American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 (7 page)

Dak left as suddenly as he had appeared and Penelope Russell turned on the picture projector again. It occurred to me fretfully that I should have asked him what was to keep our enemies from simply killing
me
, if all that was needed to upset the political applecart was to keep Bonforte (in his proper person, or through his double) from attending some barbaric Martian ceremony. But I had forgotten to ask—perhaps I was subconsciously afraid of being answered.

But shortly I was again studying Bonforte, watching his movements and gestures, feeling his expressions, subvocalizing the tones of his voice, while floating in that detached, warm reverie of artistic effort. Already I was “wearing his head.”

I was panicked out of it when the images shifted to one in which Bonforte was surrounded by Martians, touched by their pseudo limbs. I had been so deep inside the picture that I could actually feel them myself—and the stink was unbearable. I made a strangled noise and clawed at it.
“Shut it off!”

The lights came up and the picture disappeared. Miss Russell was looking at me. “What in the world is the matter with you?”

I tried to get my breath and stop trembling. “Miss Russell— I am very sorry—but please—don’t turn that on again. I can’t
stand
Martians.”

She looked at me as if she could not believe what she saw but despised it anyhow. “I told them,” she said slowly and scornfully, “that this ridiculous scheme would not work.”

“I am very sorry. I cannot help it.”

She did not answer but climbed heavily out of the cider press. She did not walk as easily at two gravities as Dak did, but she managed. She left without another word, closing the door as she went.

She did not return. Instead the door was opened by a man who appeared to be inhabiting a giant kiddie stroller. “Howdy there, young fellow!” he boomed out. He was sixtyish, a bit too heavy, and bland; I did not have to see his diploma to be aware that his was a “bedside” manner.

“How do you do, sir?”

“Well enough. Better at lower acceleration.” He glanced down at the contrivance he was strapped into. “How do you like my corset-on-wheels? Not stylish, perhaps, but it takes some of the strain off my heart. By the way, just to keep the record straight, I’m Dr. Capek, Mr. Bonforte’s personal therapist. I know who you are. Now what’s this we hear about you and Martians?”

I tried to explain it clearly and unemotionally.

Dr. Capek nodded. “Captain Broadbent should have told me. I would have changed the order of your indoctrination program. The captain is a competent young fellow in his way but his muscles run ahead of his brain on occasion . . . He is so perfectly normal an extrovert that he frightens me. But no harm done. Mr. Smythe, I want your permission to hypnotize you. You have my word as a physician that it will be used only to help you in this matter and that I will in no wise tamper with your personal integration.” He pulled out an old-fashioned pocket watch of the sort that is almost a badge of his profession and took my pulse.

I answered, “You have my permission readily, sir—but it won’t do any good. I can’t go under.” I had learned hypnotic techniques myself during the time I was showing my mentalist act, but my teachers had never had any luck hypnotizing me. A touch of hypnotism is very useful to such an act, especially if the local police aren’t too fussy about the laws the medical association has hampered us with.

“So? Well, we’ll just have to do the best we can, then. Suppose you relax, get comfortable, and we’ll talk about your problem.” He still kept the watch in his hand, fiddling with it and twisting the chain, after he had stopped taking my pulse. I started to mention it, since it was catching the reading light just over my head, but decided that it was probably a nervous habit of which he was not aware and really too trivial a matter to call to the attention of a stranger.

“I’m relaxed,” I assured him. “Ask me anything you wish. Or free association, if you prefer.”

“Just let yourself float,” he said softly. “Two gravities makes you feel heavy, doesn’t it? I usually just sleep through it myself. It pulls the blood out of the brain, makes one sleepy. They are beginning to boost the drive again. We’ll all have to sleep . . . We’ll be heavy . . . We’ll have to sleep . . .”

I started to tell him that he had better put his watch away— or it would spin right out of his hand. Instead I fell asleep.

When I woke up, the other acceleration bunk was occupied by Dr. Capek. “Howdy, bub,” he greeted me. “I got tired of that confounded perambulator and decided to stretch out here and distribute the strain.”

“Uh, are we back on two gravities again?”

“Eh? Oh yes! We’re on two gravities.”

