Текст книги "Options"

Автор книги: Robert Sheckley

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64. The Reality Principle Revisited

Johnny Allegro was feeling out of sorts that morning. He set the derby on his black glossy hair. Carefully, he straightened the cuffs of his chocolate mohair shirt. Now he was ready for business.

The telephone rang. Allegro pounced on it. "Allegro speaking."

"Johnny? This is Harry van Orlen."

Allegro pictured the big-bellied, slack-jawed gunman with the heavily stubbled jaws and the grimy fingernails.

"Well, what is it?" Johnny snapped. He hated cheap gunsels, even though his work frequently required him to spend eighteen hours a day with them.

"It's like this, Johnny. Do you remember that job we did on South Main Street?"

"Yeah," Johnny snarled, recognizing at once the euphemism referring to the recent burglary of the Wel-Rite Storage Company on Varick Street.

"Well, we found buyers for all the inventory except one piece of hardware we're still stuck with."

"What kind of a product is it?" Johnny asked.

"It's some sort of gadget labelled Spaceship Engine Part L-1223A. It was supposed to be sent to some guy named Mishkin in some place called Harmonia."

"So, sell it."

"Nobody wants it."

"Then dump it somewhere." Johnny slammed down the telephone, scowling. He hated it when his underlings bothered him with questions that an ape would be able to solve while going downhill on roller skates. But he also hated unwarranted initiative.

Just then a thought occurred to him: Maybe he should send that engine part to that guy, what was his name, that Mishkin, thus acquiring for himself the reputation of an eccentric philanthropist. Then he could do a few more nice things and maybe after that run for elected office.

This notion suited Johnny's strange notions of noblesse oblige.He reached for the telephone.

Just then the door burst open and three policemen and an author burst into the room with drawn guns.

Johnny snarled in rage. His lightning-quick reflexes enabled him to dive beneath the desk before the policemen's bullets ripped through the space where he had just been.

"Get him!" screamed the author. "He knows where the part is!"

But Johnny had already pushed the blue button under his desk. A section of floor opened under him and Johnny fell through a chute that led to the garage where his Mercedes SL 300 was waiting, its motor ticking over quietly.

65

Some days later, on the cool, raffia-covered veranda of the large, weather-beaten house on lower Key Largo, Professor John O. MacAllister was undergoing a moment of severe perplexity. This was unusual for the tall, strongly built, sandy-haired physicist from Rockport, Maine. Beside him was Lois, his tall, attractive, chestnut-haired wife. She had just entered the veranda.

Before Lois had a chance to speak, towheaded Tyie Oliver ran up on to the cool veranda with a five ball in his hand. "Pool, anyone?" he asked fatuously.

"Not just now, Tyie," said Professor MacAllister in quiet tones.

Tyie turned to go. But then it became apparent, even to his untrained and unobservant eye, that there was something strange and unnatural in the bearing of the two people he had known for only a month but already prized more than anyone in the world.

"Is anything the matter?" Tyie asked.

Before anyone could answer, Lois MacAllister's younger sister, Patty, came down the inner steps and out on to the veranda. Not yet seventeen, Patty was singularly developed for her age. She sat down in a faded green armchair and crossed the long, generously curved legs that fell from the slender waist below her ample and delicately shaped breasts.

"Yes, John," she said, tart-sweet, "isanything the matter?"

Professor MacAllister went a shade pale beneath the healthy glow of his tan. He noted that his wife's grey eyes had widened. Quietly, he said, "Now, wait just a minute…"

The kitchen door opened. Out on to the veranda came Chang, the Chinese cook, Kyoto, the Philippine houseboy, and Mary Lou, the Jamaican housekeeper. They ranged themselves silently along the wall. And now it was Patty's turn to go pale.

There was a long silence. Then Tyie said, "Uh, I guess I'd better be getting home. The paint on the birdcage is probably dry by now, and I…"

"Don't rush away, Tyie," said Lois MacAllister. "There's someone here I think you should meet."

The cellar door opened and out on to the veranda came a bald, one-eyed dwarf, a thin man in a black suit, and a pair of giggling, blonde, female twins.

