Inside Man and Other Science Fiction Stories Part 10

"A carrot and a donkey might be a more suitable simile," Mattern said. "Pity you couldn't have provided a better carrot."

The new kqyres ignored this comment. "Lord Njeri was transferred. He has asked me to say that he looks forward to the pleasure of renewing your friendship when you come again to Ferr. Meanwhile, I have taken his place." After some hesitation, the new kqyres added, "I hope we shall be good friends, also."

There was no use pretending any longer. "I know who you are," Mattern said. "I recognize your voice. You're the mbretersha herself, aren't you?"

She seemed pleased rather than dismayed. "Yes, I am the mbretersha. I came to realize that the post of kqyres was more difficult than that of queen. Therefore, I was the only one who should rightfully undertake it. As I told you, in our universe a ruler cannot afford pride. She lives only for the good of her people!"

"She's got to," Mattern said bluntly, "if, as you said, her nervous system is attuned to theirs. What actually did happen is that Njeri told you I was quitting the business and he couldn't control me any more. So you took his place to see if you could change my mind."

"Oh, that was a mere pleasantry!" she said. "I knew you would not give up the hypers.p.a.ce trade. What else would you have left?"

What else would he have left? His money, his collections, his unpleasant memories.

All his emotional ties now were with that other universe.

"Who's ruling Ferr?" he asked, evading her question, "Lord Njeri, your former kqyres, serves as my regent. He is my father, so he is fitted by birth; his system is also attuned to the planet's, although not as sensitively as mine, since he is a male. Perhaps that would make him a better ruler; he will suffer less. And I see no reason otherwise why a male should be deemed incapable of ruling, providing he is under careful supervision."

"No reason at all," Mattern agreed."Moreover," she continued, "I have organized the whole government of my planet so that it runs itself. And, of course, from time to time, when we make our trips, I shall be able to check into what's going on."

"But we're not going to make any more trips," he said. Although he had not been serious about retiring he knew that now he wasn't going to let the hypers.p.a.cers push him around. Make her sweat a little, he thought irreverently.

"Will you not give me a chance, Captain?" she asked. "Is the prospect of my company so displeasing to you that it will make you give up the business immediately?"

"You know it's not that. I told the kqyres before you came"

"But my people won't know it's not that. I shall lose face."

"If only you had a face!" he cried. "I'm sick of sailing with shadows!"

"My form in your universe is truly horrible, Mattern," she said softly, "truly monstrous. The xhindi who have seen themselves in mirrors in your universe have often gone mad."

"Anything is better than emptiness," be told her.

"If I appear in my true form, then will you accept me as your kqyres?"

"Well," he said, enjoying himself, "I'll make a few more trips with you, but that's all I'll promise."

"I accept your promises," she said.

He felt a tiny shiver rise up in him. Suppose her norms.p.a.ce form was even more hideous than her hypers.p.a.ce form, which of course, was no longer hideous to him.

Would his nerves be strong enough to bear it?

He held his breath as the vibrations began to slow down, the grays shimmering into substance, taking on all the colors of the rainbow and then flowing into one basic roseate hue. Bit by bit, the planes and shapes began to coalesce into the shape of ...

A woman. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen. A woman next to whom even the dream of Lyddy paled into thin air.

And, momentarily, he became the Len Mattern of fifteen years back, standing there with his mouth agape. "But you said you'd be a monster..."

"To my people, Mattern," she smiled, "this form is as monstrous as ours is to your people. You change into our doubles in hypers.p.a.ce; we change into yours in norms.p.a.ce. Had you kept the continuity of tradition that we have, you would know what we have always known that xhind and human are different aspects of the same race. That is why you fear us, and we do not fear you."Of course, he thought. How else could they understand us so well? How else could they find logic in our illogic and be able to condition us according to our human natures? And he smiled to think that all objection to the xhindi from the social angle was invalid. Monsters they might be but not nonhumans.

"Once I thought this appearance was monstrous, Mattern," the mbretersha went on, in the sweet voice which suited her now, "because I thought you and your kind were, though forms of our race, monstrous forms not only without beauty, but without dignity or intelligence or compa.s.sion."

"Maybe you were right," he said.

"But since I have learned to know you and to like you, I have come to realize that outward semblances are meaningless. I may appear one way in your universe, another way in mine, but I am the same I. If there is beauty" and she gave what, in a lesser personage, would have been almost a giggle "it is an inner beauty."

Mattern could not agree with this premise. Although he had admired the mbretersha on Ferr, he felt quite differently toward her now, and because of no suddenly discovered inner beauty.

