A first-rate science-fiction story is sometimes a quagmire. You venture out on its attractive and solid-looking surface and, at a point of no return, you find the ground dissolving under you. An alien planet is NOT merely a more distant Earth. To say more would be to say much too much; so, with no more warning than that, now set boldly forth to meet—
A few minutes before noon the sun
took a lurch south and set.
Sister Mary tore the solar helmet from her fair head and threw it at the settee—a display that surprised and troubled her husband, Brother Raymond.
He clasped her quivering shoulders. “Now, dear, easy does it. A blow-up can’t help us at all.”
Tears were rolling down Sister Mary’s cheeks. “As soon as we start from the house the sun drops out of sight! It happens every time!”
“Well—we know what patience is. There’ll be another soon.”
“It may be an hour! Or ten hours! And we’ve got our jobs to do!”
Brother Raymond went to the window, pulled aside the starched lace curtains, peered into the dusk. “We could start now, and get up the hill before night.”
“ ‘Night?’ “ cried Sister Mary. “What do you call this?”
Brother Raymond said stiffly, “I mean night by the Clock. Real night.”
“The Clock. . . .” Sister Mary sighed, sank into a chair. “If it weren’t for the Clock we’d all be lunatics.”
Brother Raymond, at the window, looked up toward Salvation Bluff, where the great clock bulked unseen. Mary joined him; they stood gazing through the dark. Presently Mary sighed. “I’m sorry, dear. But I get so upset.”
Raymond patted her shoulder. “It’s no joke living on Glory.”
Mary shook her head decisively. “I shouldn’t let myself go. There’s the Colony to think of. Pioneers can’t be weaklings.”
They stood close, drawing comfort from each other.
“Look!” said Raymond. He pointed. “A fire, and up in Old Fleetville!”
In perplexity they watched the far spark.
“They’re all supposed to be down in New Town,” muttered Sister Mary. “Unless it’s some kind of ceremony.... The salt we gave them . . .”
Raymond, smiling sourly, spoke a fundamental postulate of life on Glory. “You can’t tell anything about the Flits. They’re liable to do most anything.”
Mary uttered a truth even more fundamental. “Anything is liable to do anything.”
“The Flits most liable of all. . . . They’ve even taken to dying without our comfort and help!”
“We’ve done our best,” said Mary. “It’s not our fault!” —almost as if she feared that it was.
“No one could possibly blame us.”
“Except the Inspector. . . . The Flits were thriving before the Colony came.”
“We haven’t bothered them; we haven’t encroached, or molested, or interfered. In fact we’ve knocked ourselves out to help them. And for thanks they tear down our fences and break open the canal and throw mud on our fresh paint!”
Sister Mary said in a low voice, “Sometimes I hate the Flits. . . . Sometimes I hate Glory. Sometimes I hate the whole Colony.”
Brother Raymond drew her close, patted the fair hair that she kept in a neat bun. “You’ll feel better when one of the suns comes up. Shall we start?”
“It’s dark,” said Mary dubiously. “Glory is bad enough in the daytime.”
Raymond shot his jaw forward, glanced up toward the Clock. “It is daytime. The Clock says it’s daytime. That’s Reality; we’ve got to cling to it! It’s our link with truth and sanity!”
“Very well,” said Mary, “we’ll go.”
Raymond kissed her cheek. “You’re very brave, dear. You’re a credit to the Colony.”
Mary shook her head. “No, dear. I’m no better or braver than any of the others. We came out here to found homes and live the Truth. We knew there’d be hard work. So much depends on everybody; there’s no room for weakness.”
Raymond kissed her again, although she laughingly protested and turned her head. “I still think you’re brave— and very sweet.”
“Get the light,” said Mary. “Get several lights. One never knows how long these—these insufferable darknesses will last.”
They set off up the road, walking because in the Colony private power vehicles were considered a social evil. Ahead, unseen in the darkness, rose the Grand Montagne, the preserve of the Flits. They could feel the harsh bulk of the crags, just as behind them they could feel the neat fields, the fences, the roads of the Colony. They crossed the canal, which led the meandering river into a mesh of irrigation ditches. Raymond shone his light into the concrete bed. They stood looking in a silence more eloquent than curses.
“It’s dry! They’ve broken the banks again.”
“Why?” asked Mary. “Why? They don’t use the river water!”
Raymond shrugged. “I guess they just don’t like canals. Well,” he sighed, “all we can do is the best we know how.”
The road wound back and forth up the slope. They passed the lichen-covered hulk of a star-ship which five hundred years ago had crashed on Glory. “It seems impossible,” said Mary. “The Flits were once men and women just like us.”
“Not like us, dear,” Raymond corrected gently.
Sister Mary shuddered. “The Flits and their goats! Sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart.”
A few minutes later Raymond fell into a mudhole, a bed of slime, with enough water-seep to make it sucking and dangerous. Floundering, panting, with Mary’s desperate help, he regained solid ground, and stood shivering —angry, cold, wet.
