Pohlstars (22 page)

He woke up happy, with the vanishing clouds of a happy dream in his mind. Then the rattle and rasp of the air conditioner in his room chased the last of the dream away. By the time he got up and turned his little light on-he always needed one, even in the summer, because the skies were almost always dingy dark-he could remember the dream, but he couldn't feel it anymore.

His mother, Peg, worried about the way he always seemed to dream the same wishful dream, but when Rem realized that, he just stopped telling her about it. He did ask her if he could please leave the air conditioner off, at least in the winter, so that he could wake up more slowly and enjoy the dream more. "I wish you could, honey, she said, "but you know Dr. Dallinger said you had to have something filter the air, because of your asthma. I'm sorry about the noise. Maybe we can get you a new one- Although I don't know how, with the payments on the cars and the way heat's going up. And you wouldn't believe what I spent in the supermarket yesterday, just for three little bags of groceries. Then she laughed and hugged him and said, "A noisy air conditioner isn't so bad! What if you had to live in New York City?

She was the one who drove him in to school every day. His father had to leave an hour earlier because of the traffic. School wasn't bad. Rem liked to learn, and he liked being with the other children. He even liked recess, at least in the winter, when the storm winds from Canada blew some of the sulfur-smelling smog away and the reek from the slow, iridescent waves of Long Island Sound was not so strong. He didn't mind the cold. He did mind being kept inside so much of the time, when the air index was "Unsatisfactory or "Dangerous to Health or even, which had happened two or three times the previous summer, "Condition Red! No burning! No driving! On days like that everybody was stuck wherever he happened to be. Everything stopped. Rem and his mother would take turns in the shower and then sit, playing cards, or talking, or just resting, waiting for the time to pass. If his father was lucky, he would be doing the same thing in his office in the city. If he wasn't, he might be caught in the long unmoving snarl of cars on the freeways, waiting for permission to start again. That was how Rem's uncle Marc had died, two years before, when he had another heart attack sitting at the wheel and got out of the car for help, and died there.

But then after a while the rain would come. it was worse than the dry heat at first, because the drops would come down as sticky black blobs that stained all the houses, dirtied the windows, and killed the grass, where there was any grass. But after a while there might be a real storm, with luck even a hurricane, and then for a few days Long Island might look queerly green and fresh for a while.

What Rem liked best was the one or two evenings a week when his father got home before his bedtime. They would talk about grown-up things.

Rem's father, Burt, was very proud of him. He told his wife, "Rem's really interested in things-important things; I think he's going to be somebody the world will be glad to have when he grows up. One of the "important things was why the Sound was dead and unhealthy. Another was why everybody drove their own cars instead of riding trains or buses, or even working near where they lived. His father tried to answer them as well as he could. "Well, son, he said, "people
like
having their own cars. You'll see, when you grow up and get your own license. When you get behind the wheel, you're on your own. You can shut out all the unpleasant things-

"What things, Dad?

Burt looked suddenly remorseful. "Oh, not things like
here,
Rem! You and your mother-well, I wouldn't change places with anybody in the world. But there are a lot of problems. Burt was a tax accountant for the New York State government. He shook his head. "We need so much, he said, "and it's hard to know where the money's going to come from. Let's see, what was the other question? Oh, about waste heat and sewage. Well, that's one of the problems, Rem. There's so much pollution, and it costs too much to get rid of it. I suppose that, of course, you could theoretically use the heat from the factories and power plants and so on to heat homes or even to warm up some sort of farms-they'd have to be greenhouses, actually-so you could grow more things. But the capital cost, Rem, would be immense. He hesitated, trying to find the words to explain economics to a ten-year-old. "We just don't have the money. Maybe if we'd started a long time ago- But we didn't. You can't drive cars without freeways to drive them on, do you see? I guess the government could have built piping systems and recirculation plants, but then where would the money have come from for the highways? We did the best we could. I think. We used up all the low-sulfur fuels first, and we kept on dumping sewage until it was too late to stop. And it got harder and harder to make the fertilizer to grow the food. I suppose, he said thoughtfully, "that if some people had made different decisions a century or so ago, the world would be quite a different place. Some ways, it would be pretty nice. But they didn't. And it's too late now. He smiled and squeezed Rem's shoulder. "Speaking of being late, it's about time for you to be off to bed.