"Now I think we can clear this thing up," MacAllister said. "First, as to the so-called mysterious package that Ed Whittaker found in the bilge of the garbage scow, Clotilda,just two days before his disappearance…"

"Yes?" Patty breathed.

"It contained nothing more than an engine part for a spaceship. It was supposed to be sent to a Mr Mishkin of Harmonia, and in the presence of Judge Clarke I forwarded it to the Dade County Emergency Expediting Service."

Patty slumped back, her body slack with relief. "Well, that takes care of that! We've all been a pack of fools!"

"Maybe," said Lois MacAllister. "But we still haven't heard any explanation for the rest of it."

Professor MacAllister looked thoughtfully at the people on the veranda. "That," he said, "may take a little longer." He went to the sideboard and poured himself a drink.

66

The sign on the door read: CONTINUITIES, INC. Uncle Arnold went inside and was shown to the office of Thomas Grantwell.

"I've come here about my nephew," Uncle Arnold said. "Tom Mishkin is his name. He's stranded on a planet called Harmonia, and he's gotta have a certain engine part so's he can make his spaceship run again. But I can't seem to get the part to him."

"Have you tried shipping it by space freight?" Grantwell asked.

"I have. But they told me that the Interstellar Space Flight Premise had been suspended this year, and therefore they were unable to help me".

"Did you ask them what was supposed to happen to your nephew?"

"They said that they would provisionally have to deny his existence until the Premise was reinstated."

"That's government for you," Grantwell said. "Leaves you – or rather young Mishkin – in quite a spot."

"Is there anything your organization can do to help the lad?" asked Uncle Arnold.

"There is," Grantwell said, firmly. "Continuities, Inc was designed to create connections between incompatible assumptions. We will design a scenario that will provide a link between these two different realities without doing violence to either."

"That's wonderful," Uncle Arnold said.

And so it came to pass that all the toads were smoothed over and various elephants were secretly enlisted. The next step was more severe: suitable gapping material had to be found, heads had to be turned, performances judged. Spontaneity died in Kansas City and was replaced by probity.

Gigantic mechanisms were turned loose upon a suspecting Earth. Various marches were organized. The input factory increased outputs. Crimson dagles carried darkness and invisibility. People decided things. There was a necessary series of transactions conducted via radio and involving a compromise about permissible ratios of feeling.

Nor was this all. The world stood revealed in dark vestments. Certain facts of long-established limpidity died aborning. The strain on the normative cause-and-effect linkages was tremendous. Voices were raised in protest. Outright revolt was threatened.

The author, in the meantime, had formed a dismal awareness of the difficulties involved. He toyed with various possibilities, even considered killing Mishkin off and starting a new book – a cookbook, perhaps. Still…

67. Peregrinations

"Damn it all," said Mishkin, "another zero-null game."

The engine part could be seen in all its splendour, isolated in the author's mind. It was a hazy visualization, sometimes resembling a pot roast, at other times a Citroen 2 cv.

The part sounded like a rock band. It smelt like a butane burner.

68. Certificate of Unreality

Mishkin was resting in a glade. The robot was enjoying a pseudo-rest, since he didn't need a real rest. Mishkin looked up and became aware that someone was striding across the sward towards him.

"Hello, there," said The Man of a Thousand Disguises. "I'm in charge of this sequence. I have come here in person to formalize a resolution."

"What are you talking about?" Mishkin asked. "I'm just waiting here for a spaceship part."

The Man grimaced. "I'm terribly sorry about that, but you see, we are no longer entertaining that premise. The whole conception of you on an alien planet, waiting for a spaceship part – well, it had been declared dramatically unsound. Therefore, we are scrapping it."

"Does that mean that you are also scrapping me?"

The Man looked at him unhappily. "Well, yes, I'm afraid that it does. We have found a new hero to take your place."

THE NEW HERO

He was complicated, devious, terribly attractive, masculine, universal. He had idiosyncracies, habits, traits. He had soul, pzazz, vital juices. He had a sex life. He had a complicated and ambiguous history. He had a little mole to the left of his nose. He had satanic eyebrows. He was a knockout.

