Citizen in Space Read online

  Citizen in Space

  Robert Sheckley

  Contents

  The Mountain Without a Name

  The Accountant

  Hunting Problem

  A Thief in Time

  The Luckiest Man in the World

  Hands Off

  Something for Nothing

  A Ticket to Tranai

  The Battle

  Skulking Permit

  Citizen in Space

  Ask a Foolish Question

  The Mountain Without a Name

  When Morrison left headquarters tent, Dengue the observer was asleep with his mouth open, sprawled loosely in a canvas chair. Morrison took care not to awaken him. He had enough trouble on his hands.

  He had to see a deputation of natives, the same idiots who had been drumming from the cliffs. And then he had to supervise the destruction of the mountain without a name. His assistant, Ed Lemer, was there now. But first, he had to check the most recent accident.

  It was noon when he walked through the work camp, and the men were taking their lunch break, leaning against their gigantic machines as they ate sandwiches and sipped coffee. It looked normal enough, but Morrison had been bossing planetary construction long enough to know the bad signs. No one kidded him, no one griped. They simply sat on the dusty ground in the shade of their big machines, waiting for something else to happen.

  A big Owens Landmover had been damaged this time. It sagged on its broken axle where the wrecking gang had left it. The two drivers were sitting in the cab, waiting for him.

  “How did it happen?” Morrison asked.

  “I don’t know,” the chief driver said, wiping perspiration from his eyes. “Felt the road lift out. Spun sideways, sorta.”

  Morrison grunted and kicked the Owens’ gigantic front wheel. A Landmover could drop twenty feet onto rock and come up without a scratched fender. They were the toughest machines built Five of his were out of commission now.

  “Nothing’s going right on this job,” the assistant driver said, as though that explained everything.

  “You’re getting careless,” Morrison said. “You can’t wheel that rig like you were on Earth. How fast were you going?”

  “We were doing fifteen miles an hour,” the chief driver said.

  “Sure you were,” Morrison said.

  “It’s the truth! The road sorta dropped out—”

  “Yeah,” Morrison said. “When will you guys get it through your thick skulls you aren’t driving the Indianapolis speedway. I’m docking you both a half-day’s wages.”

  He turned and walked away. They were angry at him now. Good enough, if it helped take their superstitious minds off the planet

  He was starting toward the mountain without a name when the radio operator leaned out of his shack and called, “For you, Morrie. Earth.”

  Morrison took the call. At full amplification he could just recognize the voice of Mr. Shotwell, chairman of the board of Transterran Steel. He was saying, “What’s holding things up?”

  “Accidents,” Morrison said.

  “More accidents?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Mr. Shotwell said, “But why, Morrison? It’s a soft planet on the specs. Isn’t it?”

  “Yes sir,” Morrison admitted unwillingly. “We’ve had a run of bad luck. But we’ll roll.”

  “I hope so,” Mr. Shotwell said. “I certainly hope so. You’ve been there nearly a month, and you haven’t built a single city, or port, or even a highway! Our first advertisements have appeared. Inquiries are rolling in. There are people who want to settle there, Morrison! Businesses and service industries to move in.”

  “I know that, sir.”

  “I’m sure you do. But they require a finished planet, and they need definite moving dates. If we can’t give it to them, General Construction can, or Earth-Mars, or Johnson and Heam. Planets aren’t that scarce. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Morrison’s temper had been uncertain since the accidents had started. Now it flared suddenly. He shouted, “What in hell do you want out of me? Do you think I’m stalling? You can take your lousy contract and—”

  “Now, now,” Mr. Shotwell said hurriedly. “I didn’t mean anything personally, Morrison. We believe—we know—that you’re the best man in planetary construction. But the stockholders—”

  “I’ll do the best I can,” Morrison said, and signed off.

  “Rough, rough,” the radio operator murmured. “Maybe the stockholders would like to come out here with their little shovels?”

  “Forget it,” Morrison said, and hurried off.

