The Best of Fritz Leiber Part 4

demented monsters."

Whitlow lowered his gaze until it was fixed on the Chief. He sighed windily. "I guess I'd better tell you," he muttered. "You'd have probably found out in the end. Though it would have been simpler the other way-"

He pushed back the rebellious hair and ma.s.saged his forehead, a little wearily. When he spoke again it

was in a less oratorical style.

"I am a pacifist. My life is dedicated to the task of preventing war. I love my fellow men. But they are steeped in error and sin. They are victims of their baser pa.s.sions. Instead of marching on, hand in hand, trustingly, toward the glorious fulfillment of all their dreams, they insist on engaging in constant

conflict, in vile war."

"Perhaps there is a reason for that," suggested the Chief mildly. "Some inequalities that require leveling or-"

"Please," said the pacifist reprovingly. "These wars have grown increasingly more violent and terrible. I, and others, have sought to reason with the majority, but hi vain. They persist in their delusions. I have racked my brain to find a solution. I have considered every conceivable remedy. Since I came into the possession of... er... the device, I have sought throughout the cosmos and even in other tune-streams, for the secret of preventing war. With no success. Such intelligent races as I encountered were either engaged in war, which ruled them out, or had never known war-these were very obliging but obviously could volunteer no helpful information-or else had outgrown war by the painful and horrible process of fighting until there was nothing more to fight about."

"As we have," the Chief thought, in an undertone.

The pacifist spread his hands, palms toward the stars. "So, once more, I was thrown on my own resources. I studied mankind from every angle. Gradually I became convinced that its worst trait-and the one most responsible for war-was its overgrown sense of self-importance. On my planet man is the lord of creation. All the other animals are merely one among many-no species is pre-eminent. The flesh-eaters have their flesh-eating rivals. Each browser or grazer competes with other types for the gra.s.s and herbage. Even the fish in the seas and the myriad parasites that swarm in bloodstreams are divided into species of roughly equal ability and competence. This makes for humility and a sense of perspective. No species is inclined to fight among itself when it realizes that by so doing it will merely clear the way for other species to take over. Man alone has no serious rivals. As a result, he has developed delusions of grandeur-and of persecution and hate. Lacking the restraint that rivalry would provide, he fouls his planetary nest with constant civil war.

"I mulled this idea for some time. I thought wistfully of how different mankind's development might have been had he been compelled to share his planet with some equally intelligent species, say a mechanically-minded sea dweller. I considered, how, when great natural catastrophes occur, such as fires and floods and earthquakes and plagues, men temporarily quit squabbling and work hand in hand- rich and poor, friend and enemy alike. Unfortunately such cooperation only lasts until man once more a.s.serts his mastery over his environment. It does not provide a constant sobering threat. And then... I had an inspiration."

Mr. Whitlow's gaze swept the black-sh.e.l.led forms-a jumble of satiny crescent highlights ringing the sphere of light enveloping him. Similarly his mind swept their cryptically armored thoughts.

"I remembered an incident from my childhood. A radio broadcast -we make use of high velocity vibrations to transmit sound-had given an impishly realistic fictional report of an invasion of Earth by beings from Mars, beings of that evil and destructive nature which, as you say, we tend to attribute to alien life. Many believed the report. There were brief scares and panics. It occurred to me how, at the first breath of an actual invasion of that sort, warring peoples would forget their differences and join staunchly together to meet the invader. They would realize that the things they were fighting about were really trifling matters, phantoms of moodiness and fear. Their sense of perspective would be restored. They would see that the all-important fact was that they were men alike, facing a common enemy, and they would rise magnificently to the challenge. Ah my friends, when that vision occurred to me, of warring mankind at one stroke united, and united forever, I stood trembling and speechless. I-"

Even on Mars, emotion choked him.

"Very interesting," thought the Senior Coleopteroid blandly, "but wouldn't the method you propose be a contradiction of that higher morality to which I can perceive you subscribe?"

