The Frederick Pohl Omnibus (1966) SSC, Page 5

  I said: 'Forget it. We're through with him. As soon as your divorce is final, we'll get married. That's that.' I glanced at my watch, under the transparent gauntlet of the thermosuit. 'Only another hour,' I told her.

  'Oh, Oliver!'

  That was more like it. Her expression was like a candy bride's beaming from the top of a white frosted wedding cake. Only another hour, and then the statutory waiting period would be over. It was hard to believe that already eleven hours had passed since we confronted Quayle with our love.

  Almost gaily we moved among the rejoicing throng. It was a festival; the Grendoonians were laughing, singing, like happy children. It was like Iowa when I was a boy. There, when the creeks froze over, the whole town would come down to the lake--the grownups to watch, the teenagers to skate, the old ones and the babies to walk stiff-legged across the ice, everyone enjoying what the weather had done. Here it turned fog into water -water enough to fill the Wallow and make a pond of it for a few months of each year. There it had been water into ice, but the principle was the same; it was a carnival time.

  Nobody came sniffling up to us. Abjectly he asked: 'Mister, please.

  I'm hungry! Couldn't you help me out?' Diane shivered and clutched my arm. For an instant I was tempted to speak, but the instant passed. And then there was a confused clamour, and the nobody suddenly turned. 'An Earthie!' he gasped, and darted away from us.

  Diane stood on tiptoe, peering. 'It is,' she said. 'Look, Oliver!'

  And there he was, an Earthman, tall and darkfaced with the UV tan of a sunny planet but his face was crimson with anger now. He was backed against the margin of the Wallow surrounded by a dozen nobodies, imploring, clamouring, begging unashamed for food, for help--for everything. His gold brassard shone clearly, with the word Visitor glittering an invitation in diamond ink to every shunned nobody in Grendoon, for only an Earthie would fall so low as to talk to them. Short of grubbing for roots in the jungle and taking their chances with swamp, disease and the giant sapoaurs, the only way a nobody could live was by finding a Terrestrial to help them.

  But this Terrestrial was making hard work of it. He was offering them money, which was foolish--what good was money to them? And he was striking at them irritably, which was even worse. It was bringing him down to the level of the nobodies, almost.

  'I'll have to help him,' I told Diane.

  She nodded.

  I walked sternly over to him. The nobodies scattered like mist before me.

  They fled, whimpering, as I began to talk to him.

  He said angrily: 'Thanks. What kind of a place is this?'

  'I'm sorry you were bothered. Don't pay any attention to them. They'll go away.'

  'But why?'

  'It's the way we do things here,' I explained.

  'Humph.' He looked at me irritably. In a high, shrill voice, his face pouting like a fish out of water, he complained: 'I don't think much of Venus.

  What a gyp! I spent twenty-five hundred bucks on this trip. I might as well have gone to the Moon.'

  'You're a tourist?'

  'That's what they said when they sold me the ticket,' he said disagreeably.

  'I'm sorry.'

  'It isn't your fault,' he admitted. Then he tried to be a little more friendly. 'Look,' he said confidentially, 'is this all there is to it? I mean, the Coming of the Water, and the spirit of Mardi Gras that runs through the town and all, like they said in the travel agency?'

  'This is all.'

  'Man!' He shook his head ruefully. 'But isn't there, well, some place where I can find a little more excitement? I came millions of miles. I've been saving up for this vacation for years.'

  'Not the kind of excitement you want, mister,' I told him, and turned to look for Diane.

  But she wasn't there.

  'Diane!' I shouted, and heard my voice drowned out in the multitudinous cries of the crowd around the Wallow. 'Diane, where are you?'

  No answer.

  'Something wrong, buddy?' asked the Earthie. But I didn't have any answer for him. There was something wrong--plenty was wrong, but there wasn't anything he could do about it She was gone. Search as I did, I couldn't find her. Quayle. It had to be Quayle. Somehow, in the minutes when I left her out of my sight, he had begun his revenge.