  Lemer was waiting for him at Control Point Able, gazing somberly at the mountain. It was taller than Everest on Earth, and the snow on its upper ranges glowed pink in the afternoon sun. It had never been named.

  “Charges all planted?” Morrison asked.

  “Another few hours.” Lerner hesitated. Aside from being Morrison’s assistant, he was an amateur conservationist, a small, careful, graying man.

  “It’s the tallest mountain on the planet,” Lemer said. “Couldn’t you save it?”

  “Not a chance. This is the key location. We need an ocean port right here.”

  Lerner nodded, and looked regretfully at the mountain. “It’s a real pity. No one’s ever climbed it.”

  Morrison turned quickly and glared at his assistant. “Look, Lerner,” he said. “I am aware that no one has ever climbed that mountain. I recognize the symbolism inherent in destroying that mountain. But you know as well as I do that it has to go. Why rub it in?”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “My job isn’t to admire scenery. I hate scenery. My job is to convert this place to the specialized needs of human beings.”

  “You’re pretty jumpy,” Lerner said.

  “Just don’t give me any more of your sly innuendoes.”

  “All right.”

  Morrison wiped his sweaty hands against his pants leg. He smiled faintly, apologetically, and said, “Let’s get back to camp and see what that damned Dengue is up to.”

  They turned and walked away. Glancing back, Lerner saw the mountain without a name outlined red against the sky.

  Even the planet was nameless. Its small native population called it Umgcha or Ongja, but that didn’t matter. It would have no official name until the advertising staff of Transterran Steel figured out something semantically pleasing to several million potential settlers from the crowded inner planets. In the meantime, it was simply referred to as Work Order 35. Several thousand men and machines were on the planet, and at Morrison’s order they would fan out, destroy mountains, build up plains, shift whole forests, redirect rivers, melt ice caps, mold continents, dig new seas, do everything to make Work Order 35 another suitable home for Homo sapiens’ unique and demanding technological civilization.

  Dozens of planets had been rearranged to the terran standard. Work Order 35 should have presented no unusual problems. It was a quiet place of gentle fields and forests, warm seas and rolling hills. But something was wrong with the tamed land. Accidents happened, past all statistical probability, and a nervous camp chain-reacted to produce more. Everyone helped. There were fights between bulldozer men and explosions men. A cook had hysterics over a tub of mashed potatoes, and the bookkeeper’s spaniel bit the accountant’s ankle. Little things led to big things.

  And the job—a simple job on an uncomplicated planet—had barely begun.

  In headquarters tent Dengue was awake, squinting judiciously at a whiskey and soda.

  “What ho?” he called. “How goes the good work?”

  “Fine,” Morrison said.

  “Glad to hear it,” Dengue said emphatically. “I like watching y
ou lads work. Efficiency. Sureness of touch. Know-how.”

  Morrison had no jurisdiction over the man or his tongue. The government construction code stipulated that observers from other companies could be present at all projects. This was designed to reinforce the courts’ “method-sharing” decision in planetary construction. But practically, the observer looked, not for improved methods, but for hidden weaknesses which his own company could exploit. And if he could kid the construction boss into a state of nerves, so much the better. Dengue was an expert at that.

  “And what comes next?” Dengue asked.

  “We’re taking down a mountain,” Lerner said.

  “Good!” Dengue cried, sitting upright. “That big one? Excellent.” He leaned back and stared dreamily at the ceiling. “That mountain was standing while Man was grubbing in the dirt for insects and scavenging what the saber-tooth left behind. Lord, it’s even older than that!” Dengue laughed happily and sipped his drink. “That mountain overlooked the sea when Man—I refer to our noble species, Homo sapiens—was a jellyfish, trying to make up its mind between land and sea.”

  “All right,” Morrison said, “that’s enough.”

  Dengue looked at him shrewdly. “But I’m proud of you, Morrison, I’m proud of all of us. We’ve come a long way since the jellyfish days. What nature took a million years to erect we can tear down in a single day. We can pull that dinky mountain apart and replace it with a concrete and steel city guaranteed to last a century!”

