Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley (17 page)

In answer, a brilliant light flashed on, drowning out the feeble beam of his flashlight. Howard shut his eyes and stepped backwards, almost falling.

The strip was motionless. Howard opened his eyes and found himself in a great brilliantly lighted room. Looking around, he saw that it was completely paneled with mirrors.

A hundred Howards looked at him, and he stared back. Then he whirled around.

There was no exit. But the mirrored Howards did not whirl with him. They stood silently.

Howard lifted his right hand. The other Howards kept theirs at their sides. There were no mirrors.

The hundred Howards began to walk forward, toward the center of the room. They were unsteady on their feet, and no intelligence showed in their dull eyes. The original Howard gasped, and threw his flashlight at them. It clattered along the floor.

Instantaneously, a complete thought formed in his mind. This was the machine's purpose. Its builders had foreseen the death of their species. So they constructed the machine in space. Its purpose—to create humans, to populate the planet. It needed an operator, of course, and the real operator never reached it. And it needed a matrix ...

But these prototype Howards were obviously without intelligence. They milled around the room, moving automatically, barely able to control their limbs. And the original Howard discovered, almost as soon as the thought was born, that he was terribly wrong.

The ceiling opened up. Giant hooks descended, knives glistening with steam slid down. The walls opened, showing gigantic wheels and gears, blazing furnaces, frosty white surfaces. More and more Howards marched into the room, and the great knives and hooks cut into them, dragging Howard's brothers toward the open walls.

Not one of them screamed except the original Howard.

“Fleming!” he shrieked. “Not
me
. Not
me
. Fleming!”

Now it all added up; the space station, built at a time when war was decimating the planet. The operator, who had reached the machine only to die before he could enter. And his cargo of food ... which, as operator, he would never have eaten.

Of course! The population of the planet had been nine or ten billion! Starvation must have driven them to this final war. And all the time the builders of the machine fought against time and disease, trying to save their race ...

But couldn't Fleming see that
he
was the wrong matrix?

The Fleming-machine could not, for Howard fulfilled all the conditions. The last thing Howard saw was the sterile surface of a knife flashing toward him.

And the Fleming-machine processed the milling Howards, cut and sliced them, deep-froze and packaged them neatly, into great stacks of fried Howard, roast Howard, Howard with cream sauce, Howard with brown sauce, three-minute boiled Howard, Howard on the half-shell, Howard with pilaf, and especially Howard salad.

The food-duplication process was a success! The war could end, because now there was more than enough food for everyone. Food! Food for the starving billions on Paradise II!

T
HERE
are regulations to govern the conduct of First Contact spaceships, rules drawn up in desperation and followed in despair, for what rule can predict the effect of any action upon the mentality of an alien people?

Jan Maarten was gloomily pondering this as he came into the atmosphere of Durell IV. He was a big, middle-aged man with thin ash-blond hair and a round worried face. Long ago, he had concluded that almost any rule was better than none. Therefore he followed his meticulously, but with an ever-present sense of uncertainty and human fallibility.

These were ideal qualifications for the job of First Contacter.

He circled the planet, low enough for observation, but not too low, since he didn't want to frighten the inhabitants. He noted the signs of a primitive-pastoral civilization and tried to remember everything he had learned in Volume 4,
Projected Techniques for First Contact on So-called Primitive-pastoral Worlds
, published by the Department of Alien Psychology. Then he brought the ship down on a rocky, grass-covered plain, near a typical medium-sized village, but not too near, using the Silent Sam landing technique.

“Prettily done,” commented Croswell, his assistant, who was too young to be bothered by uncertainties.

Chedka, the Eborian linguist, said nothing. He was sleeping, as usual.

Maarten grunted something and went to the rear of the ship to run his tests. Croswell took up his post at the viewport.

“Here they come,” Croswell reported half an hour later. “About a dozen of them, definitely humanoidal.” Upon closer inspection, he saw that the natives of Durell were flabby, dead-white in coloration, and deadpan in expression. Croswell hesitated, then added, “They're not too handsome.”