The pacifist bowed his head. "My friend, you are quite right-in the large and ultimate sense. And let me a.s.sure you"-the fire crept back into his hoa.r.s.e voice-"that when that day comes, when the question of interplanetary relations arises, I will be in the vanguard of the interspecieists, demanding full equality for coleopteroid and man alike. But"-his feverish eyes peered up again through the hair that had once more fallen across his forehead-"that is a matter for the future. The immediate question is: How to stop war on Earth. As I said before, your invasion need only be a token one, and of course the more bloodless, the better. It would only take one taste of an outside menace, one convincing proof that he has equals and even superiors hi the cosmos, to restore man's normalcy of outlook, to weld him into a mutually-protective brotherhood, to establish peace forever!"

He threw his hands wide and his head back. His hair flipped into its proper place, but his tie popped out again.

"Mr. Whitlow," thought the Chief, with a cold sardonic merriment, "if you have any notion that we are going to invade another planet for the sake of improving the psychology of its inhabitants, disabuse yourself of it at once. Earthlings mean nothing to us. Their rise is such a recent matter that we hardly had taken note of it until you called it to our attention. Let them go on warring, if they want to. Let them kill themselves off. It is no concern of ours."

Whitlow blinked. "Why-" he started angrily. Then he caught himself. "But I wasn't asking you to do it for humanitarian reasons. I pointed out that there would be loot-"

"I very much doubt if your Earthlings have anything that would tempt us."

Whitlow almost backed off his boulder. He started to splutter something, but again abruptly changed his tack. There was a flicker of shrewdness in his expression. "Is it possible you're holding back because you're afraid the Venusian molluscoids will attack you if you violate the perpetual truce by making a foray against another planet?"

"By no means," thought the Chief harshly, revealing for the first time a certain haughtiness and racial pride bred of dry eons of tradition. "As I told you before, the molluscoids are a distinctly inferior race. Mere waterlings. We have seen nothing of them for ages. For all we know they've died out. Certainly we wouldn't be bound by any outworn agreements with them, if there were a sound and profitable reason for breaking them. And we are in no sense-no sense whatever-afraid of them."

Whitlow's thoughts rumbled confusedly, his spatulate-fingered hands making unconsciously appropriate gestures. Driven back to his former argument, he faltered lamely. "But surely then there must be some loot that would make it worth your while to invade Earth. After all, Earth is a planet rich in oxygen and water and minerals and life forms, whereas Mars has to contend with a dearth of all these things."

"Precisely," thought the Chief. "And we have developed a style of life that fits in perfectly with that dearth. By harvesting the interplanetary dust in the neighborhood of Mars, and by a judicious use of trans.m.u.tation and other techniques, we are a.s.sured of a sufficient supply of all necessary raw materials. Earth's bloated abundance would be an embarra.s.sment to us, upsetting our system. An increased oxygen supply would force us to learn a new rhythm of breathing to avoid oxygen-drowning, besides making any invasion of Earth uncomfortable and dangerous. Similar hazards might attend an over-supply of other elements and compounds. And as for Earth's obnoxiously teeming life forms, none of them would be any use to us on Mars-except for the unlucky chance of one of them finding harborage in our bodies and starting an epidemic."

Whitlow winced. Whether he knew it or not, his planetary vanity had been touched. "But you're overlooking the most important things," he argued, "the products of man's industry and ingenuity. He has changed the face of his planet much more fully than you have yours. He has covered it with roads. He does not huddle savagely hi the open as you do. He has built vast cities. He has constructed all manner of vehicles. Surely among such a wealth of things you would find many to covet."

"Most unlikely," retorted the Chief. "I cannot see envisaged in your mind any that would awaken even our pa.s.sing interest. We are adapted to our environment. We have no need of garments and housing and all the other artificialities which your ill-adjusted EarthTings require. Our mastery of our planet is greater than yours, but we do not advertise it so obtrusively. From your picture I can see that your Earthlings are given to a worship of bigness and a crude type of exhibitionism."

"But then there are our machines," Whitlow insisted, seething inwardly, plucking at his collar. "Machines of tremendous complexity, for every purpose. Machines that would be as useful to another species as to us."

"Yes, I can imagine them," commented the Chief cuttingly. "Huge, clumsy, jumbles of wheels and levers, wires and grids. In any case, ours are better."

He shot a swift question to the Senior. "Is his anger making his mind any more vulnerable?"

"Not yet."