“That blasted thing wasn’t there yesterday!” He scraped slime from his face, his clothes. “It’s these miserable things that makes life so trying.”
“We’ll get the better of it, dear.” And she said fiercely: “We’ll fight it, subdue it! Somehow we’ll bring order to Glory!”
While they debated whether or not to proceed, Red Robundus belled up over the northwest horizon, and they were able to take stock of the situation. Brother Raymond’s khaki puttees and his white shirt of course were filthy. Sister Mary’s outfit was hardly cleaner.
Raymond said dejectedly, “I ought to go back to the bungalow for a change.”
“Raymond—do we have time?”
“I’ll look a fool going up to the Flits like this.”
“They’ll never notice.”
“How can they help?” snapped Raymond.
“We haven’t time,” said Mary decisively. “The Inspector’s due any day, and the Flits are dying like flies. They’ll say it’s our fault—and that’s the end of Gospel Colony.” After a pause she said carefully, “Not that we wouldn’t help the Flits in any event.”
“I still think I’d make a better impression in clean clothes,” said Raymond dubiously.
“Pooh! A fig they care for clean clothes, the ridiculous way they scamper around.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
A small yellow-green sun appeared over the southwest horizon. “Here comes Urban. ... If it isn’t dark as pitch we get three or four suns at once!”
“Sunlight makes the crops grow,” Mary told him sweetly.
They climbed half an hour, then, stopping to catch their breath, turned to look across the valley to the colony they loved so well. Seventy-two thousand souls on a checkerboard green plain, rows of neat white houses, painted and scrubbed, with snowy curtains behind glistening glass; lawns and flower gardens full of tulips; vegetable gardens full of cabbages, kale and squash.
Raymond looked up at the sky. “It’s going to rain.”
Mary asked, “How do you know?”
“Remember the drenching we had last time Urban and Robundus were both in the west?”
Mary shook her head. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Something’s got to mean something. That’s the law of our universe—the basis for all our thinking!”
A gust of wind howled down from the ridges, carrying great curls and feathers of dust. They swirled with complicated colors, films, shades, in the opposing lights of yellow-green Urban and Red Robundus.
“There’s your rain,” shouted Mary over the roar of the wind. Raymond pressed on up the road. Presently the wind died.
Mary said, “I believe in rain or anything else on Glory when I see it.”
“We don’t have enough facts,” insisted Raymond. “There’s nothing magic in unpredictability.”
“It’s just—unpredictable.” She looked back along the face of the Grand Montagne. “Thank God for the Clock— something that’s dependable.”
The road wandered up the hill, through stands of horny spile, banks of gray scrub and purple thorn. Sometimes there was no road; then they had to cast ahead like surveyors; sometimes the road stopped at a bank or at a blank wall, continuing on a level ten feet above or below. These were minor inconveniences which they overcame as a matter of course. Only when Robundus drifted south and Urban ducked north did they become anxious.
“It wouldn’t be conceivable that a sun should set at seven in the evening,” said Mary. “That would be too normal, too matter-of-fact.”
At seven-fifteen both suns set. There would be ten minutes of magnificent sunset, another fifteen minutes of twilight, then night of indeterminate extent.
They missed the sunset because of an earthquake. A tumble of stones came pelting across the road; they took refuge under a jut of granite while boulders clattered into the road and spun on down the mountainside.
The shower of rocks passed, except for pebbles bouncing down as an afterthought. “Is that all?” Mary asked in a husky whisper.
“Sounds like it.”
“I’m thirsty.”
Raymond handed her the canteen; she drank.
“How much farther to Fleetville?”
“Old Fleetville or New Town?”
“I don’t care,” she said wearily. “Either one.”
Raymond hesitated. “As a matter of fact, I don’t know the distance to either.”
“Well, we can’t stay here all night.”
“It’s day coming up,” said Raymond as the white dwarf Maude began to silver the sky to the northeast.
“It’s night,” Mary declared in quiet desperation. “The Clock says it’s night; I don’t care if every sun in the galaxy is shining, including Home Sun. As long as the Clock says it’s night, it’s night!”
“We can see the road anyway. . . . New Town is just over this ridge; I recognize that big spile. It was here last time I came.”
Of the two, Raymond was the more surprised to find New Town where he placed it. They trudged into the village. “Things are awful quiet.”
There were three dozen huts, built of concrete and good clear glass, each with filtered water, a shower, wash-tub and toilet. To suit Flit prejudices the roofs were thatched with thorn, and there were no interior partitions. The huts were all empty.
Mary looked into a hut. “Mmmph—horrid!” She puckered her nose at Raymond. “The smell!”
The windows of the second hut were innocent of glass. Raymond’s face was grim and angry. “I packed that glass up here on my blistered back! And that’s how they thank us.”
“I don’t care whether they thank us or not,” said Mary. “I’m worried about the Inspector. He’ll blame us for—” she gestured—”this filth. After all it’s supposed to be our responsibility.”