“What are they doing?” Maarten asked.

“Just looking us over,” Croswell said. He was a slender young man with an unusually large and lustrous mustache which he had grown on the long journey out from Terra. He stroked it with the pride of a man who has been able to raise a really good mustache.

“They're about twenty yards from the ship now,” Croswell reported. He leaned forward, flattening his nose ludicrously against the port, which was constructed of one-way glass.

Croswell could look out, but no one could look in. The Department of Alien Psychology had ordered the change last year, after a Department ship had botched a first contact on Carella II. The Carellans had stared into the ship, become alarmed at something within, and fled. The Department still didn't know what had alarmed them, for a second contact had never been successfully established.

That mistake would never happen again.

“What now?” Maarten called.

“One of them's coming forward alone. Chief, perhaps. Or sacrificial offering.”

“What is he wearing?”

“He has on a—a sort of—will you kindly come here and look for yourself?”

Maarten, at his instrument bank, had been assembling a sketchy picture of Durell. The planet had a breathable atmosphere, an equitable climate, and gravity comparable to that of Earth. It had valuable deposits of radioactives and rare metals. Best of all, it tested free of the virulent microorganisms and poisonous vapors which tended to make a Contacter's life feverishly short.

Durell was going to be a valuable neighbor to Earth, provided the natives were friendly—and the Contacters skillful.

Maarten walked to the viewport and studied the natives. “They are wearing pastel clothing. We shall wear pastel clothing.”

“Check,” said Croswell.

“They are unarmed. We shall go unarmed.”

“Roger.”

“They are wearing sandals. We shall wear sandals as well.”

“To hear is to obey.”

“I notice they have no facial hair,” Maarten said, with the barest hint of a smile. “I'm sorry, Ed, but that mustache—”

“Not my mustache!” Croswell yelped, quickly putting a protective hand over it.

“I'm afraid so.”

“But, Jan, I've been six months raising it!”

“It has to go. That should be obvious.”

“I don't see why,” Croswell said indignantly.

“Because first impressions are
vital
. When an unfavorable first impression has been made, subsequent contacts become difficult, sometimes impossible. Since we know nothing about these people, conformity is our safest course. We try to look like them, dress in colors that are pleasing, or at least acceptable to them, copy their gestures, interact within their framework of acceptance in every way—”

“All right, all right,” Croswell said. “I suppose I can grow another on the way back.”

They looked at each other; then both began laughing. Croswell had lost three mustaches in this manner.

While Croswell shaved, Maarten stirred their linguist into wakefulness. Chedka was a lemurlike humanoid from Eboria IV, one of the few planets where Earth maintained successful relations. The Eborians were natural linguists, aided by the kind of associative ability found in nuisances who supply words in conversation—only the Eborians were always right. They had wandered over a considerable portion of the Galaxy in their time and might have attained quite a place in it were it not that they needed twenty hours' sleep out of twenty-four.

Croswell finished shaving and dressed in pale green coveralls and sandals. All three stepped through the degermifier. Maarten took a deep breath, uttered a silent prayer, and opened the port.

A low sigh went up from the crowd of Durellans, although the chief—or sacrifice—was silent. They were indeed humanlike, if one overlooked their pallor and the gentle sheeplike blandness of their features—features upon which Maarten could read no trace of expression.

“Don't use any facial contortions,” Maarten warned Croswell.

Slowly they advanced until they were ten feet from the leading Durellan. Then Maarten said in a low voice, “We come in peace.”

Chedka translated, then listened to the answer, which was so soft as to be almost undecipherable.

“Chief says welcome,” Chedka reported in his economical English.

“Good, good,” Maarten said. He took a few more steps forward and began to speak, pausing every now and then for translation. Earnestly, and with extreme conviction, he intoned Primary Speech BB-32 (for humanoid, primitive-pastoral, tentatively nonaggressive aliens).