  • • • •

  3

  Frantic, I hurried back to the hotel. Where else was there to go?

  The room clerk looked at me funny. I don't know how else to say it. It was the kind of look I got from everybody when I first came to Venus, but I hadn't seen it since I got conditioned to live here and took off the brassard.

  I went up in the elevator, and the room clerk's look went out of my mind like a nobody vanishing into the fog. There wasn't room for it. The only thing I had space for in my mind was Diane, Diane gone. I hurried down the corridor and unlocked the door, my fingers shaking. 'Diane!' I cried.

  But there was no answer.

  She wasn't there. The room was empty--our room. We had checked into it that morning, then gone out to file for her divorce, eaten, wasted a little time, then decided to visit the Wallow since we were in a holiday mood.

  But that mood was gone. It had been the slimmest of hopes, that she might have come back to the hotel, but now even that hope was gone...

  And then I took a longer look at the room. It was incredible, as if someone had struck me.

  The cigarette butts were still in the ashtrays.

  A soggy towel hung sloppily across a rack.

  Across the back of a chair Diane's afternoon thermosuit lay slackly, its empty arms reaching out to the wastebasket.

  The room had not been cleaned.

  I turned slowly and looked at the back of the door, but I knew before I looked what I would see.

  There was a pink slip taped on the door--pink, the colour of the complaint forms of the Maids, Butlers and Domestics. I read it with cold attention, though I knew what it would say.

  Grievance Report

  Re: Room 1635, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Sawyer.

  From: Joyce Trulove, 16th Floor Chambermaid.

  As of this date, above persons spoke rudely to the undersigned on the phone, demanding service. Said: 'This room is a disgusting mess.' Also: 'Get the hell up here and clean it up.'

  The undersigned intends to prefer charges before the Grievance Committee, pending which time undersigned refuses to deal with persons again.

  Signed:

  J. Trulove, MB&D 886

  I opened the door and went back down to the lobby, fast.

  The desk clerk was all smiles, with a sneer folded into every one of them. 'Yes, Mr. Sawyer. The room? Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Sawyer. That Grievance Report--some sort of mistake, I'm sure. But the chambermaid...'

  I said tightly: 'What about the chambermaid?'

  'Oh, you know, Mr. Sawyer. They don't like to be ordered around. You can't blame them.'

  I got a grip on myself: 'Look. We didn't even speak to the chambermaid. Don't you understand? We were getting married. We came in, dropped the suitcases; grabbed something to eat down here in the dining hall, and that's it Outside of that we weren't even in the hotel.'

  'Oh. The dining hall, yes.'

  I stopped short. 'What about the dining hall?*

  He shrugged faintly. 'You know, Mr. Sawyer. I'm sorry to have to tell you, but there's been a complaint in the dining room too.'

  'It isn't possible!'

  The clerk whispered thoughtfully: 'Mr. Sawyer, are you telling me that I lie?'

  I said fast: 'It's just a mistake, I mean. I remember everything that happened in the dining room. The waitress was perfectly wonderful. Why, we talked to her! And I left her a big tip! And-'

  'Excuse me, Mr. Sawyer. I'm rather busy.'

  I took the warning.

  There seemed to be only one thing to do.

  I walked across the lobby of the hotel. It was like walking through a mushy daiquiri--ice floated on all sides of me. The atmosphere was congealed. The bellboys looked but
saw me not; the elevator men glanced through me at the room clerk, but never realized I was alive. At the entrance to the dining room, the hostess sucked a tooth and stared at the wall and hummed quietly to herself.

  I walked right past her. She didn't blink.

  I found a table and sat down.

  In about fifteen minutes a waitress came up to my table. 'Miss,' I said eagerly, 'I--'

  But she checked the setting with a practised eye and walked away again.

  I stared at her. More minutes passed.

  I cleared my throat. 'Miss,' I said again to the waitress as she came to the table next to mine to take an order. 'Miss!'

  But she didn't respond and, after one quick, curious glance, neither did the customers at the table.