"This is your replacement," said The Man. "You've done your best, Mishkin. It's no fault of yours if you've gotten into this untenable situation. But really, we must end this thing, and to do that we need some cooperation from our characters, and you – well, you simply don't have any characteristicsfor us to work with."

Mishkin instantly developed a facial tic, a stammer, a way of biting his lips before and after speaking, a moustache, and a removable false tooth.

"Sorry, it's not quite what we had in mind," said The Man. "Now, I will just leave you boys to get acquainted." The Man turned himself into a tree.

MR MISHKIN MEETS MR HERO

"How do you do?" Mishkin said.

"How do you do?" said Mr Hero.

"Would you care for a nice cup of coffee?" said Mishkin.

"Thanks, that would be nice," said Mr Hero.

Mishkin poured coffee. They sipped in silence.

Mr Hero said, "Nice weather we've been having."

"Where?" Mishkin said.

"Oh, in Limbo," said Mr Hero. "I've been waiting there with the other archetypes."

"It's been nice here, too," Mishkin said.

The tree changed into The Man. "Interact!" he hissed and turned into a tree again.

Mr Hero smiled diffidently. "Rather an awkward situation, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is," Mishkin said. "Personally, ever since I started this thing I've been in just one awkward situation after another. Maybe a rest would do me good."

"Yes," said Mr Hero. "But before that, it would be terribly good of you to explain the ropes to me. I mean, new man on the job, and all that…" He broke off with an embarrassed laugh.

"Well," Mishkin said, "there's not much to explain. You just go along and things happen to you."

"But that's rather – passive —isn't it?"

"Sure, it is. But it's that kind of adventure."

"What about motivation?" asked Mr Hero.

"As far as I know," Mishkin said, "you're looking for a spaceship part."

"A what?"

"A part to replace a broken part in your spaceship. Without it your spaceship won't run. And that means you can't get back to Earth. And you do want to get back to Earth—that's an unspoken assumption that I personally think ought to be examined. Anyhow, that's your motivation."

"I see," said Mr Hero. "Not much you can get your teethinto, is there?"

"It's no Oedipus Rex," Mishkin admitted. "But then, what is?"

Mr Hero chuckled appreciatively. "That's terribly true, what is, indeed? Well, now, who is this other chap?"

"He's a robot," Mishkin said.

"Why is he here?"

"I can't remember the original reason. But mainly he's here so that you won't have to talk to yourself."

Mr Hero looked at the robot apprehensively. "My mother was raped by a robot," he remarked. "That's her story. The robot said that he mistook her for a refrigerator. I've felt dodgy about robots ever since. Is this robot a nice robot?"

The robot looked up. "Yes," he said, "I'm a nice robot, especially when people have the common courtesy to address me as if I am here when I am here, rather than speaking as if I weren't here, which, frankly, the way things are going these days, I'd just as soon rather not be."

"Prolix, isn't he?" said Mr Hero.

"If you don't like it," said the robot, "you can always stuff it up your nose."

Mr Hero rolled his eyes, then abruptly giggled.

The Man transformed himself from a tree into The Man. "That's it," he said. "I'm sorry, Mr Hero, but you don't seem to be the type we had in mind."

"So where's that at?" Mr Hero said haughtily, "Can I help it if you don't know what you're doing?"

"Go back at once to the collective pool of the unconscious," said The Man.

Mr Hero vanished with hauteur.

"Now we're back where we started from," Mishkin said.

"That was my line," the robot said.

"Shut up," said The Man. "I gotta think." He sat down upon a rock – a tall, sombre, light-haired man with a moustache and a terribly attractive way with women. His long, strong fingers rippled as he tapped them on one bony knee. There were dark shadows hiding his smouldering eyes. He was a knockout. But he wasn't happy. No, he wasn't happy. Perhaps he would never be happy. Had not Dr Lifshultz told him once, "Happiness is just a thing called Joe." And The Man's name was not Joe. So he was not happiness nor were any of his pursuits or practices.

