The Robert Silverberg Science Fiction MEGAPACK® (8 page)

So they wouldn’t let Erna take the raft apart, and I had to buy myself a new rocket engine. You can see the raft in the museum on Ganymede, any time you happen to be in the neighborhood. If the curator’s around, she won’t mind answering questions. But don’t try to get playful with her. I’m awfully touchy about guys who make passes at my wife.

THE DESSICATOR

Originally published in
Science Fiction Stories
, May 1956.

Mirnish brought the machine into the other room, where Scrodlee was busily bent over the ledgers, and sadly put it down. “I’ve finished it,” he said. “You can start Promoting.”

Scrodlee leaped to his feet. “Antigravity! You have it! A marvelous feat, Mirnish, marvelous! This redeems all of your old blunders.”

The inventor sat down heavily and caressed the small green box with his tentacles, looking at it with rue. “No. Not so, Scrodlee; I’m sorry, but I didn’t quite invent antigravity this time.”

Scrodlee contemplated his partner with a cosmic patience born of long experience. “You finished it, you say, and you were working on antigravity. But you didn’t invent antigravity?”

“No.”

The Promoter spoke slowly, choosing his words with care. “Then—what—did—you—invent?” He looked expectantly at the other, remembering a long history of Mirnish’s inventions.

Mirnish assumed a humble countenance. “I seem,” he said, “to have invented a Desiccator.” He waited for Scrodlee’s reaction, and it was not long in coming.

“A Desiccator?” the Promoter repeated, standing up and beginning to pace up and down the little room. “That is just in line with some of your other things. You mean a machine that dries things out, don’t you? Just what we’ve all been waiting for—here on Mars, the dryest planet in the Galaxy, if not the Universe, what does Mirnish the inventor invent but a—a
Desiccator!”

“I’m sorry, Scrodlee,” Mirnish said; “I was trying to—”

“I know. Forget about it. We’re in a pretty bad way and I can’t afford to let this go to waste.” He picked up the green box. “We’ve got an invention here, of a sort; there must be some use for it somewhere.” He pointed to the ledger. “We’ll have to make the most of it. And I’m not Scrodlee the Promoter for nothing; if we work it right, we can make millions on this thing yet! How does it work?”

“I don’t know,” Mirnish said. “I just put it together, using standard coordinates and all, and it—it desiccates. Say, look: perhaps we could go—”

“Some inventor,” Scrodlee interrupted. “First he invents something completely useless, and then he tells me he doesn’t know what it is. There are times I doubt my sanity, Mirnish; with all the inventors on this planet, whom do I promote? Mirnish.”

“I’m sorry, Scrodlee. But maybe we could take the Desiccator to—”

“Quiet, I’m thinking. How could we find some use for this thing of yours? Perhaps the Grangs could use it; let me check.” He stretched a tentacle up for a reference book, pulled it down from the shelf, and thumbed rapidly through it. “Umm. Guess not; they prefer to dry their victims themselves. Just as well; I hate dealing with them.”

“Scrodlee.”

“Yes, Mirnish?”

“Shut up. I have an idea I’ve been trying to slip in here sideways.”

“You have an idea!” Scrodlee laughed.
“You
have an idea? Well, genius, let’s hear it.”

“Look. The Desiccator is worthless on Mars—everything is desiccated enough as it is. But on Earth—why, they’re flooded down there. Two thirds of the planet is water! The humidity, the rain, everything—it makes me shudder. It’s a miracle they don’t drown in their own atmosphere.
There’s
a natural market for the Desiccator; they’ll snap it up, and we’ll be doing a service to Civilization as well.”

Scrodlee’s eyes lit up with a familiar gleam. “You’re right. Get your things together, Mirnish; you and I and the Desiccator are going to go to Earth. I’m not Scrodlee the Promoter for nothing!”

They arrived on Earth in due course, having booked third-class passage on the fourth-class liner
Edworm.
They put down outside the New York spaceport and Scrodlee procured a hotel room in the heart of the sprawling metropolis, grumbling about the outrageous rates.

Some judicious string-pulling, combined with the fact that they were Martians, got them an audience with the President a few days later. Scrodlee had insisted to Mimish that they should start at the top in their campaign to market the Desiccator.

Scrodlee led the way into the big room, and Mimish followed, carefully cradling the Desiccator under his end tentacle.