  It was the deep-freeze, all right; they were cutting me dead.

  I turned back to the table, and just caught a glimpse of the back of another waitress. For a moment I had the crazy notion that she had been about to serve me. But that notion was wrong. She had been to my table, all right; the proof was on the table before me, a sheet of bright green paper.

  I read it.

  It was bad.

  The pink slip from the chambermaid had been bad enough. It meant that no member of the local would ever clean a room for me in a hotel while the Grievance Report was outstanding. But all that meant was that I couldn't live in a hotel, and there were, after all, other places to live if I worked at finding them. It wasn't fatal.

  But the green one was more serious. It was on the stationery of the Cooks, Waiters and Restaurant Workers:

  Complaint

  Re: Oliver Sawyer

  Offense: Deliberate undertipping

  Miss Gina Sortini of this restaurant served the above mentioned Customer luncheon. Customer seemed well satisfied with the service and made no complaint. Nor, according to affidavit of headwaiter, hostess and cashier, had Customer any just cause for complaint.

  After Customer left, Waitress found two pennies under plate. It was not absentmindedness. Waitress distinctly remembers seeing Customer put money under plate, whereupon Customer's Guest, a young woman, commented upon said gratuity and both Customer and Guest laughed and made several joking remarks.

  Matter referred to Grievance Adjuster this date.

  And that meant that eat I could or starve I might, but I would do neither of them in any public restaurant in Grendoon.

  I remembered Diane's comment and how we had laughed--it was true! But it had been because the tip was large; I was extravagant, she said.

  There was no mistake here. It was deliberate. There was no longer any possible doubt.

  I got up and walked slowly away from the table. I was the Invisible Man. I went out into the lobby, hesitated, crossed it to the door. I was still wearing my thermosuit; I hadn't stayed in my room long enough to take it off. I walked hopelessly out of the door and into the hot grey night.

  There was a pile of luggage on the broad steps outside the double-paned door. I tripped over it, hesitated, then looked more closely.

  It was mine.

  • • • •

  4

  I rented an armoured car and raced out to the spaceport. Thank heaven it was only the hotels and restaurants so far!

  But it would be more--Quayle would never stop--I would have to face it some day and find an answer or live through the total extinction of my personality that came with being shunned like any other nobody. But I wouldn't face it now, no, not until I had found Diane.

  It was only desperation that drove me to the spaceport. Cryptic roarings from the side of the taped road told us that the giant machines were at work in the Ag fields. I turned at an intersection and eased cautiously into the right-hand transverse road, the sonic feeler sending out beeps into the fog to search for oncoming cars. Abruptly there was a sodden flare of white, and the giant blast of an industrial explosive behind it.

  It was like that everywhere, outside of Grendoon and the other little cities. You don't remake a planet without using power.

  And, of course, power can be dangerous ... wherefore the conditioning.

  I drove into the spaceport through a flaming fence of natural gas jets.

  A rocket was coming in. The buildings loomed queerly tall in the faint residual mist--it was strange to see the top of a two-storey building. But though I could see much, I could not see Diane.

  Nobody came weeping up to me in the walk outside the parking lot, I took a closer look, and it was Vince Borton.

  I knew him--had known him--when he was alive, but the time was coming when I would no longer be able to make that distinction. He was typical of the kind that hangs around the docks, begging handouts from the tourist. He was a farmer before. In fact, he farmed with me. In fact, he came in from Earth on the rocket with me. And went to work for Quayle with me; and it was because he had been caught stealing money from Quayle's pension fund that he was shunned. He sobbed: 'Mister, please! If I don't get something to eat, I'll--'

  'I can't help you, Vince,' I said.

  I left him staring after me, a shabby nobody with a flatfooted stance and an expression of horror and surprise.

  People didn't talk to nobodies.

  But when somebody did, they didn't refuse help.

  And the only explanation of behaviour like mine was the true one--I was in process of becoming a nobody myself.

  A high, confidential voice behind me said: 'What's the matter, buddy?