Whitlow made one last effort, with great difficulty holding his indignation in check. "Besides all that, there's our art. Cultural treasures of incalculable value. The work of a species more richly creative than your own. Books, music, paintings, sculpture. Surely-"

"Mr. Whitlow, you are becoming ridiculous," said the Chief. "Art is meaningless apart from its cultural environment. What interest could we be expected to take hi the fumbling self-expression of an immature species? Moreover, none of the art forms you mention would be adapted to our style of perception, save sculpture-and in that field our efforts are incomparably superior, since we have a direct consciousness of solidity. Your mind is only a shadow-mind, limited to flimsy two-dimensional patterns."

Whitlow drew himself up and folded his arms across his chest. "Very well!" he grated out. "I see I cannot persuade you. But"-he shook his finger at the Chief-"let me tell you something! You're contemptuous of man. You call him crude and childish. You pour scorn on his industry, his science, his art. You refuse to help him in his need. You think you can afford to disregard him. All right. Go ahead. That's my advice to you. Go ahead-and see what happens!" A vindictive light grew in his eyes. "I know my fellow man. From years of study I know him. War has made him a tyrant and exploiter. He has enslaved the beasts of field and forest. He has enslaved his own kind, when he could, and when he couldn't he has bound them with the subtler chains of economic necessity and the awe of prestige. He's wrong-headed, brutal, a tool of his baser impulses-and also he's clever, doggedly persistent, driven by a boundless ambition! He already has atomic power and rocket transport. In a few decades he'll have s.p.a.ceships and subatomic weapons. Go ahead and wait!

Constant warfare will cause him to develop those weapons to undreamed of heights of efficient destructiveness. Wait for that too! Wait until he arrives on Mars hi force. Wait until he makes your acquaintance and realizes what marvelous workers you'd be with your armored adaptability to all sorts of environments. Wait until he picks a quarrel with you and defeats you and enslaves you and ships you off, packed hi evil-smelling hulls, to labor in Earth's mines and on her ocean bottoms, hi her stratosphere and on the planetoids that man will be desirous of exploiting. Yes, go ahead and wait!"

Whitlow broke off, his chest heaving. For a moment he was conscious only of his vicious satisfaction at having told off these exasperating beetle-creatures. Then he looked around.

The coleopteroids had drawn in. The forms of the foremost were defined with a hatefully spiderish distinctness, almost invading his sphere of light. Similarly their thoughts had drawn in, to form a menacing wall blacker than the encircling Martian night. Gone were the supercilious amus.e.m.e.nt and dispa.s.sionate withdrawal that had so irked him. Incredulously he realized that he had somehow broken through their armor and touched them on a vulnerable spot.

He caught one rapid thought, from the Senior to the Chief: "And if the rest of them are anything like this one, they'll behave just as he says. It is an added confirmation."

He looked slowly around, his hair-curtained forehead bent forward, searching for a clue to the coleopteroids' sudden change hi att.i.tude. His baffled gaze ended on the Chief.

"We've changed our minds, Mr. Whitlow," the Chief volunteered grimly. "I told you at the beginning that we never hesitate about undertaking projects when given a sound and sufficient reason. What your silly arguments about humanitarianism and loot failed to provide, your recent outburst has furnished us. It is as you say. The Earth-lings will eventually attack us, and with some hope of success, if we wait. So, logically we must take preventive action, the sooner the better. We will reconnoiter Earth, and if conditions there are as you a.s.sert, we will invade her."

From the depths of a confused despondency Whitlow was in an instant catapulted to the heights of feverish joy. His fanatical face beamed. His lanky frame seemed to expand. His hair nipped back.

"Marvelous!" he chortled, and then rattled on excitedly, "Of course, I'll do everything I can to help. I'll provide transport-"

"That will not be necessary," the Chief interrupted flatly. "We have no more trust in your larger powers than you have yourself. We have our own s.p.a.ceships, quite adequate to any undertaking. We do not make an ostentatious display of them, any more than we make a display of the other mechanical aspects of our culture. We do not use them, as your Earthlings would, to go purposely skittering about. Nevertheless, we have them, stored away in the event of need."

But not even this contemptuous rebuff could spoil Whitlow's exultation. His face was radiant. Halfformed tears made him blink his hectic eyes. His Adam's apple bobbed chokingly.