“You have seven minutes,” said an officious-looking secretary.

“You’re a busy man, Mr. President,” Scrodlee said rapidly to the tired-looking chief of state, “but I think we’ve hit on a device that will turn your country into a Mar—pardon me, into a Paradise on Earth.”

Briefly he explained the purpose and function of the Desiccator. The President examined the green box, turned it upside-down, shook it, covertly photographed it with his wristcam just in case it might prove valuable, and handed it back to Mimish.

He leaned back in his chair. “Martian science is indeed a wonderful thing,” he pronounced. “Our brothers of the elder planet are skilled in the ways of the universe.”

“We realized the importance of the Desiccator immediately,” Scrodlee said, “and took it straight to you; we knew you could use it.”

“Sorry,” said the President. “We can’t; we don’t have any use for it. If we removed humidity we’d offend a big chunk of farming people. We’d end up having to balance it by seeding clouds to produce rain. Take away one, give the other, where’s the percentage?”

Scrodlee frowned. “But Earth is such a
humid
place,” he protested; “the Desiccator would remove that excess humidity and make it a livable planet.”

“We find it quite livable,” the President said curtly. He stood up. “You’d be wise to keep such opinions to yourself, Mr. Scroggly. I’m afraid I don’t have any use for your machine—but as a friendly tip, why not try some other country? Look in on one of the South American countries. It’s pretty sticky down there, and maybe you could dry things out a little for them.”

A few days later found the Martians in a white marble palace which housed the dictator of a small republic whose name Scrodlee never did manage to catch. He explained the Desiccator to the tall, much-decorated dictator, whose name Scrodlee likewise could not make out. He sat in silence, listening to Scrodlee’s sales pitch, his fingers folded daintily as if in prayer.

“No,” he said when Scrodlee finished; “never. Take your machine out of my country immediately.”

“You can’t use it?” Mirnish asked meekly.

“Certainly not! It would mean my life. Follow this picture, please: humidity goes down, banana crop fails. Banana crop fails, the Norteamericanos do not buy. They do not buy, we have no money. So we raise taxes to support the government. We raise taxes and we have a revolution and I am hung from lamppost. So I must say no. You would overthrow our entire economy and we cannot allow comfort to come first. It would be nice to have cooler country, but I am much too important to my nation to allow myself to be overthrown so.”

Mirnish looked at Scrodlee, who looked back.

“Not at all?”

The dictator mopped some sweat away with an elegant handkerchief. “No; not at all. I suggest you take your invention back to your native planet.”

“I guess we’ll have to,” Mirnish said.

“Maybe one of the neighboring countries—?” Scrodlee suggested.

“I doubt it,” the dictator said. “But you may try.” Scrodlee made a farewell gesture and exited, pushing Mirnish in front, wondering where to turn next.

They returned to New York after a fruitless visit to the east coast of Africa, where the tribal chieftain regarded them somewhat less than favorably. Disillusioned, they returned to their hotel suite and, tentacles drooping, waited despondently for something to happen.

They stared at the green box of the Desiccator sitting on the table.

“Let’s go back home,” Mirnish said. “Why not admit it: I failed; I invented something completely useless. So let’s throw it away and I’ll get to work on antigravity again.”

Scrodlee stiffened with pride. “I’m not giving up so easily. I’m not Scrodlee the Promoter if I’m going to throw away a valuable invention like this; we’ll stay here till we sell it.”

Scrodlee contacted a few other buyers without success; most people just laughed at the thought of Martians inventing a Desiccator. They never left their apartment, and found it necessary to use the Desiccator at all times in order to maintain a livable atmosphere. A week passed, with Mirnish complaining bitterly about the soup that the atmosphere was—even with the Desiccator in action—and Scrodlee was becoming more and more convinced that he had finally come up with something that defeated his promoting skills.

He was about ready to give in when, one morning, a young man knocked at the door, and, when Mirnish opened it to see who was there, he entered.

“I’m Dennan. Reporter,
New York Cosmos.
Been some strange stories coming from this place and I want to check. Lord, it’s dry in here!”

“It’s the action of the Desiccator,” Mirnish said. “It keeps us able to breathe.” He explained the function of his invention.