  You don't look as happy as you did last time I saw you.'

  I turned. I saw a bright gold brassard, with the word Visitor picked out in diamond ink.

  It was the Earthie I had seen down by the Wallow.

  'Hello,' I said shortly.

  • • • •

  An enormous roaring seeped out of the overhead mist. Jets bellowing, the Earth rocket settled in on the landing pad, pointing a finger of flame at Venus to destroy it and then embracing it.

  And then it started again.

  There was a crowd, as there always is when a rocket's coming in. A tall, lean fellow in a thermosuit of Agricultural yellow almost bumped into me. He nodded politely and started to turn away.

  'Her shool' I sneezed, and so did the Earthie--two mighty thundering sneezes. The Aggie whirled on us. His face was mottled and raging--oh, much more so than the offence justified!

  He demanded: 'What's the matter with you?'

  I said quickly: 'I'm sorry. Very sorry. Excuse me.... Us,' I added, though the Earthie hadn't much to lose. I pulled the Earthie away after me.

  He looked at me with eyes like question marks!

  'Sneeze powder,' I told him softly.

  'What?'

  'To make me sneeze on him.'

  'What?'

  'I'm sorry I got you into it, but the brassard will keep you out of trouble.

  Now you'd better leave me alone.'

  He stared at me with doubting eyes and pouty lips. 'Look. I'm just a stranger here, but I don't get it. Why the sneeze powder?'

  'To make trouble.'

  'Trouble.' He thought, and then admitted: 'I heard about this kind of thing. You Venusians have your own systems. Not like Earth.'

  'No.'

  'No violence, eh?'

  'We can't afford it.'

  He nodded. 'I know. They explained it to me, back at the travel agency. Something about conditioning. Venus is a frontier planet and all frontiers are the same. Everybody is likely to kill everybody else. Especially because weapons are so powerful nowadays.'

  'They have to be here, because of the sapoaurs. But not just weapons.'

  'No, I know about that. Explosives. Big machines that could shred a man into confetti. So they condition you against violence, eh? No matter what happens, once you're through with the conditioning you can't kill anybody. And if somebody is really out to get somebody else--'

  'He cuts him dead.' I nodded. 'You have the picture. That's what's happening to me now. Now you better stay away from me-'

  'Dunlap.'


  'Whatever your name is. I don't want to get you into trouble.'

  I turned and left him. The world was hot and empty without Diane; I didn't want to share it with him.

  But I didn't have much of a world to share.

  Even less than I'd thought.

  • • • •

  I marched out towards the parking lot, and there was the Aggie again. He was on the taped path. The jets were off and the fog beginning to settle in again. I thought of swinging around him, but the path was narrow.

  I nodded politely. 'Sorry,' I said formally.

  He looked at me with recognition, then with annoyance.

  And then his eyes opened wide, and the expression became utter rage--contempt--hatred.

  'What-what's the matter?' I faltered.

  He turned away without a word, as icy as the waitress in the hotel, as completely as any person had ever cut a nobody.

  It didn't figure.

  Even if he was one of Quayle's men, there was no reason for this. I watched, incredulous.

  In the haze of five yards of thickening fog I saw him stop to talk to one of the field police. Then the Aggie walked on and the policeman came slowly towards me. I nodded politely.

  The policeman looked through me. He saw my face and memorized it, but he also didn't see it; not at all. He looked at my chest for a thoughtful second, then turned and moved back towards the parking lot I followed.

  He went to my car, produced an official electroseal, locked it. On the entrance door he slapped a sticker with the glowing scarlet word: Impounded.

  'Hey!' I yelled. 'What's the matter?' There was no reason for that! That was the sort of treatment reserved for the gravest offenders--thieves like Vince, accidental murderers, those who used the shunning services without reason....

  And one other category.

  I touched my chest.

  A sharp metal star point scraped my finger. Pinned to my thermosuit was a badge--no, a brassard. The brassard. In diamond ink the word Visitor flared.

  I was wearing the brassard without right. It was the worst crime in the world.