The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Strories tcsopkd-5 Read online

  “I hope so,” Hoagland said. And tried to resume his repair of the defective tractor turret.

  “We’ve pretty much given up the hope of holding Mars,” General Wolff said, half to himself.

  Hoagland slowly set down his screwdriver, stared at the secret policeman.

  “What we’re going to concentrate on is Terra,” General Wolff said, and scratched his nose reflectively.

  “Then,” Hoagland said after a pause, “there’s really no hope for us here; that’s what you’re saying.”

  The blackjack general did not answer. He did not need to.

  As he bent over the faintly greenish, scummy surface of the canal where botflies and shiny black beetles buzzed, Bob Turk saw, from the corner of his vision, a small shape scuttle. Swiftly he spun, reached for his laser cane; he brought it up, fired it and destroyed—oh happy day!—a heap of rusted, discarded fuel drums, nothing more. The microrob had already departed.

  Shakily he returned the laser cane to his belt and again bent over the bug-infested water. As usual the ‘robs had been active here during the night; his wife had seen them, heard their rat-like scratchings. What the hell had they done? Bob Turk wondered dismally, and sniffed long and hard at the water.

  It seemed to him that the customary odor of the stagnant water was somehow subtly changed.

  “Damn,” he said, and stood up, feeling futile. The ‘robs had put some contaminator in the water; that was obvious. Now it would have to be given a thorough chemical analysis and that would take days. Meanwhile, what would keep his potato crop alive? Good question.

  Raging in baffled helplessness, he pawed the laser cane, wishing for a target—and knowing he could never, not in a million years, have one. As always the ‘robs did their work at night; steadily, surely, they pushed the settlement back.

  Already ten families had packed up and taken passage for Terra. To resume—if they could—the old lives which they had abandoned.

  And, soon, it would be his turn.

  If only there was something they could do. Some way they could fight back. He thought, I’d do anything, give anything, for a chance to get those ‘robs. I swear it. I’d go into debt or bondage or servitude or anything, just for a chance of freeing the area of them.

  He was shuffling morosely away from the canal, hands thrust deep in the pockets of his jacket, when he heard the booming roar of the intersystem ship overhead.

  Calcified, he stood peering up, his heart collapsing inside him. Them back? he asked himself. The Falling Star Entertainment Enterprises ship… are they going to hit us all over again, finish us off finally? Shielding his eyes he peered frantically, not able even to run, his body not knowing its way even to instinctive, animal panic.

  The ship, like a gigantic orange, lowered. Shaped like an orange, colored like an orange… it was not the blue tubular ship of the Falling Star people; he could see that. But also it was not from Terra; it was not UN. He had never seen a ship exactly like it before and he knew that he was definitely seeing another vehicle from beyond the Sol System, much more blatantly so than the blue ship of the Falling Star creatures. Not even a cursory attempt had been made to make it appear Terran.

  And yet, on its sides, it had huge letters, which spelled out words in English.

  His lips moving he read the words as the ship settled to a landing northeast of the spot at which he stood.

  Six System Educational Playtime Associates

  in a Riot of Fun and Frolic for All!

  It was—God in heaven—another itinerant carnival company.

  He wanted to look away, to turn and hurry off. And yet he could not; the old familiar drive within him, the craving, the fixated curiosity, was too strong. So he continued to watch; he could see several hatches open and autonomic mechanisms beginning to nose, like flattened doughnuts, out onto the sand.

  They were pitching camp.

  Coming up beside him his neighbor Vince Guest said hoarsely, “Now what?”

  “You can see.” Turk gestured frantically. “Use your eyes.” Already the auto-mechs were erecting a central tent; colored streamers hurled themselves upward into the air and then rained down on the still two-dimensional booths. And the first humans—or humanoids—were emerging. Vince and Bob saw men wearing bright clothing and then women in tights. Or rather something considerably less than tights.

  “Wow,” Vince managed to say, swallowing. “You see those ladies? You ever seen women with such—”

  “I see them,” Turk said. “But I’m never going back to one of these non-Terran carnivals from beyond the system and neither is Hoagland; I know that as well as I know my own name.”

