Collected Short Fiction, page 469
“Morning, Walter. Can you give me some information?”
“Maybe. What kind, Erik?”
“Travel information. When’s the next scheduled Salvor-Earth voyage?”
He frowned curiously. “The Oliver Cromwell’s booking in here on the First of Ninemonth—that’s next Twoday—and is pulling out on the Third. Why?”
“Never mind that,” I said. “Second-class fare to Earth is still five thousand credits, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but—”
“Do you have a vacancy on the Earthbound leg of the journey?”
He said nothing for a moment: Then: “Yes, yes, we have some openings. But—this can’t be for you, Erik. You know the law. And—”
“It isn’t for me,” I said. “It’s for Howard Brian. He wants to play Hamlet in New York.”
A smile appeared on Dudley’s pudgy face. “He’s a little out of date for that, unless there’s been a revolution I haven’t heard about.”
“He’s gone a little soft in the head. But he wants to die on Earth, and I’m going do my best to get him there. Five thousand credits, you say?” I paused. “Could I get him aboard that ship for seventy-five hundred?”
Anger flickered momentarily in Dudley’s eyes as his Neopuritan streak came to life. Controlling himself, he said, “It’s pointless to offer bribes, Erik. I understand the problem, but there’s absolutely nothing you or I or anyone can do. Earth’s closed to anyone who signed the Amnesty of 2168.”
“Eight thousand,” I said. “Eighty-five hundred.”
“You don’t understand, Erik. Or you won’t understand. Look here: Howard would need an entrance visa to get onto Earth. No visa, no landing. You know that, I know that, he knows it. Sure, I could put him aboard that ship, if you could find a spaceport man who’d take a bribe—and I doubt that you could. But he’d never get off the ship at the other end.”
“At least he’d be closer to Earth than he is now.”
“It won’t work. You know what side I’m on personally, Erik. But it’s impossible to board a Transgalactic Line ship without proper papers, and Howard can’t ever get those papers. He can’t go back, Erik. Sorry.”
I looked at the face framed in the screen and narrowly avoided bashing in the glass. It would only have netted me some bloody knuckles and a hundred credit repair bill, but I would have felt better about things. Instead I said, “You know, your own behavior hasn’t been strictly Neopuritan. I might write some notes—”
It was a low blow, but he ducked. He looked sad as he said, “You couldn’t prove anything, Erik. And blackmail isn’t becoming on you.”
He was right. “Okay, Walter. Hope I didn’t take up valuable time.”
“Not at all. I only wish—”
“I know. Drop around to the circus some time soon. Howard’s playing Lear. You’d better see it now, while you have the chance.”
I blanked the screen.
I sat on the edge of my hammock and cursed the fact that we’d all been born a century too late—or maybe too early. 21st Century Earth had been a glorious larking place, or so I had heard. Games and gaiety and champagne, no international tensions, no ulcers. But I had been born in the 22nd Century, when the boom came swinging back the other way. A reaction took place; people woke from a pleasant dream and turned real life into a straight-laced nightmare.
Which was why we had chosen between going to prison, entering mundane professions, and accepting the new Neopuritan government’s free offer to take ourselves far from Earth and never come back. We’d been on Salvor thirty years now. The youngest of us was middle-aged. But makeup does wonders, and anyway the Salvori didn’t care if Romeo happened to be fifty-seven and slightly paunchy.
I clenched my hands. I had been a wide-eyed kid when the Neopuritans lowered the boom, and I jumped at the chance to see the outworlds free. Now I was forty-nine, balding, a permanent exile. I vowed I was going to work like the deuce to help Howard Brian. It was a small rebellion, but a heartfelt one.
I called my bank and had them flash my bankbook on the screen. It showed a balance of Cr. 13,586—not a devil of a lot for thirty years’ work. I scribbled a draft for six thousand in cash, dropped it in the similarizer plate, and waited. They verified, and moments later a nice wad of Interstellar Galactic Credits landed in the receiving slot.
