American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 Page 6

  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.

  IV

  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 complex
ion 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.

  The Martian language gave me my greatest worry. Like most actors, I had picked up enough Martian, Venerian, Outer Jovian, etc., to be able to fake in front of a camera or on stage. But those rolled or fluttered consonants are very difficult. Human vocal cords are not as versatile as a Martian’s tympanus, I believe, and, in any case, the semi-phonetic spelling out of those sounds in Roman letters, for example “kkk” or “jjj” or “rrr,” has no more to do with the true sounds than the g in “gnu” has to do with the inhaled click with which a Bantu pronounces “gnu.” “Jjj,” for instance, closely resembles a Bronx cheer.

  Fortunately Bonforte had no great talent for other languages —and I am a professional; my ears really hear, I can imitate any sound, from a buzz saw striking a nail in a chunk of firewood to a setting hen disturbed on her nest. It was necessary only to acquire Martian as poorly as Bonforte spoke it. He had worked hard to overcome his lack of talent, and every word and phrase of Martian that he knew had been sight-sound recorded so that he could study his mistakes.

  So I studied his mistakes, with the projector moved into his office and Penny at my elbow to sort out the spools for me and answer questions.

  Human languages fall into four groups: inflecting ones as in Anglo-American, positional as in Chinese, agglutinative as in Old Turkish, polysynthetic (sentence units) as in Eskimo—to which, of course, we now add alien structures as wildly odd and as nearly impossible for the human brain as non-repetitive or emergent Venerian. Luckily Martian is analogous to human speech forms. Basic Martian, the trade language, is positional and involves only simple concrete ideas—like the greeting: “I see you.” High Martian is polysynthetic and very stylized, with an expression for every nuance of their complex system of rewards and punishments, obligations and debts. It had been almost too much for Bonforte; Penny told me that he could read those arrays of dots they use for writing quite easily but of the spoken form of High Martian he could say only a few hundred sentences.

  Brother, how I studied those few he had mastered!

  The strain on Penny was even greater than it was on me. Both she and Dak spoke some Martian but the chore of coaching me fell on her as Dak had to spend most of his time in the control room; Jock’s death had left him shorthanded. We dropped from two gravities to one for the last few million miles of the approach, during which time he never came below at all. I spent it learning the ritual I would have to know for the adoption ceremony, with Penny’s help.

  I had just completed running through the speech in which I was to accept membership in the Kkkah nest—a speech not unlike that, in spirit, with which an orthodox Jewish boy assumes the responsibilities of manhood, but as fixed, as invariable, as Hamlet’s soliloquy. I had read it, complete with Bonforte’s mispronunciations and facial tic; I finished and asked, “How was that?”

  “That was quite good,” she answered seriously.

  “Thanks, Curly Top.” It was a phrase I had lifted from the language-practice spools in Bonforte’s files; it was what Bonforte called her when he was feeling mellow—and it was perfectly in character.

  “Don’t you dare call me that!”

  I looked at her in honest amazement and answered, still in character, “Why, Penny my child!”

  “Don’t you call me that, either! You fake! You phony! You— actor! ” She jumped up, ran as far as she could—which was only to the door—and stood there, faced away from me, her face buried in her hands and her shoulders shaking with sobs.

  I made a tremendous effort and lifted myself out of the character—pulled in my belly, let my own face come up, answered in my own voice. “Miss Russell!”

  She stopped crying, whirled around, looked at me, and her jaw dropped. I added, still in my normal self, “Come back here and sit down.”

  I thought she was going to refuse, then she seemed to think better of it, came slowly back and sat down, her hands in her lap but with her face that of a little girl who is “saving up more spit.”

  I let her sit for a moment, then said quietly, “Yes, Miss Russell, I am an actor. Is that a reason for you to insult me?”

  She simply looked stubborn.

  “As an actor, I am here to do an actor’s job. You know why. You know, too, that I was tricked into taking it—it is not a job I would have accepted with my eyes open, even in my wildest moments. I hate having to do it considerably more than you hate having me do it—for despite Captain Broadbent’s cheerful assurances I am not at all sure that I will come out of it with my skin intact—and I’m awfully fond of my skin; it’s the only one I have. I believe, too, that I know why you find it hard to accept me. But is that any reason for you to make my job harder than it has to be?”