  How rapidly they were going to work. No time wasted; already faint, tinny music, of a carousel nature, filtered to Bob Turk. And the smells. Cotton candy, roasting peanuts, and with those the subtle smell of adventure and exciting sights, of the illicit. One woman with long braided red hair had hopped lithely up onto a platform; she wore a meager bra and wisp of silk at her waist and as he watched fixedly she began to practice her dance. Faster and faster she spun until at last, carried away by the rhythm, she discarded entirely what little she wore. And the funny thing about it all was that it seemed to him real art; it was not the usual carny shimmying at the midsection. There was something beautiful and alive about her movements; he found himself spellbound.

  “I—better go get Hoagland,” Vince managed to say, finally. Already a few settlers, including a number of children, were moving as if hypnotized toward the lines of booths and the gaudy streamers that fluttered and shone in the otherwise drab Martian air.

  “I’ll go over and get a closer look,” Bob Turk said, “while you’re locating him.” He started toward the carnival on a gradually accelerated run, scuffling sand as he hurried.

  To Hoagland, Tony Costner said, “At least let’s see what they have to offer. You know they’re not the same people; it wasn’t them who dumped those horrible damn microrobs off here—you can see that.”

  “Maybe it’s something worse,” Hoagland said, but he turned to the boy, Fred. “What do you say?” he demanded.

  “I want to look,” Fred Costner said. He had made up his mind.

  “Okay,” Hoagland said, nodding. “That’s good enough for me. It won’t hurt us to look. As long as we remember what that UN secret police general told us. Let’s not kid ourselves into imagining we can outsmart them.” He put down his wrench, rose from his workbench, and walked to the closet to get his fur-lined outdoor coat.

  When they reached the carnival they found that the games of chance had been placed—conveniently—ahead of even the girly shows and the freaks. Fred Costner rushed forward, leaving the group of adults behind; he sniffed the air, took in the scents, heard the music, saw past the games of chance the first freak platform: it was his favorite abomination, one he remembered from previous carnivals, only this one was superior. It was a no-body. In the midday Martian sunlight it reposed quietly: a bodiless head complete with hair, ears, intelligent eyes; heaven only knew what kept it alive… in any case he knew intuitively that it was genuine.

  “Come and see Orpheus, the head without a visible body!” the pitchman called through his megaphone, and a group, mostly children, had gathered in awe to gape. “How does it stay alive? How does it propel itself? Show them, Orpheus.” The pitchman tossed a handful of food pellets—Fred Costner could not see precisely what—at the head; it opened its mouth to enormous, frightening proportions, managed to snare most of what landed near it. The pitchman laughed and continued with his spiel. The no-body was now rolling industriously after the bits of food which it had missed. Gee, Fred thought.

  “Well?” Hoagland said, coming up beside him. “Do you see any games we might profit from?” His tone was drenched with bitterness. “Care to throw a baseball at anything?” He started away, then, not waiting, a tired little fat man who had been defeated too much, who had already lost too many times. “Let’s go,” he said to the other adults of the settle
ment. “Let’s get out of here before we get into another—”

  “Wait,” Fred said. He had caught it, the familiar, pleasing stench. It came from a booth on his right and he turned at once in that direction.

  A plump, gray-colored middle-aged woman stood in a ringtoss booth, her hands full of the light wicker rings.

  Behind Fred his father said to Hoagland Rae, “You get the rings over the merchandise; you win whatever you manage to toss the ring onto so that it stays.” With Fred he walked slowly in that direction. “It would be a natural,” he murmured, “for a psychokinetic. I would think.”

  “I suggest,” Hoagland said, speaking to Fred, “that you look more closely this time at the prizes. At the merchandise.” However, he came along, too.

  At first Fred could not make out what the neat stacks were, each of them exactly alike, intricate and metallic; he came up to the edge of the booth and the middle-aged woman began her chant-like litany, offering him a handful of rings. For a dollar, or whatever of equal value the settlement had to offer.