I got dressed in my Sevenday best, locked up the place, and caught a transport downtown to the spaceport terminal. As an Earthman, of course, I rode in the back of the transport, and stood.
A coach was just leaving the terminal for the spaceport. By noon I found myself forty miles outside Salvor City, standing at the edge of the sprawling maze of buildings and landing-areas that is Salvor Spaceport. I hadn’t been out here since that day in 2168 when the liner John Calvin deposited me and eighty-seven other Terran actors, dancers, strippers, and miscellaneous deported sinners, and a bleak-faced official advised us to behave ourselves, for we were now subject to the laws of Salvor.
I made my way through the confusing network of port buildings to the customs shed. My 6000-credit wad felt pleasantly thick in my pocket. Customs was crowded with aliens of various hues and shapes who were departing on a Mullinor-bound liner and who were getting a routine check-through. Since Mullinor is under Terran administration, not only were the Salvori officials running the check but a few black-uniformed employees of Transgalactic Spacelines were on hand as well. I picked out the least hostile-looking of those, and, palming a twenty-credit piece, sidled up to him.
He was checking through the passports of the departing travellers. I tapped him on the shoulder and slipped the bright; round double stellar into his hand at the same time.
“Pardon me, friend. Might I have a minute’s conversation with you in privacy?”
He glanced at me with contempt in his Neopuritan eyes and handed me back the big coin. “I’ll be through with this job in fifteen minutes. Wait for me in Depot A, if there’s any information you want.”
Now, it might have been that one of his superiors was watching, and that he didn’t want to be seen taking a gratuity in public. But I knew that was a mighty shaky theory for explaining his refusal. I didn’t have much hope, but I hied myself to Depot A and waited there for half an hour.
Finally he came along, walking briskly and whistling a hymn. He said, “Do you wish to see me?”
“Yes.”
I explained the whole thing: who I was and who Howard was, and why it was so important to let Howard get aboard the ship for Earth. I let him know that there would be two or three thousand credits in it for him if he arranged things so Howard Brian could board the Oliver Cromwell next Twoday. At least, I finished, he would die with Earth in sight, even though he might not be permitted to disembark.
I stood there waiting hopefully for an answer and watched his already frosty gaze drop to about three degrees Kelvin. He said, “By the law, Mr. Smit, I should turn you in for attempting to bribe a customs official. But in your case justice should be tempered by mercy. I pity you. Please leave.”
“Dammit, I’ll give you five thousand!”
He smiled condescendingly. “Obviously you can’t see that my soul is not for sale—not for five thousand or five billion credits. The law prohibits allowing individuals without visas to board interstellar ships. I ask you to leave before I must report you.”
I left. I saw I was making a head-first assault on a moral code which by its very nature was well-nigh impregnable, and all I was getting out of it was a headache.
Bribery was no good. These people took a masochistic pride in their underpaid incorruptibility: I was forced back on my last resort.
I went to see the Terran Consul. The legal above-board approach was my one slim hope.
Archibald von Junzt McDermott was his name, and he was a tall and angular person clad entirely in black, with a bit of white lace at his throat. It was his duty to comfort, aid, and abet Terran citizens on Salvor. Of course, I was no longer a Terran citizen—that was part of the Amnesty too—but I was of Terran birth, at least.
He wore the full Neopuritan makeup, bleached face, cropped hair, blackened lips; he hardly seemed like a comforting type to me. He sat stiffly erect behind his desk and let me squirm and fidget a while before he said, “You realize, of course, that such a request is impossible to grant. Utterly.”
Quietly I said, “I’m asking for a relaxation of the rules on behalf of one very sick old man who will probably die of joy the moment Earth comes into sight, and who is guaranteed not to touch off a revolution, promote licentiousness, seduce maidens, or otherwise upset the aims and standards of Neopuritan Earth.”
“There can be no relaxation of the rules,” Consul McDermott repeated stonily.
“Can’t you look the other way once? Don’t you know what pity is, Consul?”
“I know the meaning of the word well. I feel deep pity for you now, Mr. Smit. You have no spine. You are afraid to face the world as it is. You’re a weakling, Mr. Smit, and I offer you my pity.”