"Ah my friends... my good, good friends! If only I could express to you... what this moment means to me! If I could only tell you how happy I am when I envisage the greater moment that is coming! When men will look up from their trenches and foxholes, from their bombers and fighters, from their observation posts and headquarters, from their factories and homes, to see this new menace in the skies. When all their petty differences of opinion will drop away from them like a soiled and tattered garment. When they will cut the barbed-wire entanglements of an illusory hate, and join together, hand in hand, true brothers at last, to meet the common foe. When, in the accomplishment of a common task, they will at last achieve perfect and enduring peace!"

He paused for breath. His glazed eyes were lovingly fixed on the blue star of Earth, now just topping the horizon.

"Yes," faintly came the Chiefs dry thought. "To one of your emotional temperament, it will probably be a very satisfying and touching scene-for a little while."

Whitlow glanced down blankly. It was as if the Chief's last thought had lightly scratched him-a feathery flick from a huge poisoned claw. He did not understand it, but he was conscious of upwelling fear.

"What-" he faltered. "What...do you mean?"

"I mean," thought the Chief, "that hi our invasion of Earth it probably won't be necessary for us to use the divide-and-rule tactics that would normally be indicated in such a case-you know, joining with one faction on Earth to help defeat the other-warring beings never care who their allies are-and then fomenting further disunities, and so on. No, with our superiority in armament, we can probably do a straight cleanup job and avoid bothersome machinations. So you'll probably have that glimpse of Earthlings united that you set so much store by."

Whitlow stared at him from a face white with dawning horror. He licked his lips. "What did you mean by -'for a little while'?" he whispered huskily. "What did you mean by 'glimpse'?"

"Surely that should be obvious to you, Mr. Whitlow," replied the Chief with offensive good humor. "You don't for one minute suppose we'd make some footling little invasion and, after overawing the Earthlings, retire? That would be the one way to absolutely a.s.sure their eventual counterinvasion of Mars. Indeed, it would probably hasten it-and they'd come as already hostile destroyers intent on wiping out a menace. No, Mr. Whitlow, when we invade Earth, it will be to protect ourselves from a potential future danger. Our purpose will be total and complete extermination, accomplished as swiftly and efficiently as possible. Our present military superiority makes our success certain."

Whitlow goggled at the Chief blankly, like a dirty and somewhat yellowed plaster statue of himself. He opened his mouth-and shut it without saying anything.

"You never believed, did you, Mr. Whitlow," continued the Chief kindly, "that we'd ever do anything for your sake? Or for anyone's- except us coleopteroids?"

Whitlow stared at the horrible, black, eight-legged eggs crowding ever closer-living embodiments of the poisonous blackness of their planet.

All he could think to mumble was: "But... but I thought you said... it was a misconception to think of alien beings as evil monsters intent only on ravaging... and destroying-"

"Perhaps I did, Mr. Whitlow. Perhaps I did," was the Chiefs only reply.

In that instant Mr. Whitlow realized what an alien being really was.

As in a suffocating nightmare, he watched the coleopteroids edge closer. He heard the Chiefs contemptuously unguarded aside to the Senior, "Haven't you got hold of his mind yet?" and the Senior's "No," and the Chiefs swift order to the others.

Black eggs invaded his lightsphere, cruel armored claws opening to grab-those were Mr. Whitlow's last impressions of Mars.

Instants later-for the device provided him with instantaneous transportation across any spatial expanse -Mr. Whitlow found himself inside a bubble that miraculously maintained normal atmospheric pressure deep under the tideless Venusian seas. The reverse of a fish in a tank, he peered out at the gently waving luminescent vegetation and the huge mud-girt buildings it half masked. Gleaming ships and tentacled creatures darted about.

The Chief Molluscoid regarded the trespa.s.ser on his private gardens with a haughty disfavor that even surprise could not shake.

"What are you?" he thought coldly.

"I... I've come to inform you of a threatened breach in an agelong truce."

Five eyes on longish stalks regarded him with a coldness equal to that of the repeated thought: "But what are you?"

A sudden surge of woeful honesty compelled Mr. Whitlow to reply, "I suppose... I suppose you'd call me a warmonger."

The Man Who Never Grew Young

MAOT is becoming restless. Often toward evening she trudges to where the black earth meets the yellow sand and stands looking across the desert until the wind starts.