  “Shut up,” Morrison said, walking forward, his face glowing. Lerner put a restraining hand on his shoulder. Striking an observer was a good way to lose your ticket

  Dengue finished his drink and intoned sonorously, “Stand aside, Mother Nature! Tremble, ye deep-rooted rocks and hills, murmur with fear, ye immemorial ocean sea, down to your blackest depths where monsters unholy glide in eternal silence! For Great Morrison has come to drain the sea and make of it a placid pond, to level the hills and build upon them twelve-lane super-highways, complete with restrooms for trees, picnic tables for shrubs, diners for rocks, gas stations for caves, billboards for mountain streams, and other fanciful substitutions of the demigod Man.”

  Morrison arose abruptly and walked out, followed by Lerner. He felt that it would almost be worthwhile to beat Dengue’s face in and give up the whole crummy job. But he wouldn’t do it because that was what Dengue wanted, what he was hired to accomplish.

  And, Morrison asked himself, would he be so upset if there weren’t a germ of truth in what Dengue said?

  “Those natives are waiting,” Lerner said, catching up with him.

  “I don’t want to see them now,” Morrison said. But distantly, from a far rise of hills, he could hear their drums and whistles. Another irritation for his poor men. “All right,” he said.

  Three natives were standing at the North Gate beside the camp interpreter. They were of human-related stock, scrawny, naked stone- age savages.

  “What do they want?” Morrison asked.

  The interpreter said, “Well, Mr. Morrison, boiling it down, they’ve changed their minds. They want their planet back, and they’re willing to return all our presents.”

  Morrison sighed. He couldn’t very well explain to them that Work Order 35 wasn’t “their” planet, or anyone’s planet. Land couldn’t be possessed—merely occupied. Necessity was the judge. This planet belonged more truly to the several million Earth settlers who would utilize it, than to the few hundred thousand savages who scurried over its surface. That, at least, was the prevailing philosophy on Earth.

  “Tell them again,” Morrison said, “all about the splendid reservation we’ve set aside for them. We’re going to feed them, clothe them, educate them—”

  Dengue came up quietly. “We’re going to astonish them with kindness,” he said. “To every man, a wrist watch, a pair of shoes, and a government seed catalog. To every woman, a lipstick, a bar of soap, and a set of genuine cotton curtains. For every village, a railroad depot, a company store, and—”

  “Now you’re interfering with work,” Morrison said. “And in front of witnesses.”

  Dengue knew the rules. “Sorry, old man,” he said, and moved back.

  “They say they’ve changed their minds,” the interpreter said. “To render it idiomatically, they say we are to return to our demonland in the sky or they will destroy us with strong magic. The sacred drums are weaving the curse now, and the spirits are gathering.”

  Morrison looked at the savages with pity. Something like this happened on every planet with a native population. The same meaningless threats were always made by pre-civilized peoples with an inflated opinion of themselves and no concept at all of the power of technology. He knew primitive humans too well. Great boasters, great killers of the local variety of rabbits and mice. Occasionally fifty of them would gang up on a tired buffalo, tormenting it into exhaustion before they dared approach close enough to torture out its life with pin pricks from their dull spears. And then what a celebration they had! What heroes they thought themselves!

  “Tell them to get the hell out of here,” Morrison said. “Tell them if they come near this camp they’ll find some magic that really works.”

  The interpreter called after him, “They’re promising big bad trouble in five supernatural categories.”

  “Save it for your doctorate,” Morrison said, and the interpreter grinned cheerfully.

  By late afternoon it was time for the destruction of the mountain without a name. Lerner went on a last inspection. Dengue, for once acting like an observer, went down the line jotting down diagrams of the charge pattern. Then everyone retreated. The explosions men crouched in their shelters. Morrison went to Control Point Able.

