The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Strories (8 page)

“You really think,” Miss Ableseth said presently, as the ‘copter passed above New York City, “that I’m a Prox agent?”

“N-no,” Milt Biskle said. “I guess not.” It did not seem likely, under the circumstances.

“While you’re on Terra,” Miss Ableseth said, “why stay in an overcrowded, noisy hotel? Why not stay with me at my conapt in New Jersey? There’s plenty of room and you’re more than welcome.”

“Okay,” Biskle agreed, feeling the futility of arguing.

“Good.” Miss Ableseth gave an instruction to the ‘copter; it turned north. “We’ll have dinner there. It’ll save money, and at all the decent restaurants there’s a two-hour line this time of night, so it’s almost impossible to get a table. You’ve probably forgotten. How wonderful it’ll be when half our population can emigrate!”

“Yes,” Biskle said tightly. “And they’ll like Mars; we’ve done a good job.” He felt a measure of enthusiasm returning to him, a sense of pride in the reconstruct work he and his compatriots had done. “Wait until you see it, Miss Ableseth.”

“Call me Mary,” Miss Ableseth said, as she arranged her heavy scarlet wig; it had become dislodged during the last few moments in the cramped quarters of the ‘copter.

“Okay,” Biskle said, and, except for a nagging awareness of disloyalty to Fay, he felt a sense of well-being.

“Things happen fast on Terra,” Mary Ableseth said. “Due to the terrible pressure of over-population.” She pressed her teeth in place; they, too, had become dislodged

“So I see,” Milt Biskle agreed, and straightened his own wig and teeth, too.
Could I have been mistaken?
he asked himself. After all he could see the lights of New York below; Terra was decidedly not a depopulated ruin and its civilization was intact.

Or was this all an illusion, imposed on his percept-system by Prox psychiatric techniques unfamiliar to him? It was a fact that his dime had fallen completely through the amphetamine dispenser. Didn’t that indicate something was subtly, terribly wrong?

Perhaps the dispenser hadn’t really been there.

The next day he and Mary Ableseth visited one of the few remaining parks. In the southern part of Utah, near the mountains, the park although small was bright green and attractive. Milt Biskle lolled on the grass watching a squirrel progressing toward a tree in wicket-like leaps, its tail flowing behind it in a gray stream.

“No squirrels on Mars,” Milt Biskle said sleepily.

Wearing a slight sunsuit, Mary Ableseth stretched out on her back, eyes shut. “It’s nice here, Milt. I imagine Mars is like this.” Beyond the park heavy traffic moved along the freeway; the noise reminded Milt of the surf of the Pacific Ocean. It lulled him. All seemed well, and he tossed a peanut to the squirrel. The squirrel veered, wicket-hopped toward the peanut, its intelligent face twitching in response.

As it sat upright, holding the nut, Milt Biskle tossed a second nut off to the right. The squirrel heard it land among the maple leaves; its ears pricked up, and this reminded Milt of a game he once had played with a cat, an old sleepy tom which had belonged to him and his brother in the days before Terra had been so overpopulated, when pets were still legal. He had waited until Pumpkin—the tomcat—was almost asleep and then he had tossed a small object into the corner of the room. Pumpkin woke up. His eyes had flown open and his ears had pricked, turned, and he had sat for fifteen minutes listening and watching, brooding as to what had made the noise. It was a harmless way of teasing the old cat, and Milt felt sad, thinking how many years Pumpkin had been dead, now, his last legal pet. On Mars, though, pets would be legal again. That cheered him.

In fact on Mars, during his years of reconstruct work, he had possessed a pet. A Martian plant. He had brought it with him to Terra and it now stood on the living room coffee table in Mary Ableseth’s conapt, its limbs draped rather unhappily. It had not prospered in the unfamiliar Terran climate.

“Strange,” Milt murmured, “that my wug-plant isn’t thriving. I’d have thought in such a moist atmosphere…”

“It’s the gravity,” Mary said, eyes still shut, her bosom rising and falling regularly. She was almost asleep. “Too much for it.”

Milt regarded the supine form of the woman, remembering Pumpkin under similar circumstances. The hypnogogic moment, between waking and sleeping, when consciousness and unconsciousness became blended… reaching, he picked up a pebble.