PART TWO

69. And so Once More Into the Breach, Brave Friends

The prau glided over the clear waters of the creek, guided by the deft paddle of the aged Dayak who brought the frail craft expertly alongside the bamboo dock that connected the village of Omandrik with the outside world.

A white man – an American – dressed in mosquito boots, jodhpurs, a sweat-stained white shirt and crushed bush hat, had been watching the arrival of the native craft from the relative coolness of the long-shadowed veranda of his house. He rose without haste and checked the chambers of the.38 calibre Cross & Blackwell revolver that he habitually carried in a well-oiled chamois holster strapped under his right armpit. Then, moving easily through the sultry tropic heat, he shambled down to the pier.

The first man to step off the ancient steamboat was a tall Arab in flowing white robes and a white and yellow headdress of the Hadhramaut. He was followed by an enormously fat man of indeterminate age, wearing a red fez, a crumpled suit of white silk, and sandals. The fat man might have been taken for Turkish, but a keen observer, noting the faintly slanted green eyes nearly lost in rolls of fat, would have guessed him to be a Hungarian from the Carpathian steppes. He was followed by a short, emaciated, provisional English boy of some twenty years of age, whose over-quick gestures and trembling hands proclaimed a terminal amphetamine user and beneath whose denim jacket might be glimpsed the dull-grey corrugated surface of a hand grenade. Lastly, a girl stepped off the boat, smartly dressed in a flowered cotton shift, with long dark hair streaming over her shoulders, her beautiful features betraying no hint of emotionality.

The new arrivals nodded to the American on the dock, but no words were exchanged until they had all assembled on the veranda, leaving the helicopter pilot to tie down his craft with the help of several good-natured natives.

They sat in bamboo armchairs, and a white-coated house-boy brought round a tray of icy gin pahits. The fat man lifted his glass in silent tribute and said, "You seem to be doing nicely for yourself, Jamieson."

"I can't kick," the hard-faced American replied. "I'm the only trader in these parts, you know. I do a fair business in emeralds. Then there's the rare birds and butterflies, and a little gold gets panned in the alluvial streams inland, and an occasional trinket comes my way from the Khomar tombs. And, of course, I pick up various other thingsfrom time to time."

"One is surprised at your convenient lack of competitors," said the Arab, in flawless Lancashire English.

The American smiled without humour. "The natives around here wouldn't allow it. I'm something of a god to them, you know."

"I have heard something about that," the fat man said. "Rumour has it that you paddled in here about six years ago, more dead than alive, without a possession to your name except a pack containing five thousand doses of anti-plague serum."

"I heard the same story," said the Arab. "And a week later half the population was down with bubonic."

"Just a lucky break for me," said the unsmiling American. "I was right glad to be of assistance."

"By gad, sir," said the fat man, "I drink to you! I do admire a man who makes his own luck."

"What do you mean by that?" Jamieson asked.

There was a short, ominous silence. But the tension was broken by the sound of the girl laughing.

The men stared at her. Jamieson frowned and seemed about to question her misplaced levity. Then he noticed that the English speed freak had his right hand close to the white bone handle of the long knife he carried under his shirt in a white leather pouch between his scrawny shoulder blades.

"Something itchin' you, son?" Jamieson asked, with deadly mildness.

"If there is I'll let you know," said the boy, his blue eyes blazing. "And my name isn't «son», it's Billy Banterville. That's who I am and who I expect to be, and anyone who says otherwise is a dirty liar and I'll be pleased to take him apart – take him apart – take him apart… Oh, my God, my skin is crawling off, what's happening to my skin, who lit the fuses of my nerves, why is my brain boiling? My head hurts, I need, I need."

The fat man looked towards the Arab and nodded imperceptibly. The Arab took a hypodermic syringe from a flat, black leather case, filled it with a colourless liquid from a plastic ampoule, and deftly injected the solution into the boy's arm. Billy Banterville smiled and lay back in his chair like a jointless puppet, his pupils so enlarged that no whites could be seen, an expression of indescribable happiness upon his thin, tight face.

A moment later he vanished.

"Good riddance," said Jamieson, who had watched all of this without comment. "Why did you bother to keep a character like that?"

"He had his uses," said the fat man.