“I’m sorry I blacked out. How long was I asleep?” “Oh, not very long. How do you feel?”

“Fine. Wonderfully rested, in fact.”

“It frequently has that effect. Heavy boost, I mean. Feel like seeing some more pictures?”

“Why, certainly, if you say so, Doctor.”

“Okay.” He reached up and again the room went dark. I was braced for the notion that he was going to show me more pictures of Martians; I made up my mind not to panic. After all, I had found it necessary on many occasions to pretend that they were not present; surely motion pictures of them should not affect me—I had simply been surprised earlier.

They were indeed stereos of Martians, both with and without Mr. Bonforte. I found it possible to study them with detached mind, without terror or disgust.

Suddenly I realized that I was
enjoying
looking at them! I let out some exclamation and Capek stopped the film.

“Trouble?”

“Doctor—you hypnotized me!”

“You told me to.”

“But I can’t be hypnotized.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“Uh—so you managed it. I’m not too dense to see that.” I added, “Suppose we try those pictures again. I can’t really believe it.”

He switched them on and I watched and wondered. Martians were not disgusting, if one looked at them without prejudice; they weren’t even ugly. In fact, they possessed the same quaint grace as a Chinese pagoda. True, they were not human in form, but neither is a bird of paradise—and birds of paradise are the loveliest things alive.

I began to realize, too, that their pseudo limbs could be very expressive; their awkward gestures showed some of the bumbling friendliness of puppies. I knew now that I had looked at Martians all my life through the dark glasses of hate and fear.

Of course, I mused, their stench would still take getting used to, but—and then I suddenly realized that I was smelling them, the unmistakable odor—and I didn’t mind it a bit! In fact, I liked it. “Doctor!” I said urgently. “This machine has a ‘smellie’ attachment—doesn’t it?”

“Eh? I believe not. No, I’m sure it hasn’t—too much parasitic weight for a yacht.”

“But it must. I can smell them very plainly.”

“Oh, yes.” He looked slightly shamefaced. “Bub, I did one thing to you that I hope will cause you no inconvenience.”

“Sir?”

“While we were digging around inside your skull it became evident that a lot of your neurotic orientation about Martians was triggered by their body odor. I didn’t have time to do a deep job so I had to offset it. I asked Penny—that’s the youngster who was in here before—for a loan of some of the perfume she uses. I’m afraid that from here on out, bub, Martians are going to smell like a Parisian house of joy to you. If I had had time I would have used some homelier pleasant odor, like ripe strawberries or hot cakes and syrup. But I had to improvise.”

I sniffed. Yes, it did smell like a heavy and expensive perfume —and yet, damn it, it was unmistakably the reek of Martians. “I like it.”

“You can’t help liking it.”

“But you must have spilled the whole bottle in here. The place is drenched with it.”

“Huh? Not at all. I merely waved the stopper under your nose a half hour ago, then gave the bottle back to Penny and she went away with it.” He sniffed. “The odor is gone now. ‘Jungle Lust,’ it said on the bottle. Seemed to have a lot of musk in it. I accused Penny of trying to make the crew space-happy and she just laughed at me.” He reached up and switched off the stereopix. “We’ve had enough of those for now. I want to get you onto something more useful.”

When the pictures faded out, the fragrance faded with them, just as it does with smellie equipment. I was forced to admit to myself that it was all in the head. But, as an actor, I was intellectually aware of that truth anyhow.

When Penny came back in a few minutes later, she had a fragrance exactly like a Martian.

I loved it.

My education continued in that room (Mr. Bonforte’s guest room, it was) until turnover. I had no sleep, other than under hypnosis, and did not seem to need any. Either Doc Capek or Penny stuck with me and helped me the whole time. Fortunately my man was as thoroughly photographed and recorded as perhaps any man in history and I had, as well, the close co-operation of his intimates. There was endless material; the problem was to see how much I could assimilate, both awake and under hypnosis.

I don’t know at what point I quit disliking Bonforte. Capek assured me—and I believe him—that he did not implant a hypnotic suggestion on this point; I had not asked for it and I am quite certain that Capek was meticulous about the ethical responsibilities of a physician and hypnotherapist. But I suppose that it was an inevitable concomitant of the role—I rather think I would learn to like Jack the Ripper if I studied for the part. Look at it this way: to learn a role truly, you must for a time become that character. And a man either likes himself, or he commits suicide, one way or another.