Dennan looked hard at the Martian. “So
that’s
it! You guys have been causing it after all. People drying up, groceries crumbling, grass turning brown on the penthouse. Excuse me, please.” And he dashed out, exiting even more abruptly than he had entered.

“What was all that about?” asked Scrodlee, coming in from the other room. Mirnish told him. “Wonder what it means?”

They found out the next morning when the New York Cosmos dropped through the telechute and into their living room. Mirnish, who followed the newspapers with considerable interest, unfolded the front strip and began to scan it. Suddenly he gave the equivalent of a whistle and shouted for Scrodlee to come in.

“Look at this!” He held out the paper. The big red headline said:

MARTIANS PLOT MY DOOM

Underneath it was a story which began:

A daring
Cosmos
reporter yesterday uncovered a Martian plot to turn New York City into a desert.

Two Martian agents have established themselves in New York armed with a machine called a Desiccator which is responsible for the present drought and also for the curious reports of “dried-out” people in midtown New York, earlier believed to be a mysterious new epidemic.

The story continued on in that vein for almost two columns.

“Why, they’re crazy!” Scrodlee exclaimed.

“They may be right, though,” said Mirnish. “I never did test the field of the Desiccator. We may be Desiccating all of Manhattan by leaving the machine on.”

Suddenly a rock came crashing through their window. Scrodlee ran to the broken window, coughing a little at the thick Terran air pouring through, and looked out.

There was a mob milling around the street, shouting imprecations and waving fists.

“Some inventor,” Scrodlee said; “the people of Earth are yelling for our scalps.”

“We don’t have scalps,” Mirnish said.

“Shut up; they want blood. We have to find some way of getting off this crazy planet without touching off another interplanetary war. You and your useless inventions!” Another rock came hurtling up from below and bounded off the side of the building.

“What are we going to do?” asked Mirnish.

“Sweat it out, I guess; shut off your damned Desiccator, anyway.”

The visiphone chimed. Mirnish ignored it, but Scrodlee ran toward it and snatched it up. Mirnish walked to the window and stared glumly out at the milling mass of people in the street below.

Scrodlee began talking excitedly into the phone, and Mirnish watched almost with interest, unable to hear what he was saying because of the noise from the street.

When he hung up he returned to Mirnish with a triumphant look on his face. “What now?” Mirnish asked.

“When you deal with Scrodlee, you deal with a
Promotor,”
he said. “Everything’s all right; one of my contacts came through and I sold the Desiccator.”

“What? To whom?”

“You’ll see. He was the last man on my list, but he wants it. I explained our predicament, and he’s going to evacuate us by helicopter and take us to where the Desiccator’s going to be installed. We’ll be whisked right out from under the nose of that mob down there.”

“Let’s go up there and get them,” a stentorian voice from below roared.

“When’s he coming?” Mirnish asked anxiously.

“Any minute now; get your machine packed up, and get ready to leave.”

They waited tensely as the yelling of the mob increased. Finally there came a rapping at the window, and they saw a helicopter hovering outside. It drew close and they cautiously opened a window.

“Suppose it’s a trap,” Mirnish whispered.

“Shut up.”

A well-dressed, dignified gentleman came through the window.

“Mr. Henceford?” Scrodlee asked.

“That’s right,” he said in a deep, rich voice. “Owner of the Universal Vineyards. Your machine is what I’ve been looking for for years. Looks like I just made it in the proverbial nick, I guess. Get into the copter before this mob breaks loose and we’ll fly out to my place and arrange terms.”

Mirnish and Scrodlee returned to Mars the following day, considerably wealthier; Mirnish again set out to conquer gravity, while Scrodlee spurred him on and kept careful watch to see that nothing went wrong this time.

As for the Desiccator, it’s now busily employed in the heart of a deserted part of lower Nevada, pouring forth its desiccating rays day and night without end.

Turning grapes into raisins.

THE HAPPY UNFORTUNATE

Originally published in
Amazing Stories
, December 1957.

Rolf Dekker stared incredulously at the slim, handsome young Earther who was approaching the steps of Rolf’s tumbling-down Spacertown shack.
He’s got no ears
, Rolf noted in unbelief. After five years in space, Rolf had come home to a strangely-altered world, and he found it hard to accept.