Seething with indignation Raymond surveyed the village. He recalled the day New Town had been completed—a model village, thirty-six spotless huts, hardly inferior to the bungalows of the Colony. Arch-Deacon Burnette had voiced the blessing; the volunteer workers knelt to pray in the central compound. Fifty or sixty Flits had come down from the ridges to watch—a wide-eyed ragged bunch: the men all gristle and unkempt hair; the women sly, plump and disposed to promiscuity, or so the colonists believed.
After the invocation Arch-Deacon Burnette had presented the chief of the tribe a large key of gilded plywood. “In your custody, Chief—the future and welfare of your people! Guard it—cherish it!”
The chief stood almost seven feet tall; he was lean as a pike, his profile cut in and out, sharp and hard as a turtle’s. He wore greasy black rags and carried a long staff, upholstered with goat-hide. Alone in the tribe he spoke the language of the colonists, with a good accent that always came as a shock. “They are no concern of mine,” he said in a casual, hoarse voice. “They do as they like. That’s the best way.”
Arch-Deacon Burnette had encountered this attitude before. A large-minded man, he felt no indignation, but rather sought to argue away what he considered an irrational attitude. “Don’t you want to be civilized? Don’t you want to worship God, to live clean, healthy lives?”
“No.”
The Arch-Deacon grinned. “Well, we’ll help anyway, as much as we can. We can teach you to read, to cipher; we can cure your disease. Of course you must keep clean and you must adopt regular habits—because that’s what civilization means.”
The chief grunted. “You don’t even know how to herd goats.”
“We are not missionaries,” Arch-Deacon Burnette continued, “but when you choose to learn the Truth, we’ll be ready to help you.”
“Mmph-mmph—where do you profit by this?”
Arch-Deacon smiled. “We don’t. You are fellow-humans; we are bound to help you.”
The chief turned, called to the tribe; they fled up the rocks pell-mell, climbing like desperate wraiths, hair waving, goat-skins flapping.
“What’s this? What’s this?” cried the Arch-Deacon. “Come back here,” he called to the chief, who was on his way to join the tribe.
The chief called down from a crag. “You are all crazy people.”
“No, no,” exclaimed the Arch-Deacon, and it was a magnificent scene, stark as a stage-set: the white-haired Arch-Deacon calling up to the wild chief with his wild tribe behind him; a saint commanding satyrs, all in the shifting light of three suns.
Somehow he coaxed the chief back down to New Town. Old Fleetville lay half a mile farther up, in a saddle funnelling all the winds and clouds of the Grand Montagne, until even the goats clung with difficulty to the rocks. It was cold, dank, dreary. The Arch-Deacon hammered home each of Old Fleetville’s drawbacks. The chief insisted he preferred it to New Town.
Fifty pounds of salt made the difference, with the Arch-Deacon compromising his principles over the use of bribes. About sixty of the tribe moved into the new huts with an air of amused detachment, as if the Arch-Deacon had asked them to play a foolish game.
The Arch-Deacon called another blessing upon the village; the colonists knelt; the Flits watched curiously from the doors and windows of their new homes. Another twenty or thirty bounded down from the crags with a herd of goats which they quartered in the little chapel. Arch-Deacon Burnette’s smile became fixed and painful, but to his credit he did nothing to interfere.
After a while the colonists filed back down into the valley. They had done the best they could, but they were not sure exactly what it was they had done.
Two months later New Town was deserted. Brother Raymond and Sister Mary Dunton walked through the village; and the huts showed dark windows and gaping doorways.
“Where have they gone?” asked Mary in a hushed voice.
“They’re all mad,” said Raymond. “Stark staring mad.” He went to the chapel, pushed his head through the door. His knuckles shone suddenly white where they gripped the door frame.
“What’s the trouble?” Mary asked anxiously.
Raymond held her back. “Corpses. . . . There’s—ten, twelve, maybe fifteen bodies in there.”
“Raymond!” They looked at each other. “How? Why?”
Raymond shook his head. With one mind they turned, looked up the hill toward Old Fleetville.
“I guess it’s up to us to find out.”
“But this is—is such a nice place,” Mary burst out. “They’re—they’re beasts! They should love it here!” She turned away, looked out over the valley, so that Raymond wouldn’t see her tears. New Town had meant so much to her; with her own hands she had white-washed rocks and laid neat borders around each of the huts. The borders had been kicked askew, and her feelings were hurt. “Let the Flits live as they like, dirty, shiftless creatures. They’re irresponsible,” she told Raymond, “just completely irresponsible!”
Raymond nodded. “Let’s go on up, Mary; we have our duty.”
Mary wiped her eyes. “I suppose they’re God’s creatures, but I can’t see why they should be.” She glanced at Raymond. “And don’t tell me about God moving in a mysterious way.”
“Okay,” said Raymond. They started to clamber up over the rocks, up toward Old Fleetville. The valley became smaller and smaller below. Maude swung up to the zenith and seemed to hang there.
They paused for breath. Mary mopped her brow. “Am I crazy, or is Maude getting larger?”