  One by one the section chiefs reported their men in. Weather took its last readings and found conditions satisfactory. The photographer snapped his last “before” pictures.

  “Stand by,” Morrison said over the radio, and removed the safety interlocks from the master detonation box.

  “Look at the sky,” Lerner murmured.

  Morrison glanced up. It was approaching sunset, and black clouds had sprung up from the west, covering an ocher sky. Silence descended on the camp, and even the drums from the nearby hills were quiet.

  “Ten seconds…five, four, three, two, one—now!” Morrison called, and rammed the plunger home. At that moment, he felt the wind fan his cheek.

  Just before the mountain erupted, Morrison clawed at the plunger, instinctively trying to undo the inevitable moment.

  Because even before the men started screaming, he knew that the explosion pattern was wrong, terribly wrong.

  Afterward, in the solitude of his tent, after the injured men had been carried to the hospital and the dead had been buried, Morrison tried to reconstruct the event. It had been an accident, of course; a sudden shift in wind direction, the unexpected brittleness of rock just under the surface layer, the failure of the dampers, and the criminal stupidity of placing two booster charges where they would do the most harm.

  Another in a long series of statistical improbabilities, he told himself, then sat suddenly upright.

  For the first time it occurred to him that the accidents might have been helped.

  Absurd! But planetary construction was tricky work, with its juggling of massive forces. Accidents happened inevitably. If someone gave them a helping hand, they could become catastrophic.

  He stood up and began to pace the narrow length of his tent Dengue was the obvious suspect. Rivalry between the companies ran high. If Transterran Steel could be shown inept, careless, acci- dent-ridden, she might lose her charter, to the advantage of Dengue’s company, and Dengue himself.

  But Dengue seemed too obvious. Anyone could be responsible. Even little Lerner might have his motives. He really could trust no one. Perhaps he should even consider the natives and their magic—which might be unconscious psi manipulation, for all he knew.

  He walked to the doorway and looked out on the scor
es of tents housing his city of workmen. Who was to blame? How could he find out?

  From the hills he could hear the faint, clumsy drums of the planet’s former owners. And in front of him, the jagged, ruined, avalanche-swept summit of the mountain without a name was still standing.

  He didn’t sleep well that night.

  The next day, work went on as usual. The big conveyor trucks lined up, filled with chemicals for the fixation of the nearby swamps. Dengue arrived, trim in khaki slacks and pink officer’s shirt

  “Say chief,” he said, “I think I’ll go along, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” Morrison said, checking out the trip slips.

  “Thanks. I like this sort of operation,” Dengue said, swinging into the lead Trailbreaker beside the chartman. “This sort of operation makes me proud to be a human. We’re reclaiming all wasted swamp land, hundreds of square miles of it, and some day fields of wheat will grow where only bulrushes flourished.”

  “You’ve got the chart?” Morrison asked Rivera, the assistant foreman.

  “Here it is,” Lerner said, giving it to Rivera.

  “Yes,” Dengue mused out loud. “Swamp into wheat fields. A miracle of science. And what a surprise it will be for the denizens of the swamp! Imagine the consternation of several hundred species of fish, the amphibians, water fowl, and beasts of the swamp when they find that their watery paradise has suddenly solidified on them! Literally solidified on them; a hard break. But, of course, excellent fertilizer for the wheat.”

  “All right, move out,” Morrison called. Dengue waved gaily as the convoy started. Rivera climbed into a truck. Flynn, the fix foreman, came by in his jeep.

  “Wait a minute,” Morrison said. He walked up to the jeep. “I want you to keep an eye on Dengue.”

  Flynn looked blank. “Keep an eye on him?”

  “That’s right.” Morrison rubbed his hands together uncomfortably. “I’m not making any accusations, understand. But there’s too many accidents on this job. If someone wanted us to look bad—”

  Flynn smiled wolfishly. “I’ll watch him, boss. Don’t worry about this operation. Maybe he’ll join his fishes in the wheat fields.”