Another Earther appeared. This one was about the same size, and gave the same impression of fragility. This one had ears, all right—and a pair of gleaming, two-inch horns on his forehead as well.
I’ll be eternally roasted
, Rolf thought.
Now I’ve seen everything.

Both Earthers were dressed in neat, gold-inlaid green tunics, costumes which looked terribly out of place amid the filth of Spacertown, and their hair was dyed a light green to match.

He had been scrutinizing them for several moments before they became aware of him. They both spotted him at once and the one with no ears turned to his companion and whispered something. Rolf, leaning forward, strained to hear.

“…beautiful, isn’t he? That’s the biggest one I’ve seen!”

“Come over here, won’t you?” the horned one called, in a soft, gentle voice which contrasted oddly with the raucous bellowing Rolf had been accustomed to hearing in space. “We’d like to talk to you.”

Just then Kanaday emerged from the door of the shack and limped down to the staircase.

“Hey, Rolf!” he called. “Leave those things alone!”

“Let me find out what they want first, huh?”

“Can’t be any good, whatever it is,” Kanaday growled. “Tell them to get out of here before I throw them back to wherever they came from. And make it fast.”

* * * *

The two Earthers looked at each other uneasily. Rolf walked toward them.

“He doesn’t like Earthers, that’s all,” Rolf explained. “But he won’t do anything but yell.”

Kanaday spat in disgust, turned, and limped back inside the shack.

“I didn’t know you were wearing horns,” Rolf said.

The Earther flushed. “New style,” he said. “Very expensive.”

“Oh,” Rolf said. “I’m new here; I just got back. Five years in space. When I left you people looked all alike. Now you wear horns.”

“It’s the new trend,” said the earless one. “We’re Individs. When you left the Conforms were in power, style-wise. But the new surgeons can do almost anything, you see.”

The shadow of a frown crossed Rolf’s face. “Anything?”

“Almost. They can’t transform an Earther into a Spacer, and they don’t think they ever will.”

“Or vice versa?” Rolf asked.

They sniggered. “What Spacer would want to become an Earther? Who would give up that life, out in the stars?”

Rolf said nothing. He kicked at the heap of litter in the filthy street.
What spacer indeed?
he thought. He suddenly realized that the two little Earthers were staring up at him as if he were some sort of beast. He probably weighed as much as both of them, he knew, and at six-four he was better than a foot taller. They looked like children next to him, like toys. The savage blast of acceleration would snap their flimsy bodies like toothpicks.

“What places have you been to?” the earless one asked.

“Two years on Mars, one on Venus, one in the Belt, one on Neptune,” Rolf recited. “I didn’t like Neptune. It was best in the Belt; just our one ship, prospecting. We made a pile on Ceres—enough to buy out. I shot half of it on Neptune. Still have plenty left, but I don’t know what I can do with it.” He didn’t add that he had come home puzzled, wondering why he was a Spacer instead of an Earther, condemned to live in filthy Spacertown when Yawk was just across the river.

They were looking at his shabby clothes, at the dirty brownstone hovel he lived in—an antique of a house four or five centuries old.

“You mean you’re rich?” the Earther said.

“Sure,” Rolf said. “Every Spacer is. So what? What can I spend it on? My money’s banked on Mars and Venus. Thanks to the law I can’t legally get it to Earth. So I live in Spacertown.”

“Have you ever seen an Earther city?” the earless one asked, looking around at the quiet streets of Spacertown with big powerful men sitting idly in front of every house.

“I used to live in Yawk,” Rolf said. “My grandmother was an Earther; she brought me up there. I haven’t been back there since I left for space.”
They forced me out of Yawk
, he thought.
I’m not part of their species. Not one of them.

* * * *

The two Earthers exchanged glances.

“Can we interest you in a suggestion?” They drew in their breath as if they expected to be knocked sprawling.

Kanaday appeared at the door of the shack again.

“Rolf. Hey! You turning into an Earther? Get rid of them two cuties before there’s trouble.”

Rolf turned and saw a little knot of Spacers standing on the other side of the street, watching him with curiosity. He glared at them.

“I’ll do whatever I damn well please,” he shouted across.

He turned back to the two Earthers. “Now, what is it you want?”

“I’m giving a party next week,” the earless one said. “I’d like you to come. We’d like to get the Spacer slant on life.”

“Party?” Rolf repeated. “You mean, dancing, and games, and stuff like that?”