Raymond looked. “Maybe it is swelling a little.”
“It’s either a nova or we’re falling into it!”
“I suppose anything could happen in this system,” sighed Raymond. “If there’s any regularity in Glory’s orbit it’s defied analysis.”
“We might very easily fall into one of the suns,” said Mary thoughtfully.
Raymond shrugged. “The System’s been milling around for quite a few million years. That’s our best guarantee.”
“Our only guarantee.” She clenched her fists. “If there were only some certainty somewhere—something you could look at and say, this is immutable, this is changeless, this is something you can count on. But there’s nothing! It’s enough to drive a person crazy!”
Raymond put on a glassy smile. “Don’t, dear. The Colony’s got too much trouble like that already.”
Mary sobered instantly. “Sorry. ... I’m sorry, Raymond. Truly.”
“It’s got me worried,” said Raymond. “I was talking to Director Birch at the Rest Home yesterday.”
“How many now?”
“Almost three thousand. More coming in every day.” He sighed. “There’s something about Glory that grinds at a person’s nerves—no question about it.”
Mary took a deep breath, pressed Raymond’s hand. “We’ll fight it, darling, and beat it! Things will fall into routine; we’ll straighten everything out.”
Raymond bowed his head. “With the Lord’s help.”
“There goes Maude,” said Mary. “We’d better get up to Old Fleetville while there’s still light.”
A few minutes later they met a dozen goats, herded by as many scraggly children. Some wore rags; some wore goatskin clothes; others ran around naked, and the wind blew on their washboard ribs.
On the other side of the trail they met another herd of goats—perhaps a hundred, with one urchin in attendance.
“That’s the Flit way,” said Raymond, “twelve kids herd twelve goats and one kid herds a hundred.”
“They’re surely victims of some mental disease. ... Is insanity hereditary?”
“That’s a moot point. ... I can smell Old Fleetville.”
Maude left the sky at an angle which promised a long twilight. With aching legs Raymond and Mary plodded up into the village. Behind came the goats and the children, mingled without discrimination.
Mary said in a disgusted voice, “They leave New Town —pretty, clean New Town—to move up into this filth.”
“Don’t step on that goat!” Raymond guided her past the gnawed carcass which lay on the trail. Mary bit her lip.
They found the chief sitting on a rock, staring into the air. He greeted them with neither surprise nor pleasure. A group of children were building a pyre of brush and dry spile.
“What’s going on?” asked Raymond with forced cheer. “A feast? A dance?”
“Four men, two women. They go crazy, they die. We burn them.”
Mary looked at the pyre. “I didn’t know you cremated your dead.”
“This time we burn them.” He reached out, touched Mary’s glossy golden hair. “You be my wife for a while.”
Mary stepped back, and said in a quivering voice. “No, thanks. I’m married to Raymond.”
“All the time?”
“All the time.”
The chief shook his head. “You are crazy. Pretty soon you die.”
Raymond said sternly, “Why did you break the canal? Ten times we’ve fixed it; ten times the Flits come down in the dark and pulled down the banks.”
The chief deliberated. “The canal is crazy.”
“It’s not crazy. It helps irrigate, helps the farmers.”
“It goes too much the same.”
“You mean, it’s straight?”
“Straight? Straight? What word is that?”
“In one line—in one direction.”
The chief rocked back and forth. “Look—mountain. Straight?”
“No, of course not.”
“Sun—straight?”
“Look here—”
“My leg.” The chief extended his left leg, knobby and covered with hair. “Straight?”
“No,” sighed Raymond. “Your leg is not straight.”
“Then why make canal straight? Crazy.” He sat back. The topic was disposed of. “Why do you come?”
“Well,” said Raymond. “Too many Flits die. We want to help you.”
“That’s all right. It’s not me, not you.”
“We don’t want you to die. Why don’t you live in New Town?”
“Flits get crazy, jump off the rocks.” He rose to his feet. “Come along, there’s food.”
Mastering their repugnance, Raymond and Mary nibbled on bits of grilled goat. Without ceremony, four bodies were tossed into the fire. Some of the Flits began to dance.
Mary nudged Raymond. “You can understand a culture by the pattern of its dances. Watch.”
Raymond watched. “I don’t see any pattern. Some take a couple hops, sit down; others run in circles; some just flap their arms.”
Mary whispered, “They’re all crazy. Crazy as sandpipers.”
Raymond nodded. “I believe you.”
Rain began to fall. Red Robundus burnt the eastern sky but never troubled to come up. The rain became hail. Mary and Raymond went into a hut. Several men and women joined them, and with nothing better to do, noisily began loveplay.
Mary whispered in agony. “They’re going to do it right in front of us! They don’t have any shame!”
Raymond said grimly, “I’m not going out in that rain. They can do anything they want.”
Mary cuffed one of the men who sought to remove her shirt; he jumped back. “Just like dogs!” she gasped.
“No repressions there,” said Raymond apathetically. “Repressions mean psychoses.”
“Then I’m psychotic,” sniffed Mary, “because I have repressions!”