But I sit with my back to the reed screen and watch the Nile.

It isn't just that she's growing young. She is wearying of the fields. She leaves their tilling to me and lavishes her attentions on the flock. Every day she takes the sheep and goats farther to pasture.

I have seen it coming for a long time. For generations the fields have been growing scantier and less diligently irrigated. There seems to be more ram. The houses have become simpler-mere walled tents. And every year some family gathers its flocks and wanders off west.

Why should I cling so tenaciously to these poor relics of civilization-I, who have seen king Cheops' men take down the Great Pyramid block by block and return it to the hills?

I often wonder why I never grow young. It is still as much a mystery to me as to the brown farmers who kneel hi awe when I walk past.

I envy those who grow young. I yearn for the sloughing of wisdom and responsibility, the plunge into a period of lovemaking and breathless excitement, the carefree years before the end.

But I remain a bearded man of thirty-odd, wearing the goatskin as I once wore the doublet or the toga, always on the brink of that plunge yet never making it.

It seems to me that I have always been this way. Why, I cannot even remember my own disinterment, and everyone remembers that.

Maot is subtle. She does not ask for what she wants, but when she comes home at evening she sits far back from the fire and murmurs disturbing fragments of song and rubs her eyelids with green pigment to make herself desirable to me and tries in every way to infect me with her restlessness. She tempts me from the hot work at midday and points out how hardy our sheep and goat are becoming.

There are no young men among us any more. All of them start for the desert with the approach of youth, or before. Even toothless, scrawny patriarchs uncurl from their grave-holes, and hardly pausing to refresh themselves with the food and drink dug up with them, collect their flocks and wives and hobble off into the west.

I remember the first disinterment I witnessed. It was in a country of smoke and machines and constant news. But what I am about to relate occurred hi a backwater where there were still small farms and narrow roads and simple ways.

There were two old women named Flora and Helen. It could not have been more than a few years since their own disinterments, but those I cannot remember. I think I was some sort of nephew, but I cannot be sure.

They began to visit an old grave in the cemetery a half mile outside town. I remember the little bouquets of flowers they would bring back with them. Their prim, placid faces became troubled. I could see that grief was entering their lives.

The years pa.s.sed. Their visits to the cemetery became more frequent. Accompanying them once, I noted that the worn inscription on the headstone was growing clearer and sharper, just as was happening to their own features. "John, loving husband of Flora..."

Often Flora would sob through half the night, and Helen went about with a set look on her face. Relatives came and spoke comforting words, but these seemed only to intensify their grief.

Finally the headstone grew brand-new and the gra.s.s became tender green shoots which disappeared into the raw brown earth. As if these were the signs their obscure instincts had been awaiting, Flora and Helen mastered their grief and visited the minister and the mortician and the doctor and made certain arrangements.

On a cold autumn day, when the brown curled leaves were whirl-ing up into the trees, the procession set out-the empty hea.r.s.e, the dark silent automobiles. At the cemetery we found a couple of men with shovels turning away un.o.bstrusively from the newly opened grave. Then, while Flora and Helen wept bitterly and the minister spoke solemn words, a long narrow box was lifted from the grave and carried to the hea.r.s.e.

At home the lid of the box was unscrewed and slid back, and we saw John, a waxen old man with a long life before him.

Next day, in obedience to what seemed an age-old ritual, they took him from the box, and the mortician undressed him and drew a pungent liquid from his veins and injected the red blood. Then they took him and laid him in bed. After a few hours of stoney-eyed waiting, the blood began to work. He stirred and his first breath rattled in his throat. Flora sat down on the bed and strained him to her in a fearful embrace.

But he was very sick and in need of rest, so the doctor waved her from the room. I remember the look on her face as she closed the door.

I should have been happy too, but I seem to recall that I felt there was something unwholesome about the whole episode. Perhaps our first experiences of the great crises of life always affect us hi some such fashion.

I love Maot. The hundreds I have loved before her in my wanderings down the world do not take away from the sincerity of my affection. I did not enter her life, or theirs, as lovers ordinarily do- from the grave or hi the pa.s.sion of some terrible quarrel. I am always the drifter.

Maot knows there is something strange about me. But she does not let that interfere with her efforts to make me do the thing she wants.