“You’ll enjoy it,” the Earther said coaxingly. “And we’d all love to have a real Spacer there.”

“When is it?”

“A week.”

“I have ten days left of my leave. All right,” he said. “I’ll come.”

He accepted the Earther’s card, looked at it mechanically, saw the name—Kal Quinton—and pocketed it. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

The Earthers moved toward their little jetcar, smiling gratefully. As Rolf crossed the street, the other Spacers greeted him with cold, puzzled stares.

* * * *

Kanaday was almost as tall as Rolf, and even uglier. Rolf’s eyebrows were bold and heavy; Kanaday’s, thick, contorted, bushy clumps of hair. Kanaday’s nose had been broken long before in some barroom brawl; his cheekbones bulged; his face was strong and hard. More important, his left foot was twisted and gnarled beyond hope of redemption by the most skillful surgeon. He had been crippled in a jet explosion three years before, and was of no use to the Spacelines any more. They had pensioned him off. Part of the deal was the dilapidated old house in Spacertown which he operated as a boarding-house for transient Spacers.

“What do you want to do that for?” Kanaday asked. “Haven’t those Earthers pushed you around enough, so you have to go dance at one of their wild parties?”

“Leave me alone,” Rolf muttered.

“You like this filth you live in? Spacertown is just a ghetto, that’s all. The Earthers have pushed you right into the muck. You’re not even a human being to them—just some sort of trained ape. And now you’re going to go and entertain them. I thought you had brains, Rolf!”

“Shut up!” He dashed his glass against the table; it bounced off and dropped to the floor, where it shattered.

Kanaday’s girl Laney entered the room at the sound of the crash. She was tall and powerful-looking, with straight black hair and the strong cheekbones that characterized the Spacers. Immediately she stooped and began shoveling up the broken glass.

“That wasn’t smart, Rolf,” she said. “That’ll cost you half a credit. Wasn’t worth it, was it?”

Rolf laid the coin on the edge of the table. “Tell your pal to shut up, then. If he doesn’t stop icing me I’ll fix his other foot for him and you can buy him a dolly.”

She looked from one to the other. “What’s bothering you two now?”

“A couple of Earthers were here this morning,” Kanaday said. “Slumming. They took a fancy to our young friend here and invited him to one of their parties. He accepted.”

“He
what
? Don’t go, Rolf. You’re crazy to go.”

“Why am I crazy?” He tried to control his voice. “Why should we keep ourselves apart from the Earthers? Why shouldn’t the two races get together?”

* * * *

She put down her tray and sat next to him. “They’re more than two races,” she said patiently. “Earther and Spacer are two different species, Rolf. Carefully, genetically separated. They’re small and weak, we’re big and powerful. You’ve been bred for going to space; they’re the castoffs, the ones who were too weak to go. The line between the two groups is too strong to break.”

“And they treat us like dirt—like animals,” Kanaday said. “But
they’re
the dirt. They were the ones who couldn’t make it.”

“Don’t go to the party,” Laney said. “They just want to make fun of you. Look at the big ape, they’ll say.”

Rolf stood up. “You don’t understand. Neither of you does. I’m part Earther,” Rolf said. “My grandmother on my mother’s side. She raised me as an Earther. She wanted me to be an Earther. But I kept getting bigger and uglier all the time. She took me to a plastic surgeon once, figuring he could make me look like an Earther. He was a little man; I don’t know what he looked like to start with but some other surgeon had made him clean-cut and straight-nosed and thin-lipped like all the other Earthers. I was bigger than he was—twice as big, and I was only fifteen. He looked at me and felt my bones and measured me. ‘Healthy little ape’—those were the words he used. He told my grandmother I’d get bigger and bigger, that no amount of surgery could make me small and handsome, that I was fit only for space and didn’t belong in Yawk. So I left for space the next morning.”

“I see,” Laney said quietly.

“I didn’t say good-bye. I just left. There was no place for me in Yawk; I couldn’t pass myself off as an Earther any more. But I’d like to go back and see what the old life was like, now that I know what it’s like to be on the other side for a while.”

“It’ll hurt when you find out, Rolf.”

“I’ll take that chance. But I want to go. Maybe my grandmother’ll be there. The surgeons made her young and pretty again every few years; she looked like my sister when I left.”