He tossed the pebble into the leaves near Mary’s head.

At once she sat up, eyes open startled, her sunsuit falling from her.

Both her ears pricked up.

“But we Terrans,” Milt said, “have lost control of the musculature of our ears, Mary. On even a reflex basis.”

“What?” she murmured, blinking in confusion as she retied her sunsuit.

“Our ability to prick up our ears has atrophied,” Milt explained. “Unlike the dog and cat. Although to examine us morphologically you wouldn’t know because the muscles are still there. So you made an error.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mary said, with a trace of sullenness. She turned her attention entirely to arranging the bra of her sunsuit, ignoring him.

“Let’s go back to the conapt,” Milt said, rising to his feet. He no longer felt like lolling in the park, because he could no longer believe in the park. Unreal squirrel, unreal grass… was it actually? Would they ever show him the substance beneath the illusion? He doubted it.

The squirrel followed them a short way as they walked to their parked ‘copter, then turned its attention to a family of Terrans which included two small boys; the children threw nuts to the squirrel and it scampered in vigorous activity.

“Convincing,” Milt said. And it really was.

Mary said, “Too bad you couldn’t have seen Dr. DeWinter more, Milt. He could have helped you.” Her voice was oddly hard.

“I have no doubt of that,” Milt Biskle agreed as they re-entered the parked ‘copter.

When they arrived back at Mary’s conapt he found his Martian wug-plant dead. It had evidently perished of dehydration.

“Don’t try to explain this,” he said to Mary as the two of them stood gazing down at the parched, dead stalks of the once active plant. “You know what it shows. Terra is supposedly more humid than Mars, even reconstructed Mars at its best. Yet this plant has completely dried out. There’s no moisture left on Terra because I suppose the Prox blasts emptied the seas. Right?”

Mary said nothing.

“What I don’t understand,” Milt said, “is why it’s worth it to you people to keep the illusion going.
I’ve finished my job
.”

After a pause Mary said, “Maybe there’re more planets requiring reconstruct work, Milt.”

“Your population is that great?”

“I was thinking of Terra. Here,” Mary said. “Reconstruct work on it will take generations; all the talent and ability you reconstruct engineers possess will be required.” She added, “I’m just following your hypothetical logic, of course.”

“So Terra’s our next job. That’s why you let me come here. In fact I’m going to
stay
here.” He realized that, thoroughly and utterly, in a flash of insight. “I won’t be going back to Mars and I won’t see Fay again. You’re replacing her.” It all made sense.

“Well,” Mary said, with a faint wry smile, “let’s say I’m attempting to.” She stroked his arm. Barefoot, still in her sunsuit, she moved slowly closer and closer to him.

Frightened, he backed away from her. Picking up the dead wug-plant he numbly carried it to the apt’s disposal chute and dropped the brittle, dry remains in. They vanished at once.

“And now,” Mary said busily, “we’re going to visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York and then, if we have time, the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. They’ve asked me to keep you busy so you don’t start brooding.”

“But I am brooding,” Milt said as he watched her change from her sunsuit to a gray wool knit dress. Nothing can stop that, he said to himself. And you know it now. And as each reconstruct engineer finishes his area it’s going to happen again. I’m just the first.

At least I’m not alone, he realized. And felt somewhat better.

“How do I look?” Mary asked as she put on lipstick before the bedroom mirror.

“Fine,” he said listlessly, and wondered if Mary would meet each reconstruct engineer in turn, become the mistress of each. Not only is she not what she seems, he thought, but I don’t even get to keep her.

It seemed a gratuitous loss, easily avoided.

He was, he realized, beginning to like her.
Mary was alive
; that much was real. Terran or not. At least they had not lost the war to shadows; they had lost to authentic living organisms. He felt somewhat cheered.

“Ready for the Museum of Modern Art?” Mary said briskly, with a smile.

Later, at the Smithsonian, after he had viewed the Spirit of St. Louis and the Wright brothers’ incredibly ancient plane—it appeared to be at least a million years old—he caught sight of an exhibit which he had been anticipating.

Saying nothing to Mary—she was absorbed in studying a case of semiprecious stones in their natural uncut state—he slipped off and, a moment later, stood before a glass-walled section entitled

Three Prox soldiers stood frozen, their dark muzzles stained and grimy, side arms ready, in a makeshift shelter composed of the remains of one of their transports. A bloody Prox flag hung drably. This was a defeated enclave of the enemy; these three creatures were about to surrender or be killed.