So Rem would take his pills and drink his glass of soymilk and go off to sleep. He wasn't unhappy about that. He remembered the dream, and knew he would dream it again, and that was something to look forward to. It was so very pleasant, and so very real; he wasn't always sure which was the reality and which was the dream.

Putting this collection together has made me realize that nearly every story in it was written, at least in part, in some corner of the world far from my desk and typewriter. That's not too surprising in some ways, because I have this habit of doing at least four pages worth of writing wherever I happen to be, every day, and I do a lot of traveling. It is often easier to work on a short story than a novel under such circumstances, if only because when you pack a couple of novel manuscripts into a suitcase you don't have much room left for clean socks. This one, however, was written right at home. It's true that part of its setting comes from a marvelous trip over the Cascade Mountains and much of its incident from a strange weekend I spent with an encounter group in New Jersey, having my sensitivities elevated and my inhibitions soaked away in the blood-temperature pool. It was an unsettling sort of experience, a dozen total strangers opening to each other, but one I am glad I did not miss. Among other things it brought me a couple of friendships I still treasure.., and, later on, filling up my daily pages in my office, this story.

It could have been just this way: That the get of Moolkri Mawkri could have landed in a faster-than-light spaceship resembling an artichoke on the outskirts of Jackson, Mississippi.

In this version Mawkri gathers her Get-cluster around her broodingly, while Moolkri assumes the shape of a man. The Get has studied all of the Earth's TV programs while they were in orbit, and they have picked an average person for Moolkri to be, not too tall, not too symmetrical, not too
dvezhnizt
(a term in their language which relates to the proportion between upper and middle circumferences). The Get is satisfied with Moolkri's appearance, but all the same it is pretty funny-looking. They laugh as he exits the spacecraft to explore.

Moolkri has well assimilated TV lore, and so he knows how to behave in a way appropriate to his body. He hooks his "thumbs in his "belt, crosses a deserted bridge, and strides swaggeringly down the light-saturated and totally uninhabited street.

It does not seem unusual to Moolkri that there should be no one gazing into the bright shop windows. He does not have a very good grasp of what is usual or unusual for human beings. It is late at night, and so a human being (or at least one from another city than Jackson) might find it strange that everything was so brightly lit. Contrariwise, a human might consider it odd that with every amenity turned on for shoppers, there was not a single strolling person to he seen. Moolkri does not realize this is strange. He is aware that sometimes streets are deserted and sometimes not; he is also aware that sometimes they are bright and sometimes dark.; he is simply not aware that deserted is not really compatible with well-lit, but then there is a lot he is not aware of about the Earth.

So Moolkri swings, gunman wide, his "chaps rustling against each other and his "bandanna bright against his "neck. He slouches past the People's Cut Rate Pharmacy and Bette's New York Boutique and the Yazoo-Jackson Consolidated All-Faith Ashram, looking in the windows. He reads a typed notice about a lost Australian terrier. He inspects a naked black dummy with no hands, waiting for the window dresser to return in the morning and give her hands and ball gown. It is all interesting to him, and back in the spaceship Mawkri and her Get chatter excitedly among themselves, forgetting to be afraid as they receive his impressions.

It is not only his sense of vision that is active, it is also his sense of hearing, although that input does not produce much he considers worth noting. There are no voices, no footsteps. Overhead there is the sound of a motor, which he identifies easily enough as a helicopter. It is too far away for him to care much. He does not realize that it is quartering the city, alert for the sight of stray humans on the broad, bright street. He does not hear the radio message that the helicopter pilot transmits to the ground. Back in the spaceship the rest of the Get could have heard it, did in fact register the radio signal as an artifact originating nearby, but they did not associate the message with Moolkri.