"You'll stay this way in this universe then?" he asked. "It makes it so much more comfortable for me than just a collection of shadows," he added hastily.

"I will stay this way permanently while I am in your universe, Mattern," she told him, "if, in your turn, you will accept me as"

"As my shipmate," Mattern finished, "my kqyres. I have already done so."

"Notmerely as your shipmate."

"As my wife?" he blurted, wondering whether he was reading her mind or whether she was projecting so forcibly into his that he merely spoke her thoughts for her.

She nodded.

To be chained again, after this brief moment of freedom! He wanted her, right enough, and he was delighted to have her for his partner, his companion, but he saw no need for formal commitments between them.

"You're the mbretersha," he protested, "the queen. It wouldn't be right for you to marry a commoner!"

"And you," she retorted, "are one of nature's own n.o.blemen, and, hence, a fitting consort for me. There is no one in either universe whom I could marry without lowering myself," she explained, "so I might as well wed where there is a basis of respect, of admiration, and, to be sure, expediency."

"But but our ceremony wouldn't be valid in your universe, would it?" he spluttered wildly. "And your ceremony""We will have two ceremonies, Mattern, one in each universe."

This, he could see in alarm, was going to be a truly lasting marriage.

Mattern was happy with the mbretersha, for she knew how to satisfy a man's every dream as well as his desires, and of course, being the kqyres, she was the only woman who would not be disturbed by the presence of one on board. Moreover, she was a woman for whom a universe could be risked, a woman to whom worlds could be offered in short, just as he was the only man worthy of her, so she was the only woman worthy of him.

But sometimes he fancied that the mbretersha's blue eyes had the same haunting familiarity that he had seen in Lyddy's and Alard's, and he wondered. Alard's had been explicable enough; he and Mattern had had the same mother. But why should Lyddy also have his mother's eyes and, stranger still, why should the mbretersha?

Len could not help wondering whether, to create the ideal fantasy, the ultimate carrot, the xhindi had reached far back in his mind to get the earliest -- and thus the most fundamental illusion of beauty for him. Could both Lyddy and the mbretersha have been deliberately modeled on his mother, and was the mbretersha's form in norms.p.a.ce merely whatever she chose it to be or appear to be?

Oh, well, he thought, perhaps an artful illusion is the truest form of reality.

GRIFTER'S ASTEROID.

Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity, though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of sand that had been termed a s.p.a.ceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically into the battered metalloy saloon the only one on Planetoid 42 his tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something incoherent. They tried in the doorway, violently.

"We're delirious" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"

"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.

Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared, speechless for once.

In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.

Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native didsimultaneously.

"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer things to know there are always more."

He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped: "Water quick!"

Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out two gla.s.ses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked for more, until they had drunk eight gla.s.ses. Meanwhile, the bartender had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.

Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.

"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.

"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual lush manner.

"We purvey that renowned Martian remedy, La-anag Yergis, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in the ancient ruined city of Laanago. Medical science is unanimous in proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history of therapeutics."

"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser gla.s.ses without washing them. "Where you heading?"

"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone without water for five ghastly days."

"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.

"We did. He came near starving and moved on to t.i.tan. Ships don't land here unless they're in trouble."

"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."

"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."

Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."

"Might as well. Water's five buckos a gla.s.s. Liquor's free with every chaser."

Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That that's robbery!" the lanky man managed to get out in a thin quaver.

The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta make more on each one. Besides"

"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty crook robbingpoor s.p.a.cemen! You"

Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are sometimes overactive.

You were going to say?"

The round face of the barkeeper had a.s.sumed an aggrieved expression.

"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said, shaking his head.

"Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think I was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge because I gotta."

"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's thirst."

The saloon man removed his dirty ap.r.o.n and came around the bar.

"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official recorder, fire chief..."

"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.

"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will you need?"

Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.

"Let's say ten buckos a liter," he mayor said. "On account of the quant.i.ty, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to, that's all."

The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with them. The planetoid men worked the pump while the mayor intently watched the crude level gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and wetted his lips expectantly.

Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be preposterous. We simply can't afford it."

Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing. It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."

After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water pool, theponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed back to the saloon.

His six-armed a.s.sistant followed him inside.

"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly, is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."

"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can get used to in ten minutes."

In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents, according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.

It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to investigate.

Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound that was unmistakably a buried pipe.

"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had to transport water in pails."

"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.

"It leads to the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the pipe back toward the s.p.a.ceport. "What I am concerned with is where it leads from."

Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst into the open before a clear, sparkling pool.

Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.

"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.