The girl had herself under control now. She said, "That's it, you see. Each of us has his uses, each of us has something that is necessary to the others. You might consider us a corporate entity."

"I see," said Jamieson, although he didn't. "So each of you is irreplaceable."

"Not at all," said the girl. "Quite the contrary. Each of us stands in constant fear of replacement. That is why we try to stay always in each other's company – to avoid sudden and premature replacement."

"I don't get it," Jamieson said, although he did. He waited, but it became evident that no one was going to expatiate upon the subject. Jamieson shrugged his shoulders, suddenly ill at ease in the uncanny silence. He said, "I suppose you'd like to get down to business?"

"If it would not be too much trouble," said the tall Arab.

"Sure," Jamieson said. The Arab made him feel uneasy. All of them made him feel uneasy. All except the girl. He had some ideas about her – and some plans.

Fifty yards from Jamieson's house the laboriously cleared area ended and jungle abruptly began – a green, vertical labyrinth in which a seemingly infinite number of randomly connected planes receded endlessly towards some unimaginable centre. The jungle was infinite repetition, infinite regression, infinite despair.

Standing just within the jungle margin, invisible to observers in the clearing, were two men. One was a native, a Malay to judge from his green and brown headband. He was of medium height, stocky and strongly built. His aspect was thoughtful, melancholic, tense.

His companion was a white man, tall, deeply tanned, perhaps thirty years of age, conventionally handsome, dressed in the yellow robe of a Buddhist monk. The incongruity between his appearance and his dress vanished in the fantastic contortions of the surrounding jungle.

The white man was seated cross-legged on the ground facing away from the clearing.

He was in a state of extreme relaxation. His grey eyes seemed to be focused inward.

Presently the native said, "Tuan, the man, Jamieson, has gone into his house."

"Yes," said the white man.

"Now he returns. He is carrying an object wrapped in burlap. It is not a large object—perhaps one-fourth the size of a young elephant's head."

The white man did not answer.

"Now he unwraps the burlap. Within, there is an object of metal. It is of a complicated shape."

The white man nodded.

"They have all gathered around the object," the native went on. "They are pleased, they are smiling. No, not all of them. The Arab has a strange expression on his face. It is not exactly displeasure. It is some emotion that I cannot describe. Yes, I can! The Arab knows something that the others don't. He is a man who thinks he has a secret advantage."

"So much the worse for him," the white man said. "The others have the safety of their ignorance. That one has the peril of his understanding."

"Do you foresee this, Tuan?"

"I read what is written," the white man said. "The ability to read is my curse."

The native shuddered, fascinated and repelled. A strange pity welled up in him for this man of strange talents and great vulnerabilities.

The white man said, "Now the fat man is holding the metal object. He gives money to Jamieson."

"Tuan, you are not even looking at them."

"Nevertheless, I see."

The native shook himself like a dog. The gentle white man – his friend – had power but was himself the victim of greater power. Yes, but it was best not to think of such things, for the white man's destiny was not his destiny, and he thanked his God for that.

"Now they are going inside Jamieson's house," the native said. "But you know that, do you not, Tuan?"

"I know. I am unable not to know."

"And you know what they are doing within the house?"

"This, too, I cannot avoid."

The native said, impulsively, "Tell me only what I must hear."

"That is all I ever tell you," the white man said. Then, without looking at the native, he said, "You should leave me, leave this place. You should go to another island, get a wife, go into business."

"No, Tuan. We are yoked together, you and I. There is no avoiding it. As you know."

"Yes, I know. But sometimes I hope I am wrong, just for once. I would give a great deal to be wrong."

"It is not in your nature."

"Perhaps not. Still, I can hope." The white man shrugged. "Now the fat man has put the metal object into a black leather satchel. They are all smiling and shaking hands and there is murder in the air. Come, let us go away now."

"Is there not a chance they will escape us?"

"It no longer matters. The ending is wrought in iron. We will go away and eat now and then sleep."

"And then?"

The white man shook his head wearily. "You do not need to know that. Come."

They moved into the jungle. The native prowled with the silent grace of a tiger. The white man drifted like a ghost.