“I have too.”
The hail stopped; the wind blew the clouds through the notch; the sky was clear. Raymond and Mary left the hut with relief.
The pyre was drenched; four charred bodies lay in the ashes; no one heeded them.
Raymond said thoughtfully, “It’s on the tip of my tongue —the verge of my mind . . .”
“What?”
“The solution to this whole Flit mess.”
“Well?”
“It’s something like this: The Flits are crazy, irrational, irresponsible.”
“Agreed.”
“The Inspector’s coming. We’ve got to demonstrate that the Colony poses no threat to the aborigines—the Flits, in this case.”
“We can’t force the Flits to improve their living standards.”
“No. But if we could make them sane; if we could even make a start against their mass psychosis . . .”
Mary looked rather numb. “It sounds like a terrible job.”
Raymond shook his head. “Use rigorous thinking, dear. It’s a real problem: a group of aborigines too psychotic to keep themselves alive. But we’ve got to keep them alive. The solution: remove the psychoses.”
“You make it sound sensible, but how in heaven’s name shall we begin?”
The chief came spindle-legged down from the rocks, chewing at a bit of goat-intestine. “We’ve got to begin with the chief,” said Raymond.
“That’s like belling the cat.”
“Salt,” said Raymond. “He’d skin his grandmother for salt.”
Raymond approached the chief, who seemed surprised to find him still in the village. Mary watched from the background.
Raymond argued; the chief looked first shocked, then sullen. Raymond expounded, expostulated. He made his telling point: salt—as much as the chief could carry back up the hill. The chief stared down at Raymond from his seven feet, threw up his hands, walked away, sat down on a rock, chewed at the length of gut.
Raymond rejoined Mary. “He’s coming.”
* * * *
Director Birch used his heartiest manner toward the chief. “We’re honored! It’s not often we have visitors so distinguished. We’ll have you right in no time!”
The chief had been scratching aimless curves in the ground with his staff. He asked Raymond mildly, “When do I get the salt?”
“Pretty soon now. First you’ve got to go with Director Birch.”
“Come along,” said Director Birch. “We’ll have a nice ride.”
The chief turned and strode off toward the Grand Montagne. “No, no!” cried Raymond. “Come back here!” The chief lengthened his stride.
Raymond ran forward, tackled the knobby knees. The chief fell like a loose sack of garden tools. Director Birch administered a shot of sedative, and presently the shambling, dull-eyed chief was secure inside the ambulance.
Brother Raymond and Sister Mary watched the ambulance trundle down the road. Thick dust roiled up, hung in the green sunlight. The shadows seemed tinged with bluish-purple.
Mary said in a trembling voice, “I do so hope we’re doing the right thing. . . . The poor chief looked so— pathetic. Like one of his own goats trussed up for slaughter.”
Raymond said, “We can only do what we think best, dear.”
“But is it the best?”
The ambulance had disappeared; the dust had settled. Over the Grand Montagne lightning flickered from a black-and-green thunderhead. Faro shone like a cat’s-eye at the zenith. The Clock—the staunch Clock, the good, sane Clock—said twelve noon.
“The best,” said Mary thoughtfully. “A relative word...”
Raymond said, “If we clear up the Flit psychoses—if we can teach them clean, orderly lives—surely it’s for the best.” And he added after a moment, “Certainly it’s best for the Colony.”
Mary sighed— “I suppose so. But the chief looked so stricken.”
“We’ll go see him tomorrow,” said Raymond. “Right now, sleep!”
When Raymond and Mary awoke, a pink glow seeped through the drawn shades: Robundus, possibly with Maude. “Look at the clock,” yawned Mary. “Is it day or night?”
Raymond raised up on his elbow. Their clock was built into the wall, a replica of the Clock on Salvation Bluff, and guided by radio pulses from the central movement. “It’s six in the afternoon—ten after.”
They rose and dressed in their neat puttees and white shirts. They ate in the meticulous kitchenette, then Raymond telephoned the Rest Home.
Director Birch’s voice came crisp from the sound box. “God help you, Brother Raymond.”
“God help you, Director. How’s the chief?”
Director Birch hesitated. “We’ve had to keep him under sedation. He’s got pretty deep-seated troubles.”
“Can you help him? It’s important.”
“All we can do is try. We’ll have a go at him tonight.”
“Perhaps we’d better be there,” said Mary.
“If you like. . . . Eight o’clock?”
“Good.”
The Rest Home was a long, low building on the outskirts of Glory City. New wings had recently been added; a set of temporary barracks could also be seen to the rear.
Director Birch greeted them with a harassed expression.
“We’re so pressed for room and time; is this Flit so terribly important?”
Raymond gave him assurance that, the chiefs sanity was a matter of grave concern for everyone.
Director Birch threw up his hands. “Colonists are clamoring for therapy. They’ll have to wait, I suppose.”
Mary asked soberly, “There’s still—the trouble?”
