One and Wonder (30 page)

His eyes, all shiny black iris without any whites, were set back deep in the shadow of his head. They reminded Sam Weber of the scanners on the
Biocalibrator: they tabulated, deduced, rather than saw.

“I was afraid I would be too late,” he rumbled at last in weird, clipped tones. “You have already duplicated yourself, Mr. Weber, making necessary unpleasant rearrangements. And the duplicate has destroyed the disassembleator. Too bad. I shall have to do it manually. An ugly job.”

He came further into the room until they could almost breathe their fright upon him. “This affair has already dislocated four major programs, but we had to move in accepted cultural grooves and be absolutely certain of the recipients identity before we could act to withdraw the set. Mrs. Lipanti's collapse naturally stimulated emergency measures.”

The duplicate cleared his throat. “You are—”

“Not exactly human. A humble civil servant of precision manufacture. I am Census Keeper for the entire twenty-ninth oblong. You see, your set was intended for the Thregander children who are on a field trip in this oblong. One of the Threganders who has a Weber chart requested the set through the chrondromos which, in an attempt at the supernormal, un-stabled without carnuplicating. You therefore received the package instead. Unfortunately, the unstabling was so complete that we were forced to locate you by indirect methods.”

The Census Keeper paused and Sam's double hitched his pants nervously. Sam wished he had anything—even a fig leaf—to cover his nakedness. He felt like a character in the Garden of Eden trying to build up a logical case for apple-eating. He appreciated glumly how much more than “Bild-A-Man” sets clothes had to do with the making of a man.

“We will have to recover the set, of course,” the staccato thunder continued, “and readjust any discrepancies it has caused. Once the matter has been cleared up, however, your life will be allowed to resume its normal progression. Meanwhile, the problem is which of you is the original Sam Weber?”

“I am,” they both quavered—and turned to glare at each other.

“Difficulties,” the old man rumbled. He sighed like an arctic wind. “I always have difficulties! Why can't I ever have a simple case like a carnuplicator?”

“Look here,” the duplicate began. “The original will be—”

“Less unstable and of better emotional balance than the replica,” Sam interrupted. “Now, it seems—”

“That you should be able to tell the difference,” the other concluded breathlessly. “From what you see and have seen of us, can't you decide which is the more valid member of society?”

What a pathetic confidence, Sam thought, the fellow was trying to display! Didn't he know he was up against someone who could really discern mental differences? This was no fumbling psychiatrist of the present; here was a creature who could see through externals to the most coherent personality beneath.

“I can, naturally. Now, just a moment.” He studied them carefully, his eyes traveling with judicious leisure up and down their bodies. They waited, fidgeting, in a silence that pounded.

“Yes,” the old man said at last. “Yes. Quite.”

He walked forward.

A long thin arm shot out.

He started to disassemble Sam Weber.

“But listennnnn—” began Weber in a yell that turned into a high scream and died in a liquid mumble.

“It would be better for your sanity if you didn't watch,” the Census Keeper suggested.

The duplicate exhaled slowly, turned away and began to button a shirt. Behind him the mumbling continued, rising and falling in pitch.

“You see,” came the clipped, rumbling accents, “it's not the gift we're afraid of letting you have—it's the principle involved. Your civilization isn't ready for it. You understand.”

“Perfectly,” replied the counterfeit Weber, knotting Aunt Maggie's blue and red tie.

I had forgotten the bits about the office, but clearly remembered the horrifying conclusion. This still strikes me as a good story, illustrating a pitfall of such an ability. A person’s duplicate would have the same physical and mental abilities as the original, and the same instinct of self preservation. He would be, in short, the worst enemy.

—Piers

GROUND LEAVE INCIDENT

Rog Phillips

May 1958

I did not like this story when I first read it, for an obvious reason, but was so impressed by its ruthless logic and savage conclusion that it struck me as an outstanding narrative. A housewife is approached and raped by a nastily sure-of himself man; what does she do? I think she would take the course this one did. Suppose her husband learns of it? He well might take the course this one did. It rings devastatingly true.

—Piers

To a young country couple on an isolated, hardship planet, a spaceship visit is a special event. There is the trip to town, new clothes, the smell of fresh food and
spices . . . .
There are also the hot, demanding eyes of the woman-hungry crew.

The sound came to Marvin down the tortuous twists of the pipestem, faint but unmistakable. Behind the transparency of his faceplate his lean face broke into a delighted smile.

Dropping his shovel, he hesitated for a brief second over the almost full bucket of diamond clay, then grabbed the hook and slipped it into the eye on his belt. He caught the small control box swinging on its short flexible cord from the cable, squeezed his thumb down on the black
Go
button, and started walking up the vertical side of the pipestem, pulled along by the hoist cable.

A spaceship was coming!

He was so excited he stumbled a couple of times on the two hundred foot ascent and was dragged along until he could shove out and regain his footing. When he emerged from the pipestem he could see the vapor trail in the blue tinted methane atmosphere. There was no question, the ship was landing.