“Damned decent of you,” I snorted. “You won’t grant Howard Brian a visa to Earth, then?”
“Definitely not. We’re neither cruel nor vindictive, Mr. Smit. But the standards of society must be upheld. And I cannot find it within my heart to encourage immorality.”
“Okay,” I said. I stood up and flashed a withering glare at him—a glare of pure hate that would have been a credit to the starchiest Neopuritan preacher in the universe.
Then I turned and walked out.
IT was 1800 when I got back to my flat, and that left me an hour to relax before I had to get down to the theater to set things up for the 2030 performance. I got out of my stiff dress clothes and into my work outfit, and spent a little time on my forthcoming condensation of Medea while waiting for the hour to pass. I felt sour with defeat.
The visiphone chime sounded. I activated the receiver and John Ludwig’s face appeared, half in makeup for his role of Gloucester.
“What is it, Johnny?”
“Erik, can you get right down to the theater? Howard’s had a sort of stroke. We’ll have to call off tonight’s performance.”
“I’ll decide that,” I said. “I’ll be right down.”
They had fixed up a rough sort of bed for him in the main dressing-room, and he was stretched out, looking pale and lean and lonely; gobbets of sweat stood out on his forehead. The whole company was standing around, plus a couple of tentacled Arcturan acrobats and the three Damooran hypnotists whose act follows our show each night.
Ludwig said, “He got here early and started making up for Lear. Then he just seemed to cave in. He’s been asking for you, Erik.”
I went over to him and took his cool wrist and said, “Howard? You hear me, Howard?”
He didn’t open his eyes, but he said, “Well, how did it go? Did you book the trip for me?”
I took a deep breath. I felt cold and miserable inside, and I glanced around at the tense ring of faces before I told the lie. “Yeah,” I said. “Sure, Howard. I fixed it all up. Leave it to old Erik. Everything’s fine.”
A pathetic trusting childlike smile slowly blossomed on his face. I scowled and snapped to a couple of others, “Carry him into my office. Then get finished making up for tonight’s show.”
Ludwig protested, “But Howard doesn’t have an understudy. How can we—”
“Don’t worry,” I barked. “I’ll play Lear tonight, if Howard’s out.”
I supervised as they carried Howard, bed and all, through the corridor into my office. Then, sweating nervously, I collared the three Damoorans and said, “Are you boys doing anything for the next half hour or so?”
“We’re free,” they said in unison. They looked like a trio of tall, red, flashy animated corkscrews with bulbous eyes in their forehead. They weren’t pretty, but they were masters of their trade and fine showmen. They hung around Goznor’s Circus all the time, even when they weren’t on.
I explained very carefully to them just what I wanted them to do. It was an idea I’d held in reserve, in case all else failed. They were dubious, but liberal application of platinum double stellar coins persuaded them to give in. They vanished into my office and shut the door behind them. While I was waiting, I found Howard’s makeup kit and started turning myself into King Lear.
Perhaps fifteen minutes later the Damoorans filed out again, and nodded to me. “You had better go in there, now. He’s on Earth. It was a very good trip.”
I tiptoed into the office. Howard lay sprawled on the bed, eyes screwed tight shut, mouth moving slowly. His skin was a frightening waxy white. I put an ear near his lips to hear what he was mumbling.
“I cannot live to hear
the news from England,
But I do prophesy the elec-
tion lights
On Fortinbras; he has my
dying voice:
So tell him, with the occur-
ents, more and less,
Which have solicited—the
rest is silence.”
My mind filled in the stage direction: Dies. Act Five, Scene Two. Hamlet’s last speech.
Bravo, I thought. I looked down at Howard Brian. His voice had ceased, and his throat was still. His part was played. Howard Brian had acted Hamlet at last, and it was his finest moment on Broadway.
He was smiling even in death.