“The Home was built with five hundred beds,” said Director Birch. “We’ve got thirty-six hundred patients now; not to mention the eighteen hundred colonists we’ve evacuated back to Earth.”
“Surely things are getting better?” asked Raymond. The Colony’s over the hump; there’s no need for anxiety.”
“Anxiety doesn’t seem to be the trouble.”
“What is the trouble?”
“New environment, I suppose. We’re Earth-type people; the surroundings are strange.”
“But they’re not really!” argued Mary. “We’ve made this place the exact replica of an Earth community. One of the nicer sort. There are Earth houses and Earth flowers and Earth trees.”
“Where is the chief?” asked Brother Raymond.
“Well—right now, in the maximum-security ward.”
“Is he violent?”
“Not unfriendly. He just wants to get out. Destructive! I’ve never seen anything like it!”
“Have you any ideas—even preliminary?”
Director Birch shook his head grimly. “We’re still trying to classify him. Look.” He handed Raymond a report. “That’s his zone survey.”
“Intelligence zero.” Raymond looked up. “I know he’s not that stupid.”
“You’d hardly think so. It’s a vague referent, actually. We can’t use the usual tests on him—thematic perception and the like; they’re weighted for our own cultural background. But these tests here—” he tapped the report
“——they’re basic; we use them on animals—fitting pegs into holes; matching up colors; detecting discordant patterns; threading mazes.”
“And the chief?”
Director Birch sadly shook his head. “If it were possible to have a negative score, he’d have it.”
“How so?”
“Well, for instance, instead of matching a small round peg into a small round hole, first he broke the star-shaped peg and forced it in sideways, and then he broke the board.”
“But why?”
Mary said, “Let’s go see him.”
“He’s safe, isn’t he?” Raymond asked Birch.
“Oh, entirely.”
The chief was confined in a pleasant room exactly ten feet on a side. He had a white bed, white sheets, gray coverlet. The ceiling was restful green, the floor was quiet gray.
“My!” said Mary brightly, “you’ve been busy!”
“Yes,” said Director Birch between clenched teeth. “He’s been busy.”
The bedclothes were shredded, the bed lay on its side in the middle of the room, the walls were befouled. The chief sat on the doubled mattress.
Director Birch said sternly, “Why do you make this mess? It’s really not clever, you know!”
“You keep me here,” spat the chief. “I fix the way I like it. In your house you fix the way you like.” He looked at Raymond and Mary. “How much longer?”
“In just a little while,” said Mary. “We’re trying to help you.”
“Crazy talk, everybody crazy.” The chief was losing his good accent; his words rasped with fricatives and glottals. “Why you bring me here?”
“It’ll be just for a day or two,” said Mary soothingly, “then you get salt—lots of it.”
“Day—that’s while the sun is up.”
“No,” said Brother Raymond. “See this thing?” He pointed to the clock in the wall. “When this hand goes around twice—that’s a day.”
The chief smiled cynically.
“We guide our lives by this,” said Raymond. “It helps us.”
“Just like the big Clock on Salvation Bluff,” said Mary.
“Big devil,” the chief said earnestly. “You good people; you all crazy. Come to Fleetville. I help you; lots of good goat. We throw rocks down at Big Devil.”
“No,” said Mary quietly, “that would never do. Now you try your best to do what the doctor says. This mess for instance—it’s very bad.”
The chief took his head in his hands. “You let me go. You keep salt; I go home.”
“Come,” said Director Birch kindly. “We won’t hurt you.” He looked at the clock. “It’s time for your first therapy.”
Two orderlies were required to conduct the chief to the laboratory. He was placed in a padded chair, and his arms. and legs were constricted so that he might not harm himself. He set up a terrible, hoarse cry. “The Devil, the Big Devil—it comes down to look at my life. ...”
Director Birch said to the orderly, “Cover over the wall clock; it disturbs the patient.”
“Just lie still,” said Mary. “We’re trying to help you —you and your whole tribe.”
The orderly administered a shot of D-beta hypnidine. The chief relaxed, his eyes open, vacant, his skinny chest heaving.
Director Birch said in a low tone to Mary and Raymond, “He’s now entirely suggestible—so be very quiet; don’t make a sound.”
Mary and Raymond eased themselves into chairs at the side of the room.
“Hello, Chief,” said Director Birch.
“Hello.”
“Are you comfortable?”
“Too much shine—too much white.”
The orderly dimmed the lights.
“Better?”
“That’s better.”
“Do you have any troubles?”
“Goats hurt their feet, stay up in the hills. Crazy people down the valley; they won’t go away.”
“How do you mean ‘crazy?’ “
The chief was silent. Director Birch said in a whisper to Mary and Raymond, “By analyzing his concept of sanity we get a clue to his own derangement.”
The chief lay quiet. Director Birch said in his soothing voice, “Suppose you tell us about your own life.”
The chief spoke readily. “Ah, that’s good. I’m chief. I understand all talks; nobody else knows about things.”
“A good life, eh?”