A group of Terran visitors stood before the exhibit, gawking. Milt Biskle said to the man nearest him, “Convincing, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” the man, middle-aged, with glasses and gray hair, agreed. “Were you in the war?” he asked Milt, glancing at him.

“I’m in reconstruct,” Milt said. “Yellow Engineer.”

“Oh.” The man nodded, impressed. “Boy, these Proxmen look scary. You’d almost expect them to step out of that exhibit and fight us to the death.” He grinned. “They put up a good fight before they gave in, those Proxmen; you have to give ‘em credit for that.”

Beside him the man’s gray, taut wife said, “Those guns of theirs make me shiver. It’s too realistic.” Disapproving, she walked on.

“You’re right,” Milt Biskle said. “They do look frighteningly real, because of course they are.” There was no point in creating an illusion of this sort because the genuine thing lay immediately at hand, readily available. Milt swung himself under the guard rail, reached the transparent glass of the exhibit, raised his foot and smashed the glass; it burst and rained down with a furious racket of shivering fragments.

As Mary came running, Milt snatched a rifle from one of the frozen Proxmen in the exhibit and turned it toward her.

She halted, breathing rapidly, eyeing him but saying nothing.

“I am willing to work for you,” Milt said to her, holding the rifle expertly. “After all, if my own race no longer exists I can hardly reconstruct a colony world for them; even I can see that. But I want to know the truth. Show it to me and I’ll go on with my job.”

Mary said, “No, Milt, if you knew the truth you wouldn’t go on. You’d turn that gun on yourself.” She sounded calm, even compassionate, but her eyes were bright and enlarged, wary.

“Then I’ll kill you,” he said. And, after that, himself.

“Wait.” She pondered. “Milt—this is difficult. You know absolutely nothing and yet look how miserable you are. How do you expect to feel when you can see your planet as it is? It’s almost too much for me and I’m—” She hesitated.

“Say it.”

“I’m just a—” she choked out the word—“a visitor.”

“But I am right,” he said. “Say it. Admit it.”

“You’re right, Milt,” she sighed.

Two uniformed museum guards appeared, holding pistols. “You okay, Miss Ableseth?”

“For the present,” Mary said. She did not take her eyes off Milt and the rifle which he held. “Just wait,” she instructed the guards.

“Yes ma’am.” The guards waited. No one moved.

Milt said, “Did any Terran women survive?”

After a pause, Mary said, “No, Milt. But we Proxmen are within the same genus, as you well know. We can interbreed. Doesn’t that make you feel better?”

“Sure,” he said. “A lot better.” And he did feel like turning the rifle on himself now, without waiting. It was all he could do to resist the impulse. So he had been right; that thing had not been Fay, there at Field Three on Mars. “Listen,” he said to Mary Ableseth, “I want to go back to Mars again. I came here to learn something. I learned it, now I want to go back. Maybe I’ll talk to Dr. DeWinter again, maybe he can help me. Any objection to that?”

“No.” She seemed to understand how he felt. “After all, you did all your work there. You have a right to return. But eventually you have to begin here on Terra. We can wait a year or so, perhaps even two. But eventually Mars will be filled up and we’ll need the room. And it’s going to be so much harder here… as you’ll discover.” She tried to smile but failed; he saw the effort. “I’m sorry, Milt.”

“So am I,” Milt Biskle said. “Hell, I was sorry when that wug-plant died. I knew the truth then. It wasn’t just a guess.”

“You’ll be interested to know that your fellow reconstruct engineer Red, Cleveland Andre, addressed the meeting in your place. And passed your intimations on to them all, along with his own. They voted to send an official delegate here to Terra to investigate; he’s on his way now.”

“I’m interested,” Milt said. “But it doesn’t really matter. It hardly changes things.” He put down the rifle. “Can I go back to Mars now?” He felt tired. “Tell Dr. DeWinter I’m coming.” Tell him, he thought, to have every psychiatric technique in his repertory ready for me, because it will take a lot. “What about Earth’s animals?” he asked. “Did any forms at all survive? How about the dog and the cat?”