raised their prices for helping humans make a profit.

  WE braked down into a respectful orbit around Mars. The Red Planet was still the same suspicious place. Martians were never noted for their trusting nature, and with modern technology their distrust extended as far out as the orbit of Deimos. They had never forgotten how the exploration parties had nearly wrecked their culture with the exotic diseases the first humans had brought with them, and they were determined that such things would never happen again.

  The Customs and Sanitation boat that came out to intercept us was filled with the typically fussbudget officials that have made Mars a trader’s nightmare for the past two centuries. We were examined, poked, prodded, fluoroscoped, X-rayed, tracered and decontaminated until we and the “Queen” were as sterile as an autoclaved forcep. And only then were we permitted to land. I couldn’t blame the Martians. In their place I’d act the same way. We were too much alike in structure and metabolism for anything less. Human and Martian diseases flourished equally well in either race.

  But this took time, and Martinelli was getting impatient. “We have less than six months left,” he protested. “This stay in quarantine hasn’t helped things any.”

  “It’s the rule,” I said. “It does no good to buck it. The whole thing is designed for mutual safety.”

  “But why do they have to move so slowly?”

  “That’s the Martian way.”

  “Ah, yes—the Martian Movement is called the largo. I wondered why.”

  “Your friend Raposnikov must have been a frustrated spaceman,” I said.

  “He could talk about the planets of the solar system for hours,” Martinelli said, “and though he’d never been off Earth except for one tour of the System, he probably knew more about it than most men. He was a shrewd and careful observer.”

  “So it seems. Well, I hope he was right about his Martian sound effects. The thin air of Mars might make a difference.”

  “I’m sure he took that into consideration. He hasn’t missed so far, has he?”

  I shook my head.

  We landed at Marsport—the domed Earth town on the outskirts of K’vasteh. Nobody paid us more than casual attention since spaceships were constantly leaving and taking off, and the “Queen” was neither large nor otherwise extraordinary. The Martians had been hearing the sound of jets for so many years that they were used to them, and the absence of the sound would have been more disturbing than its presence. We checked in at Customs, stated our business to a politely incredulous customs officer, drew
our billet assignments and settled down to planetside life.

  The crew went off to stretch their muscles in the nearest bar. I sat in the port administrative offices cleaning up the inevitable paper work that goes with a Mars touchdown, and Martinelli went off to K’vasteh looking happier than I’d seen him in months. The closer he got to the sun, the lighter his spirits became. He was, I reflected, a true son of Mother Earth. The spacelanes and other worlds didn’t interest him. His principal desire was to get through and get home to the familiar sensations of Earth. Mars, to him, was merely the third from the last stop in a trip that was already much too long. The temple bells at K’vasteh were just another sound that had to be obtained, and he intended to obtain them with the least possible trouble.

  I COULD have told him something about those bells, but I didn’t have a chance. He was gone before it occurred to me that he might not know. I learned about the Algunite monks a good many years ago and the information was so much an integral part of my background that it was second nature. Algun was the nearest thing the Martians had to a Supreme Deity. Properly translated, the name means “infinite intelligence” and the bells are only rung for a candidate who succeeds in passing the examinations for the priesthood and on the annual Festival of Algun which occurs in the summer on a date fixed by a complicated astronomical calculation performed by the Grand Ecclesiastical Council. Since the Martian year is over twice as long as ours, if we had missed the annual festival our only chance of hearing the bells would be to find a priestly candidate willing to take the examination and capable of passing it.

  Finding a candidate would be no trouble, but finding one who would risk the examination was another matter. Since a suitable penalty was provided for failure, few acolytes were willing to take the examination, which was how the priests of Algun managed to keep a large number of acolytes to serve them. In my book priests were the only truly privileged class on Mars. Anything they wanted they had merely to ask and it was given them. The people, I suppose, figured that if the priests were on their side they could receive the benefits of infinite intelligence. And after all, there was some justice in the belief, because a priest did wield some awesome powers.

  Oh yes—the penalty. It wouldn’t be too much to an Earthman but a Martian’s ears are much larger. A losing candidate lost his ears, and was driven from the temple. Most failures became hermits and hid their shame in the desert. The rest committed suicide. You see, a Martian’s ears are not like ours. They’re bigger, more brilliantly colored, and serve as a focussing device for psi-potential. Loss of his ears deprives a Martian of one of his six senses and impairs another. It was a high price for failure.

  Martinelli came back looking downcast. “The spring Festival is three months away,” he said, “and they won’t ring the bells prior to that time.”

  “Unless a candidate passes the examination for the priesthood,” I added.

  “Candidate? Priesthood? What’s this?”

  I explained.

  Martinelli’s face lightened. “Then it’s easy,” he said with relief. “All we have to do is find a candidate who wants to be a priest—and make sure that he passes.”

  “Easy,” I said without conviction. “Ha! Remember the ears?”

  “What could be so hard about it?” Martinelli asked. “There shouldn’t be anything we can’t answer for him. We can surgically implant a two-way communicator and rig it into the Solar Union branch library here on a direct beam. With all that information to draw upon, a Martian couldn’t help but pass any test.” I shook my head doubtfully. “The priests know every trick of cheating in the book. In fact, since most of them pass their examinations by some form of dishonesty, you might say that they are experienced experts in academic cheating.”