Even Croswell, who was impressed by very little, had to admit it was a fine speech. Maarten said they were wanderers from afar, come out of the Great Nothingness to engage in friendly discourse with the gentle people of Durell. He spoke of green and distant Earth, so like this planet, and of the fine and humble people of Earth who stretched out hands in greeting. He told of the great spirit of peace and cooperation that emanated from Earth, of universal friendship, and many other excellent things.

Finally he was done. There was a long silence.

“Did he understand it all?” Maarten whispered to Chedka.

The Eborian nodded, waiting for the chief's reply. Maarten was perspiring from the exertion, and Croswell couldn't stop nervously fingering his newly shaven upper lip.

The chief opened his mouth, gasped, made a little half turn, and collapsed to the ground.

It was an embarrassing moment and one uncovered by any amount of theory.

The chief didn't rise; apparently it was not a ceremonial fall. As a matter of fact, his breathing seemed labored, like that of a man in a coma.

Under the circumstances, the Contact team could only retreat to their ship and await further developments.

Half an hour later, a native approached the ship and conversed with Chedka, keeping a wary eye on the Earthmen and departing immediately.

“What did he say?” Croswell asked.

“Chief Moréri apologizes for fainting,” Chedka told them. “He said it was inexcusably bad manners.”

“Ah!” Maarten exclaimed. “His fainting might help us, after all—make him eager to repair his ‘impoliteness.' Just as long as it was a fortuitous circumstance, unrelated to us—”

“Not,” Chedka said.

“Not what?”

“Not unrelated,” the Eborian said, curling up and going to sleep.

Maarten shook the little linguist awake. “What else did the chief say? How was his fainting related to us?”

Chedka yawned copiously. “The chief was very embarrassed. He faced the wind from your mouth as long as he could, but the alien odor—”

“My breath?” Maarten asked. “My breath knocked him out?”

Chedka nodded, giggled unexpectedly, and went to sleep.

Evening came, and the long dim twilight of Durell merged imperceptibly into night. In the village, cooking fires glinted through the surrounding forest and winked out one by one. But lights burned within the spaceship until dawn. And when the sun rose, Chedka slipped out of the ship on a mission into the village. Croswell brooded over his morning coffee, while Maarten rummaged through the ship's medicine chest.

“It's purely a temporary setback,” Croswell was saying hopefully. “Little things like this are bound to happen. Remember that time on Dingoforeaba VI—”

“It's little things that close planets forever,” Maarten said.

“But how could anyone possibly guess—”

“I should have foreseen it,” Maarten growled angrily. “Just because our breath hasn't been offensive anywhere else—here it is!”

Triumphantly he held up a bottle of pink tablets. “Absolutely guaranteed to neutralize any breath, even that of a hyena. Have a couple.”

Croswell accepted the pills. “Now what?”

“Now we wait until—aha! What did he say?”

Chedka slipped through the entry port, rubbing his eves. “The chief apologizes for fainting.”

“We know that. What else?”

“He welcomes you to the village of Lannit at your convenience. The chief feels that this incident shouldn't alter the course of friendship between two peace-loving courteous peoples.”

Maarten sighed with relief. He cleared his throat and asked hesitantly, “Did you mention to him about the forthcoming—ah—improvement in our breaths?”

“I assured him it would be corrected,” Chedka said, “although it never bothered me.”

“Fine, fine. We will leave for the village now. Perhaps you should take one of these pills?”

“There's nothing wrong with
my
breath,” the Eborian said complacently.

They set out at once for the village of Lannit.

When one deals with a primitive-pastoral people, one looks for simple but highly symbolic gestures, since that is what they understand best. Imagery! Clear-cut and decisive parallels! Few words but many gestures! Those were the rules in dealing with primitive-pastorals.

As Maarten approached the village, a natural and highly symbolic ceremony presented itself. The natives were waiting in their village, which was in a clearing in the forest. Separating forest from village was a dry stream bed, and across that bed was a small stone bridge.