  She mumbled. I said sharply, “Speak up!”

  “It’s dishonest! It’s indecent! ”

  I sighed. “It certainly is. More than that, it is impossible— without the wholehearted support of the other members of the cast. So let’s call Captain Broadbent down here and tell him. Let’s call it off.”

  She jerked her face up and said, “Oh no! We can’t do that.”

  “Why can’t we? A far better thing to drop it now than to present it and have it flop. I can’t give a performance under these conditions. Let’s admit it.”

  “But—but—we’ve got to! It’s necessary.”

  “Why is it necessary, Miss Russell? Political reasons? I have not the slightest interest in politics—and I doubt if you have any really deep interest. So why must we do it?”

  “Because—because he——” She stopped, unable to go on, strangled by sobs.

  I got up, went over, and put a hand on her shoulder. “I know. Because if we don’t, something that he has spent years building up will fall to pieces. Because he can’t do it himself and his friends are trying to cover up and do it for him. Because his friends are loyal to him. Because you are loyal to him. Nevertheless, it hurts you to see someone else in the place that is rightfully his. Besides that, you are half out of your mind with grief and worry about him. Aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” I could barely hear it.

  I took hold of her chin and tilted her face up. “I know why you find it so hard to have me here, in his place. You love him. But I’m doing the best job for him I know how. Confound it, woman! Do you have to make my job six times harder by treating me like dirt? ”

  She looked shocked. For a moment I thought she was going to slap me. Then she said brokenly, “I am sorry. I am very sorry. I won’t let it happen again.”

  I let go her chin and said briskly, “Then let’s get back to work.”

  She did not move. “Can you forgive me?”

  “Huh? There’s nothing to forgive, Penny. You were acting up because you love him and you were worried. Now let’s get to work. I’ve got to be letter-perfect—and it’s only hours away.” I dropped at once back into the role.

  She picked up a spool and started the projector again. I watched him through it once, then did the acceptance speech with the sound cut out but stereo on, matching my voice—his voice, I mean—to the moving image. She watched me, looking from the image back to my face with a dazed look on her own. We finished and I switched it off myself. “How was that?”

  “That
was perfect!”

  I smiled his smile. “Thanks, Curly Top.”

  “Not at all—‘Mr. Bonforte.’”

  Two hours later we made rendezvous with the Go For Broke.

  Dak brought Roger Clifton and Bill Corpsman to my cabin as soon as the Go For Broke had transferred them. I knew them from pictures. I stood up and said, “Hello, Rog. Glad to see you, Bill.” My voice was warm but casual; on the level at which these people operated a hasty trip to Earth and back was simply a few days’ separation and nothing more. I limped over and offered my hand. The ship was at the moment under low boost as it adjusted to a much tighter orbit than the Go For Broke had been riding in.

  Clifton threw me a quick glance, then played up. He took his cigar out of his mouth, shook hands, and said quietly, “Glad to see you back, Chief.” He was a small man, bald-headed and middle-aged, and looked like a lawyer and a good poker player.

  “Anything special while I was away?”

  “No. Just routine. I gave Penny the file.”

  “Good.” I turned to Bill Corpsman, again offered my hand. He did not take it. Instead he put his fists on his hips, looked up at me, and whistled. “Amazing! I really do believe we stand a chance of getting away with it.” He looked me up and down, then said, “Turn around, Smythe. Move around. I want to see you walk.”

  I found that I was actually feeling the annoyance that Bonforte would have felt at such uncalled-for impertinence, and, of course, it showed in my face. Dak touched Corpsman’s sleeve and said quickly, “Knock it off, Bill. You remember what we agreed?”

  “Chicken tracks!” Corpsman answered. “This room is soundproofed. I just want to make sure he is up to it. Smythe, how’s your Martian? Can you spiel it?”

  I answered with a single squeaking polysyllabic in High Martian, a sentence meaning roughly, “Proper conduct demands that one of us leave!”—but it means far more than that, as it is a challenge which usually ends in someone’s nest being notified of a demise.