The Damoorans had done their job well. For thirty years I had watched them perform, and I had faith in their illusion-creating ability. Howard had probably lived months in these last fifteen minutes. The long journey to Earth, the tickertape parade down Fifth Avenue, the thronged opening-night house, deafening applause. Certainly the Damoorans had manufactured good notices for him in the late editions.
Anyway, it was over. Howard Brian had cheated them after all. He had returned to Earth for his swansong performance.
I shook a little as I left the office and shut the door behind me. The on-stage bell sounded. I heard Kent and Gloucester begin their scene.
I went out there as Lear and maybe I did a good job. The cast told me later that I did, and the Salvori loved it. It didn’t matter. Howard would have wanted the show to go on.
But I couldn’t help thinking, during the solemn aftershow moments when they carried Howard out, that my turn was coming. You can’t go back to Earth; but someday in the next twenty years I was going to want to go back with all my heart, as Howard had wanted. The thought worried me. I only hoped there’d be a few Damoorans around, when my time came.
THE END
The Unique and Terrible Compulsion
The mild and gentle natives of the planet Danneroi had an incredible means of enforcing their desires upon the Earthmen. It just had to be experienced to be believed!
DAVE GARTH was an honorable man. He had entered the Interstellar Merchant Service at the age of 23 in 2406. and by the time he was 23 he had risen high in the ranks of the organization. He had a reputation for impeccable honesty, and he was an advocate of fair dealings between Earthmen and the hundreds of native races of other planets with which Earth dealt.
In his first five years Garth had served the usual jobs on the Merchant Service circuit, ending up with a minor administrative post on Lorphar in the Semmelweis System. He was in his second year on the Lorphar job, and already beginning to speculate on how long it would be until he had risen to the top job at the Lorphar outpost, when he was called to his superior’s office and was told that a subradiogram had just arrived for him from the central office on Earth.
He had been reassigned. He was to leave Lorphar immediately and return to Earth for briefing on his new job.
“We’re sorry to lose you,” his superior told him. “You did a fine job here, Garth.”
In a way, Garth was a trifle disappointed at being yanked from Lorphar. He was working out well there, with his job under control and going smoothly, and he liked the planet, its people, and the men he worked with. Still, if the Merchant Service thought he would be more useful somewhere else, it was not his duty to question their decision. He returned to Earth on the next ship that blasted out of Lorphar.
Earthfall took place early in April of 2412, and Garth reported immediately to the central office in Buenos Aires for reassignment. The main computer processed him through, and within half an hour he was in the office of one Martin Kingsley, a District Supervisor.
Kingsley turned out to be a slim pale man in his forties, who offered Garth a chair, a drink, and a cigar, and then plunged immediately into the matter at hand.
“Mr. Garth, do you know anything about the planet called Danneroi?”
“No, sir.” Garth shook his head. There were thousands of worlds in the galaxy, and he had nothing to gain by pretending he knew them all. Garth always believed in honesty as a guiding rule, and so far in his life it had worked out well.
Kingsley leaned forward and puffed at his cigar. “Danneroi is a Plus Point Two world in the Murchison System—it’s Murchison IV, I believe. We have a single outpost in the hotlands of Danneroi they mine a good grade of thorium there, and we have big plans for Danneroi in the next few decades, The outpost is run by a single operator, and he’s been there for thirty years. His name is Lidman—Anton Lidman. He’s done a good job for us, or so we’ve been thinking all along. But now we get some strange reports about him.”
Garth stared solemnly at the well-dressed supervisor, and picked up his cue. “What sort of reports, Mr. Kingsley?”
“A pickup ship touches down on Danneroi every three months to bring new trading goods for Lidman and to pick up the thorium he’s bought. I have the reports of the ship captains right here.” He displayed a sheaf of minifac sheets. “I don’t think it’s news to you, Mr. Garth, that every time a ship touches down on a world to deal with one of our trading posts, we request a report on the behavior of our representative. Well, over the last three years or so we’ve had increasingly dismaying reports about Lidman—he’s uncooperative, cranky, secretive, that sort of thing. We began to suspect he might be too old for the post. But this last report here claims that Lidman’s been distributing drugs to the natives.”