“To understand all is to forgive all”—and I was beginning to understand Bonforte.

At turnover we got that one-gravity rest that Dak had promised. We never were in free fall, not for an instant; instead of putting out the torch, which I gather they hate to do while under way, the ship described what Dak called a 180-degree skew turn. It leaves the ship on boost the whole time and is done rather quickly, but it has an oddly disturbing effect on the sense of balance. The effect has a name something like Coriolanus. Coriolis?

All I know about spaceships is that the ones that operate from the surface of a planet are true rockets but the
voyageurs
call them “teakettles” because of the steam jet of water or hydrogen they boost with. They aren’t considered real atomic-power ships even though the jet is heated by an atomic pile. The long-jump ships such as the
Tom Paine
, torchships that is, are (so they tell me) the real thing, making use of E equals MC 45 squared, or is it M equals EC squared? You know—the thing Einstein invented.

Dak did his best to explain it all to me, and no doubt it is very interesting to those who care for such things. But I can’t imagine why a gentleman should bother with such. It seems to me that every time those scientific laddies get busy with their slide rules life becomes more complicated. What was wrong with things the way they were?

During the two hours we were on one gravity I was moved up to Bonforte’s cabin. I started wearing his clothes and his face and everyone was careful to call me “Mr. Bonforte” or “Chief ” or (in the case of Dr. Capek) “Joseph,” the idea being, of course, to help me build the part.

Everyone but Penny, that is . . . She simply would not call me “Mr. Bonforte.” She did her best to help but she could not bring herself to that. It was clear as scripture that she was a secretary who silently and hopelessly loved her boss, and she resented me with a deep, illogical, but natural bitterness. It made it hard for both of us, especially as I was finding her most attractive. No man can do his best work with a woman constantly around him who despises him. But I could not dislike her in return; I felt deeply sorry for her—even though I was decidedly irked.

We were on a tryout-in-the-sticks basis now, as not everyone in the
Tom Paine
knew that I was not Bonforte. I did not know exactly which ones knew of the substitution, but I was allowed to relax and ask questions only in the presence of Dak, Penny, and Dr. Capek. I was fairly sure that Bonforte’s chief clerk, Mr. Washington, knew but never let on; he was a spare, elderly mulatto with the tight-lipped mask of a saint. There were two others who certainly knew, but they were not in the
Tom Paine
; they were standing by and covering up from the
Go For Broke
, handling press releases and routine dispatches—Bill Corpsman, who was Bonforte’s front man with the news services, and Roger Clifton. I don’t know quite how to describe Clifton’s job. Political deputy? He had been Minister without Portfolio, you may remember, when Bonforte was Supreme Minister, but that says nothing. Let’s put it symbolically: Bonforte handed out policy and Clifton handed out patronage.

This small group had to know; if any others knew it was not considered necessary to tell me. To be sure, the other members of Bonforte’s staff and all the crew of the
Tom Paine
knew that something odd was going on; they did not necessarily know what it was. A good many people had seen me enter the ship— but as “Benny Grey.” By the time they saw me again I was already “Bonforte.”

Someone had had the foresight to obtain real make-up equipment, but I used almost none. At close range make-up can be seen; even Silicoflesh cannot be given the exact texture of skin. I contented myself with darkening my natural complexion a couple of shades with Semiperm and wearing his face, from inside. I did have to sacrifice quite a lot of hair and Dr. Capek inhibited the roots. I did not mind; an actor can always wear hairpieces—and I was sure that this job was certain to pay me a fee that would let me retire for life, if I wished.

On the other hand, I was sometimes queasily aware that “life” might not be too long—there are those old saws about the man who knew too much and the one about dead men and tales. But truthfully I was beginning to trust these people. They were all darn nice people—which told me as much about Bonforte as I had learned by listening to his speeches and seeing his pix. A political figure is not a single man, so I was learning, but a compatible team. If Bonforte himself had not been a decent sort he would not have had these people around him.