Laney nodded her head. “There’s no point arguing with him, Kanaday. He has to go back there and find out, so let him alone.”

Rolf smiled. “Thanks for understanding.” He took out Quinton’s card and turned it over and over in his hand.

* * * *

Rolf went to Yawk on foot, dressed in his best clothes, with his face as clean as it had been in some years. Spacertown was just across the river from Yawk, and the bridges spanning the river were bright and gleaming in the mid-afternoon sun.

The bombs had landed on Yawk during the long-forgotten war, but somehow they had spared the sprawling borough across the river. And so Yawk had been completely rebuilt, once the radioactivity had been purged from the land, while what was now Spacertown consisted mostly of buildings that dated back to the Twentieth Century.

Yawk had been the world’s greatest seaport; now it was the world’s greatest spaceport. The sky was thick with incoming and outgoing liners. The passengers on the ship usually stayed at Yawk, which had become an even greater metropolis than it had been before the Bomb. The crew crossed the river to Spacertown, where they could find their own kind.

Yawk and Spacertown were like two separate planets. There were three bridges spanning the river, but most of the time they went unused, except by spacemen going back home or by spacemen going to the spaceport for embarkation. There was no regular transportation between the two cities; to get from Spacertown to Yawk, you could borrow a jetcar or you could walk. Rolf walked.

He enjoyed the trip.
I’m going back home
, he thought as he paced along the gleaming arc of the bridge, dressed in his Sunday best. He remembered the days of his own childhood, his parentless childhood. His earliest memory was of a fight at the age of six or so. He had stood off what seemed like half the neighborhood, ending the battle by picking up an older bully, much feared by everyone, and heaving him over a fence. When he told his grandmother about the way he had won the fight she cried for an hour, and never told him why. But they had never picked on him again, though he knew the other boys had jeered at him behind his back as he grew bigger and bigger over the years. “Ape,” they called him. “Ape.”

But never to his face.

He approached the Yawk end of the bridge. A guard was waiting there—an Earther guard, small and frail, but with a sturdy-looking blaster at his hip.

“Going back, Spacer?”

Rolf started. How did the guard know? And then he realized that all the guard meant was, are you going back to your ship?

“No. No, I’m going to a party. Kal Quinton’s house.”

“Tell me another, Spacer.” The guard’s voice was light and derisive. A swift poke in the ribs would break him in half, Rolf thought.

“I’m serious. Quinton invited me. Here’s his card.”

“If this is a joke it’ll mean trouble. But go ahead; I’ll take your word for it.”

Rolf marched on past the guard, almost nonchalantly. He looked at the address on the card.
12406 Kenman Road.
He rooted around in his fading memory of Yawk, but he found the details had blurred under the impact of five years of Mars and Venus and the Belt and Neptune. He did not know where Kenman Road was.

The glowing street signs were not much help either. One said 287th Street and the other said 72nd Avenue. Kenman Road might be anywhere.

He walked on a block or two. The streets were antiseptically clean, and he had the feeling that his boots, which had lately trod in Spacertown, were leaving dirtmarks along the street. He did not look back to see.

* * * *

He looked at his wristchron. It was getting late, and Kenman Road might be anywhere. He turned into a busy thoroughfare, conscious that he was attracting attention. The streets here were crowded with little people who barely reached his chest; they were all about the same height, and most of them looked alike. A few had had radical surgical alterations, and every one of these was different. One had a unicorn-like horn; another, an extra eye which cunningly resembled his real ones. The Earthers were looking at him furtively, as they would at a tiger or an elephant strolling down a main street.

“Where are you going, Spacer?” said a voice from the middle of the street.

Rolf’s first impulse was to snarl out a curse and keep moving, but he realized that the question was a good one and one whose answer he was trying to find out for himself. He turned.

Another policeman stood on the edge of the walkway. “Are you lost?” The policeman was short and delicate-looking.

Rolf produced his card.

The policeman studied it. “What business do you have with Quinton?”

“Just tell me how to get there,” Rolf said. “I’m in a hurry.”

The policeman backed up a step. “All right, take it easy.” He pointed to a kiosk. “Take the subcar here. There’s a stop at Kenman Road. You can find your way from there.”

“I’d rather walk it,” Rolf said. He did not want to have to stand the strain of riding in a subcar with a bunch of curious staring Earthers.