“Sure, everything good.” He spoke on, in disjointed phrases, in words sometimes unintelligible, but the picture of his life came clear. “Everything go easy—no bother, no trouble—everything good. When it rain, fire feels good. When suns shine hot, then wind blow, feels good. Lots of goats, everybody eat.”
“Don’t you have troubles, worries?”
“Sure. Crazy people live in valley. They make town: New Town. No good. Straight—straight—straight. No good. Crazy. That’s bad. We get lots of salt, but we leave New Town, run up hill to old place.”
“You don’t like the people in the valley?”
“They good people, they all crazy. Big Devil bring them to valley. Big Devil watch all time. Pretty soon all go tick-tick-tick—like Big Devil.”
Director Birch turned to Raymond and Mary, his face in a puzzled frown. “This isn’t going so good. He’s too assured, too forthright.”
Raymond said guardedly, “Can you cure him?”
“Before I can cure a psychosis,” said Director Birch, “I have to locate it. So far I don’t seem to be even warm.”
“It’s not sane to die off like flies,” whispered Mary. “And that’s what the Flits are doing.”
The Director returned to the chief. “Why do your people die, Chief? Why do they die in New Town?”
The chief said in a hoarse voice, “They look down. No pretty scenery. Crazy cut-up. No river. Straight water. It hurts the eyes; we open canal, make good river. . . . Huts all same. Go crazy looking at all same. People go crazy; we kill ‘em.”
Director Birch said, “I think that’s all we’d better do just now till we study the case a little more closely.”
“Yes,” said Brother Raymond in a troubled voice. “We’ve got to think this over.”
They left the Rest Home through the main reception hall. The benches bulged with applicants for admission and their relatives, with custodian officers and persons in their care. Outside the sky was wadded with overcast. Sallow light indicated Urban somewhere in the sky. Rain spattered in the dust, big, syrupy drops.
Brother Raymond and Sister Mary waited for the bus at the curve of the traffic circle.
“There’s something wrong,” said Brother Raymond in a bleak voice. “Something very very wrong.”
“And I’m not so sure it isn’t in us.” Sister Mary looked around the landscape, across the young orchards, up Sarah Gulvin Avenue into the center of Glory City.
“A strange planet is always a battle,” said Brother Raymond. “We’ve got to bear faith, trust in God—and fight!”
Mary clutched his arm. He turned. “What’s the trouble?”
“I saw—or I thought I saw—someone running through the bushes.”
Raymond craned his neck. “I don’t see anybody.”
“I thought it looked like the chief.”
“Your imagination, dear.”
They boarded the bus, and presently were secure in their white-walled, flower-gardened home.
The communicator sounded. It was Director Birch. His voice was troubled. “I don’t want to worry you, but the chief got loose. He’s off the premises—where we don’t know.”
Mary said under her breath, “I knew, I knew!”
Raymond said soberly, “You don’t think there’s any danger?”
“No. His pattern isn’t violent. But I’d lock my door anyway.”
“Thanks for calling, Director.”
“Not at all, Brother Raymond.”
There was a moment’s silence. “What now?” asked Mary.
“I’ll lock the doors, and then we’ll get a good night’s sleep.”
Sometime in the night Mary woke up with a start. Brother Raymond rolled over on his side. “What’s the trouble?”
“I don’t know,” said Mary. “What time is it?”
Raymond consulted the wall clock. “Five minutes to one.”
Sister Mary lay still.
“Did you hear something?” Raymond asked.
“No. I just had a—twinge. Something’s wrong, Raymond!”
He pulled her close, cradled her fair head in the hollow of his neck. “All we can do is our best, dear, and pray that it’s God’s will.”
They fell into a fitful doze, tossing and turning. Raymond got up to go to the bathroom. Outside was night— a dark sky except for a rosy glow at the north horizon. Red Robundus wandered somewhere below.
Raymond shuffled sleepily back to bed.
“What’s the time, dear?” came Mary’s voice.
Raymond peered at the clock. “Five minutes to one.”
He got into bed. Mary’s body was rigid. “Did you say —five minutes to one?”
“Why yes,” said Raymond. A few seconds later he climbed out of bed, went into the kitchen. “It says five minutes to one in here too. I’ll call the Clock and have them send out a pulse.”
He went to the communicator, pressed buttons. No response.
“They don’t answer.”
Mary was at his elbow. “Try again.”
Raymond pressed out the number. “That’s strange.”
“Call Information,” said Mary.
Raymond pressed for Information. Before he could frame a question, a crisp voice said, “The Great Clock is momentarily out of order. Please have patience. The Great Clock is out of order.”
Raymond thought he recognized the voice. He punched the visual button. The voice said, “God keep you, Brother Raymond.”
“God keep you, Brother Ramsdell . . . What in the world has gone wrong?”
“It’s one of your protégés, Raymond. One of the Flits— raving mad. He rolled boulders down on the Clock.”
“Did he—did he—”
“He started a landslide. We don’t have any more Clock.”
* * * *
Inspector Coble found no one to meet him at the Glory City space-port. He peered up and down the tarmac; he was alone. A scrap of paper blew across the far end of the field; nothing else moved.