  “Do they know about microminiaturization?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “But can you prove it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then—”

  “If you can persuade an acolyte to go along with your scheme, I won’t object,” I said. “Where would we find one?”

  “Probably in one of the downtown bars in K’vasteh. They live it up during off-duty hours.”

  “Isn’t that an odd sort of activity for a holy man?”

  I shrugged. “Different worlds, different customs.”

  “Want to go with me and help find a volunteer?” he asked.

  “Why not? The sooner we get this done, the sooner we get home, and the sooner I get paid.” Martinelli looked at me oddly—an enigmatic expression on his dark face. He nodded.

  WE found our acolyte in the Garden of the Seven Delights, one of K’vasteh’s plushier night spots. From observation and experience I had long ago deduced that six of the seven delights involved alcohol, narcotics, audio, visual, olfactory, and sexual stimulation, but I never did discover what the seventh was. It involved something peculiarly Martian—about which the natives never talked. When asked they would respond with the irritating Martian cackle that can roughly be translated “find out for yourself if you’re so curious.” I’ll admit I was curious but in a quarter of a century of riding the spacelanes, I had never found out. I figured it had something to do with their peculiar ears, but that was as far as I could go. And not having Martian ears, I would probably never learn anything more than I already knew.

  Lor T’shonke was our lad’s name, a Senior Acolyte of about fifteen years standing, a typical Martian, small, lean, pigeonchested, and oddly human in conformation. Only his crest of feathers and scaly legs betrayed his avian ancestry. He reminded me of Commander Kelthorn’s wry comment to the reporters after the first successful landing and return. “There’s a bunch of queer birds on that world,” Kelthorn had said—and the description was as good today as it was two centuries ago. Martians are queer birds.

  T’shonke was in the middle of the First Delight—alcohol. A large amphora of Ko-fruit wine stood on the floor beside his booth and the peculiar narrowmouthed sipping glass in his hand was half empty. He looked at us fuzzily, his eyes half filmed by the translucent membranes of his third eyelids. He blinked at us, and I was somehow reminded of an earthly chicken. The lower lids of Martians are movable, while the uppers, encrusted in a mass of brilliant red pigmented tissue are more ornamental than useful. A Martian’s eyes constantly give an earthman the impression that all Martians are recovering from a three-day binge—but T’shonke was sober enough.

  “Greetings, Earthmen, what brings you to this poor table?” he said.

  Martinelli looked at me.

  “Tell him,” I said, “straight out. There’s no ceremony. Just get the idea across fast and clean.”

  “How would you like to be a priest?” Martinelli asked.

  T’shonke ran his long, bony fingers over the gorgeous earlobes that drooped in multicolored splendor from the sides of his head. “I would like to very much—but the penalty for failure is too great.”

  “And if we could fix it so failure was an impossibility?” Martinelli asked.

  T’shonke’s third eyelids snapped back and his yellow eyes were suddenly alert. “How?” he asked.

  “Just a minute,” Martinelli said. “What is your answer?”

  “If you could guarantee that I would not fail,” T’shonke said slowly, “I would pledge anything within reason.”

  Martinelli glanced at me.

  “That’s a top offer,” I said. “You can go ahead.”

  “Would the contents of the Solar Union library be sufficient information for your purpose?”

  “More than enough,” T’shonke said, “except for the mysteries—and I’m well grounded there.” His glass floated off the table, the amphora tipped, poured and the glass floated back full. “I can handle up to fifty kilograms—which is twice as good as most priests can do.”

  “Amazing!” Martinelli said. “Are all of you Martians telekinetics?”

  “No—just a certain percentage—like your telepaths—only better trained and better developed. We recognized ESP
long before you did and made it part of our culture.” He sighed. “If only our brains were designed for telepathy.”

  “That’s where we can help,” Martinelli said. “We can give you access to the Solar Union library even while you are taking the examination. In effect, you will be a telepath.”

  “How?”

  “We surgically implant a fourth order communicator in your ear—back of the cochlea—and another behind your syrinx. This will allow you to talk to our agents in the library and they’ll research any data you want. With the electronic coders in the library this can be done in seconds.”

  “They give five minutes for thinking,” T’shonke mused. “That would be plenty.”

  The Martian shook his head. “But it wouldn’t work,” he said. “It’s been tried before.” His eyes filmed over. “Two years ago an acolyte tried this technique. He was discovered. His ears are nailed to Algun’s altar.”

  “Why was he discovered?”

  “We go before Algun naked as we came into the world and are examined for evidence of cheating. Under X-ray the mechanisms showed.”

  “That’s no problem—the communicator could be made of radio-transparent material.”

  “The size?—displacement of tissues?”

  Martinelli held his fingers a centimeter apart. “That too large?” he asked.

  T’shonke shook his head. “If you can do as you say,” he said, “I will try to take—but wait—what do you gain from this?”

  “The temple bells which will be rung in your honor,” Martinelli said. “I wish to record their music.”

  “But can’t you wait until the Festival?” T’shonke’s voice was suddenly suspicious.

  “You don’t understand,” Martinelli said, and then he told T’shonke about the “Nine Worlds” symphony.

  “Hmm—I see. Now it makes sense. But before I agree, I must be sure that you are telling the truth. Can I hear this music?”

  “Part of the first movement,” I said. “Enough to give you an idea. No more.”