Marvin skirted the small pile of unsorted clay and ran to his truck. In the ordinary course of things he would have brought up two more buckets of clay, then had his lunch. After that he would have gone through the clay, handful by handful, feeling out the diamonds and sifting the clay into the bucket for dumping.

The phone was ringing in the truck cab. He picked up file mike in the middle of a ring.

“Marv—”

“Thelma!” He drowned out her voice. “Be ready, we're going to town! I'm starting down the mountain this minute.”

“I'll be ready, Marvin!” she said excitedly.

Marvin dropped the mike on the hook, and reached under the dashboard to a secret button. A square section of the dash dropped down, revealing
a viewscreen and a row of buttons underneath.

He pushed one, and the view of the kitchen sprang onto the screen, with Thelma just disappearing through the door to the hallway. He pushed another. The view of the bedroom appeared, and as he stepped down on the damper rod control and the truck began to move, Thelma came onto the screen, headed toward the clothes closet.

Thelma didn't know he could watch her like this. They had been married just a little over a year, had gotten married as soon as he had put up the prefab bubble. He hadn't liked the idea of her being all alone there. He had pictured her fainting, or being hurt somehow, and lying there suffering until he came home at supper time. So he had put in the spy kits, a couple of electronic eyes to a room, and the screen hidden in the truck. He didn't snoop, he just looked in on her several times a day to be sure she was okay. But he didn't let her know about it because she might not like it.

Marvin sent the truck recklessly down the mountain trail and risked a quick glance at the screen now and then, grinning at Thelma's indecision over what dress to put on.

Filled with excitement, Thelma, having decided on her blue dress with the white bodice, hastened to get ready. There were all sorts of things she wanted to buy, and she and Marvin had quite a bit of money accumulated now. There had been several big diamonds in the past few months. When Marvin arrived she was ready to go, neatly encased in her voluminous transparent plastic sheathe that wouldn't muss her dress, and large plastic helmet that wouldn't muss her hair.

It was sixty miles to town, around Paxton Hill. On their weekly trips to town, Marvin usually closed up the cab and turned on the air supply, and they took their time. But not now. A space ship was down. The speedometer needle pushed up to eighty and the big tires molded to the rocks and bumps with no time for jarring bouncing.

Overhead the twin suns floated, brownish red, in a purple sky. And soon, around the curve of the hill, the city moved into view, from a distance looking like a cardboard box with a mirror lying on top, with a toy ship near it.

City and ship grew in size until the roof of the city was hidden and only the hundred-foot-high walls loomed into the purple haze.

They parked near the wall, went inside, and checked in their gas-tight suits.

They didn't talk much on the expresswalk to the dock area—they were too excited. The platforms at the dock area were already stacked high with goods, and more were being wheeled from the subway elevators. They eagerly sniffed the strange and delightful assortment of spice odors salted with an ozone tang, their eyes trying not to miss anything. They moved slowly, holding hands so as not to become separated, drifting along with the crowd, now and then disengaging themselves from the tide of humanity to make their purchases, checking off their list, making sure their packages were addressed to the right willcall station at the city wall for loading onto the truck.

Thelma was unaware of Claude Mathews for a long time. Marvin was never aware of him.

He was tall, dark-haired, with black eyes and a round face that made him seem a bit fat despite the muscular leanness of his short body and long legs. He was a spaceman.

“Two days. Two lousy days, that's all we've got,” he grumbled to his companions as they lifted ten-pound boxes of tea off the conveyor belt. “Six months in space and we get two days. How you gonna get next to a babe in that time?”

“Do like the rest of us, Claude,” a short, heavy-set man said without pausing in his work. “Line up at one of the local pro houses or forget it.”

“Not me,” Claude growled. “None of that grasshopper stuff for me. I'll make out. But two days doesn't give me much time.” His eyes roved over the slowly moving crowd as he worked, pausing hungrily here and there.

“You could get shot, you know,” the blond man said.

“Not when you size up the right situation,” Claude said. About to set down a box of tea, he paused, his eyes on a girl in a blue dress with white bodice that accentuated her slim waist and full hips and breasts. Her hair was a rich golden color, her face pretty, with pale skin and full red lips. Her eyes were large, wideset, and deep blue. His pulse quickened, just looking at her.

The man with her—undoubtedly her husband—was a nothing. The dime-a-dozen solid young citizen type, medium height and build, angular face—an unimaginative worker type.

The couple disentangled themselves from the slowly moving crowd and pushed toward the hawker. Claude slowly set the box of tea down and moved within hearing.

The couple was buying twenty pounds of tea. The girl was taking a pencil out of her purse and crossing off something on her list.

Claude grinned to himself. That kind was a pushover.

He listened while she gave her name to the hawker for the will-call ticket, Mrs. Thelma Lake, will-call station five. Address, bubble seven, Ted-row Valley. He fixed it in his mind.