Odd, thought Inspector Coble. A committee had always been on hand to welcome him, with a program that was flattering but rather wearing. First to the Arch-Deacon’s bungalow for a banquet, cheerful speeches and progress reports, then services in the central chapel, and finally a punctilious escort to the foot of the Grand Montagne.
Excellent people, by Inspector Coble’s lights, but too painfully honest and fanatical to be interesting.
He left instructions with the two men who crewed the official ship, and set off on foot toward Glory City. Red Robundus was high, but sinking toward the east; he looked toward Salvation Bluff to check local time. A clump of smoky lace-veils blocked his view.
Inspector Coble, striding briskly along the road, suddenly jerked to a halt. He raised his head as if testing the air, looked about him in a complete circle. He frowned, moved slowly on.
The colonists had been making changes, he thought. Exactly what and how, he could not instantly determine: The fence there—a section had been torn out. Weeds were prospering in the ditch beside the road. Examining the ditch, he sensed movement in the harp-grass behind, the sound of young voices. Curiosity aroused, Coble jumped the ditch, parted the harp-grass.
A boy and girl of sixteen or so were wading in a shallow pond; the girl held three limp water-flowers, the boy was kissing her. They turned up startled faces; Inspector Coble withdrew.
Back on the road he looked up and down. Where in thunder was everybody? The fields—empty. Nobody working. Inspector Coble shrugged, continued.
He passed the Rest Home, and looked at it curiously It seemed considerably larger than he remembered it: a pair of wings, some temporary barracks had been added. He noticed that the gravel of the driveway was hardly as neat as it might be. The ambulance drawn up to the side was dusty. The place looked vaguely run down. The inspector for the second time stopped dead in his tracks. Music? From the Rest Home?
He turned down the driveway, approached. The music grew louder. Inspector Coble slowly pushed through the front door. In the reception hall were eight or ten people— they wore bizarre costumes: feathers, fronds of dyed grass, fantastic necklaces of glass and metal. The music sounded loud from the auditorium, a kind of wild jig.
“Inspector!” cried a pretty woman with fair hair. “Inspector Coble! You’ve arrived!”
Inspector Coble peered into her face. She wore a kind of patchwork jacket sewn with small iron bells. “It’s— it’s Sister Mary Dunton, isn’t it?”
“Of course! You’ve arrived at a wonderful time! We’re having a carnival ball—costumes and everything!”
Brother Raymond clapped the inspector heartily on the back. “Glad to see you, old man! Have some cider—it’s the early press.”
Inspector Coble backed away. “No, no thanks.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll be off on my rounds . . . and perhaps drop in on you later.”
Inspector Coble proceeded to the Grand Montagne. He noted that a number of the bungalows had been painted bright shades of green, blue, yellow; that fences in many cases had been pulled down, that gardens looked rather rank and wild.
He climbed the road to Old Fleetville, where he interviewed the chief. The Flits apparently were not being exploited, suborned, cheated, sickened, enslaved, forcibly proselyted or systematically irritated. The chief seemed in a good humor.
“I kill the Big Devil,” he told Inspector Coble. “Things go better now.”
Inspector Coble planned to slip quietly to the spaceport and depart, but Brother Raymond Dunton hailed him as he passed their bungalow.
“Had your breakfast, Inspector?”
“Dinner, darling!” came Sister Mary’s voice from within. “Urban just went down.”
“But Maude just came up.”
“Bacon and eggs anyway, Inspector!”
The inspector was tired; he smelled hot coffee. “Thanks,” he said, “don’t mind if I do.”
After the bacon and eggs, over the second cup of coffee, the inspector said cautiously, “You’re looking well, you two.”
Sister Mary looked especially pretty with her fair hair loose.
“Never felt better,” said Brother Raymond. “It’s a matter of rhythm, Inspector.”
The inspector blinked. “Rhythm, eh?”
“More precisely,” said Sister Mary, “a lack of rhythm.”
“It all started,” said Brother Raymond, “when we lost our Clock.”
Inspector Coble gradually pieced out the story. Three weeks later, back at Surge City he put it in his own words to Inspector Keefer.
“They’d been wasting half their energies holding onto— well, call it a false reality. They were all afraid of the new planet. They pretended it was Earth—tried to whip it, beat it, and just plain hypnotize it into being Earth. Naturally they were licked before they started. Glory is about as completely random a world as you could find. The poor devils were trying to impose Earth rhythm and Earth routine upon this magnificent disorder; this monumental chaos!”
“No wonder they all went nuts.”
Inspector Coble nodded. “At first, after the Clock went out, they thought they were goners. Committed their souls to God and just about gave up. A couple of days passed, I guess—and to their surprise they found they were still alive. In fact, even enjoying life. Sleeping when it got dark, working when the sun shone.”
“Sounds like a good place to retire,” said Inspector Keefer. “How’s fishing out there on Glory?”
“Not so good. But the goat-herding is great!”