Then the black-and-white slides silently around the corner. There is only one policeman in it. They are not expecting riots of mad killers, only the odd break-and-grab hoodlum or the hopeful would-be mugger. Moolkri hears the prowl car. First he hears the faint purr of the motor and whisper of tires, then, only in the last moment before it skids to a stop beside him, the quick bleat of its siren. He turns to look. The young cop leaps out. "Hands against the wall! Spread your feet! Hold it right there! He does not say it like that precisely, there is brushwood and bayou in his accent, but Moolkri is not attuned to regional distinctions of dialect. Moolkri submits. It is unfortunate, but it is all right. He has been ready to submit to human violence, in case it should develop, ever since he accepted the assignment to explore. Now it appears that he will not return to the Get, but he does not mind that. The Get will continue. He does not feel as though he were in danger. He only feels rage, and his rage races decisively, by means of his fourth and seventh senses, across the world and into the heavens.

In the spacecraft Mawkri mourns. The Get moves fearfully around her. She had wished to extend her motherhood to this planet, but it had rejected her. It was unfortunate since, among other things, it meant the end of sexual intercourse for her for the rest of her life, but she does not protest, only regrets.

Moolkri opens all the tactile inputs he has bothered to connect in order to perceive the policeman fully. He observes stimuli identified as pain, heat, body disorientation, and sex climax denied as the policeman's hand invades his body spaces. (There turns out to be nothing in the "pockets, nothing at all, Moolkn had never realized anything should be put there.)

Out of curiosity (he is overdeveloped in curiosity, that is why he is here), Moolkri increases his audio perception and, translating easily from the peckerwood English, hears the policeman radio in to see if there is a want on an unidentified white male pedestrian wearing a cowboy suit, about fifty, five feet seven, white beard, bald, blue eyes, no visible scars.

Listening in this way is only curiosity on Moolkri's part. It can no longer affect the outcome, since violence has already been done to him. He waits patiently, not very long. He hears headquarters report that there is no want on the described individual. The policeman tells Moolkri he can go. Moolkri adds to his file the datum that the violence has been withdrawn, but only out of neatness. The file is now complete. No more will be added.

The policeman cautions him against walking alone in the city at night, mentioning the risk of being robbed or harmed. He advises Moolkri to carry identification at all times. He gets back into his car, hesitates, then says, with half a smile and a cursory salute, "Y'all enjoy your stay in Jackson now, hear?

But it is too late.

The automatic orbiting guardians have already reacted to Moolkri's broadcast danger of violence, as they were programmed to do. The spacecraft with Mawkri and the Get lifts and flees screaming into the sky. And the first planet busters begin to drop.

Fusion infernos blossom and burst. Cities slide into the already boiling sea. Mawkri's motherhood has punished the offense.

It is the end of the world of human beings, except as a blob of molten rock, and that is one way it could have been.

Or it could have been like this, that all of Moolkri Mawkri's Get remained in orbit, thundering down motherly orders to be obeyed:

Under pain of destruction!

Humans are commanded!

Alternative is the planet busters, and the end of your world!

In this version the Get prudently refrained from landing but after careful study of all radio and television transmissions elected to play a mother's arduous role from out in space. So they made a plan and ordered the world to carry it out. Six representatives of humankind were to present themselves, unarmed and tractable, in orbit: one each from China, the United States, Sweden, Rhodesia, Brazil, and the U.S.S.R.

The Get, here, too, had carefully studied all the EMF transmissions from Tokyo Tower and London's GPO and the American networks. The Get thought that most of them were very funny. Nevertheless they decoded them into aural and visual signals and analyzed them for meaning and implications.

Both Moolkri and Mawkri agreed that this complicatedly comic planet needed to be taken into the motherhood of Mawkri, and in this version they studied the means of manipulation nations and persons used upon each other. They were aware of the human custom of giving each other ultimatums: thus the commands from space. They were not as aware of certain other human habits. They were taken quite by surprise when, united in a common purpose at last, all six of the nations that had a nuclear missile capability conferred through their secret hot lines, set a time, and fired simultaneously upon the orbiting spaceship of Moolkri Mawkri and the Get.