He leaned against the stacked tea and studied her hungrily. She sensed his stare and turned startled eyes on him. He grinned slowly into her eyes. She tried to look away, her white face slowly growing flushed, her nostrils flaring as her breathing became more rapid.

Suddenly she turned away. He continued staring at the back of her neck, and knew that she felt his stare.

“Me,” he said softly to himself, “I've got it made.”

Marvin brought the truck in through the big airlock when they got home—an extravagant procedure using up three pounds of oxygen. But, he pointed out, it would take almost two pounds to get everything in through the smaller lock anyway, and this way he could drive the truck right up to the storeroom and unload.

The twin suns were setting when they finished unloading. Thelma and Marvin stood arm in arm beside the truck, watching. It was one of those rare sunsets, with a clear purple sky changing to the indigo of night, Alpha plunging down below the horizon as though in free fall while Beta hung suspended on a sawtooth of the distant Minor Range. It happened that way just once every three years, and it was supposed to bring good luck to see it.

It was an anniversary for Thelma and Marvin. Three years ago they had been standing arm in arm watching Beta rest on the mountains, when Marvin had told her he now had enough money for them to be married and live by themselves . . .

Marvin put an arm around Thelma's shoulders and squeezed lightly.

“Maybe next time, three years from now, there will be three of us standing here.”

“I hope so,” Thelma said, snuggling closer . . .

Claude Mathews parked at a lookout point on Paxton Hill overlooking Tedrow Valley, and studied his newly bought map for landmarks. After a while he got out of the rented car and studied the valley through his field-scope,
turning the light amplifier on full to get a sharp image on the screen. Here and there through the blue, early morning mist were glossy inkblots that he knew must be petroleum pools.

He found bubble seven almost at once, but he also located the other glass domes in the valley, and studied them, to be familiar with their location in relation to number seven. There were ten altogether, scattered out, and the main road took an erratic course that carried it within a mile or two of each of them.

Finally, satisfied that he knew the details of the valley, he settled down to watch bubble seven. There were lights on in the house, and a small truck inside the bubble parked near one wing of the house.

He had learned that most of the men in Tedrow Valley worked diamond mines. Pipestem clay deposits that assayed about five hundred karats a ton, most of it very small, diamond grains suitable only for industrial uses.

If Marvin Lake worked such a mine, he should be leaving soon, and if no one else lived with the Lakes, then Mrs. Thelma Lake would be alone . . .

His round face broke into a smile as he saw a man come out of the house and get into the truck. He watched the truck move into a short extension from the bubble and stop. A truck airlock.

A few minutes later the truck moved away from the bubble. He watched it creep along the valley floor, ignoring the vaguely defined road, and head toward the hills on the other side of the valley.

Claude kept the truck on the viewscreen until it left the valley and vanished part way up a distant hill. Then he got back in the rented car and started down into the valley, driving fast.

The memory of Thelma Lake's face rose in his mind. Wide set large blue eyes, slightly parted full lips—He jerked the wheel, bringing the car away from the edge of the sheer drop on the right side of the road. His heart was pounding violently, but not from his narrow escape.

In the valley he cut off from the road, and parked the rented car in a spot he had picked out where it couldn't be seen.

He continued on foot, checking the landmarks he had picked out from the lookout point. There were ten hours of oxygen left in his rented, lightweight, landside suit. He could not afford to get lost.

He would have preferred his spacesuit. He was used to it and it was more functional. But it would have marked him a mile off as a spaceman to
anyone who happened to see him.

After he had walked a mile he stopped at a small pool, dipped a plastic-gloved finger in the black oil, and smeared it over his faceplate, thin enough so he could see out, but thick enough so that it would be difficult for anyone to make out his features.

When he came within sight of his destination he began staggering and stumbling, stopping often to rest. He knew that somewhere, a few hundred yards out from the bubble, he would trip an alarm signal. He had to get into the bubble, and he hoped that Thelma Lake would open up for a stranger apparently in trouble. Of course, she might call her husband before she let him in. The truck certainly would have a radiophone. If she did call, however, there was a good chance Marvin Lake would be down in his mine and not hear the phone. When he was thirty yards from the smaller airlock he saw her come out of the house and look toward him. He staggered and went to one knee, then picked himself up and staggered on toward the airlock.

He saw her half turn, as though to go back into the house. Then she came running toward the airlock. She was wearing a long blue housecoat, and under it, hanging below the housecoat, a sheer pink nightgown.

Claude Mathews grinned. Probably, like many married women left alone, she went back to bed for a while after the old man left in the morning.

He staggered into the airlock and collapsed. He saw her fumbling with the controls, smiling encouragingly at him, and knew that she had not been able to see his face behind the oil on his faceplate.

When Marvin reached the mine he swung the truck around and parked it as usual. Today he felt lazy. He would bring up three more buckets of clay and take things easy.