  “What are they?” Hoagland said, peering. “I—think they’re some kind of machines.”

  Fred said, “I know what they are.” And we’ve got to play, he realized. We must round up every item in the settlement that we can possibly trade these people, every cabbage and rooster and sheep and wool blanket.

  Because, he realized, this is our chance. Whether General Wolff knows about it or likes it.

  “My God,” Hoagland said quietly. “Those are traps.”

  “That’s right, mister,” the middle-aged woman chanted. “Homeostatic traps; they do all the work, think for themselves, you just let them go and they travel and travel and they never give up until they catch—” She winked. “You know what. Yes, you know what they catch, mister, those little pesky things you can’t ever possibly catch by yourselves, that are poisoning your water and killing your steers and ruining your settlement—win a trap, a valuable, useful trap, and you’ll see, you’ll see!” She tossed a wicker ring and it nearly settled over one of the complex, sleek-metal traps; it might very well have, if she had thrown it just a little more carefully. At least that was the impression given. They all felt this.

  Hoagland said to Tony Costner and Bob Turk, “We’ll need a couple hundred of them at least.”

  “And for that,” Tony said, “we’ll have to hock everything we own. But it’s worth it; at least we won’t be completely wiped out.” His eyes gleamed “Let’s get started “ To Fred he said, “Can you play this game? Can you win?”

  “I think so,” Fred said. Although somewhere nearby, someone in the carnival was ready with a contrary power of psychokinesis. But not enough he decided. Not quite enough.

  It was almost as if they worked it that way on purpose.

  Not by its Cover

  The elderly, cross-tempered president of Obelisk Books said irritably, “I don’t want to see him, Miss Handy. The item is already in print; if there’s an error in the text we can’t do anything about it now.”

  “But Mr. Masters,” Miss Handy said, “it’s such an important error, sir. If he’s right. Mr. Brandice claims that the entire chapter—”

  “I read his letter; I also talked to him on the vidphone. I know what he claims.” Masters walked to the window of his office, gazed moodily out at the arid, crater-marred surface of Mars which he had witnessed so many decades. Five thousand copies printed and bound, he thought. And of that, half in gold-stamped Martian wub-fur. The most elegant, expensive material we could locate. We were already losing money on the edition, and now this.

  On his desk lay a copy of the book. Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, in the lofty, noble John Dryden translation. Angrily, Barney Masters turned the crisp white pages. Who would expect anyone on Mars to know such an ancient text that well? he reflected. And the man waiting in the outer office consisted of only one out of eight who had written or called Obelisk Books about a disputed passage.

  Disputed? There was no contest; the eight local Latin scholars were right. It was simply a question of getting them to depart quietly, to forget they had ever read through the Obelisk edition and found the fumbled-up passage in question.

  Touching the button of his desk intercom, Masters said to his receptionist, “Okay; send him.” Otherwise the man would never leave; his type would stay parked outside. Scholars were generally like that; they seemed to have infinite patience.

  The door opened and a tall gray-haired man, wearing old-fashioned Terra-style glasses, loomed, briefcase in hand. “Thank you, Mr. Masters,” he said, entering. “Let me explain, sir, why my organization considers an error such as this so important.” He seated himself by the desk, unzipped his briefcase briskly. “We are after all a colony planet. All our values, mores, artifacts and customs come to us from Terra. WODAFAG considers your printing of this book…”

  “ ‘WODAFAG’?” Masters interrupted. He had never heard of it, but even so he groaned. Obviously one of the many vigilant crank outfits who scanned everything printed, either emanating locally here on Mars or arriving from Terra.

  “Watchmen Over Distortion And Forged Artifacts Generally,” Brandice explained. “I have with me an authentic, correct Terran edition of De Rerum Natura—the Dryden translation, as is your local edition.” His emphasis on local made it sound slimy and second-rate; as if, Masters brooded, Obelisk Books was doing something unsavory in printing books at all. “Let us consider the inauthentic interpolations. You are urged to study first my copy—” He laid a battered, elderly, Terran-printed book open on Masters’ desk. “—in which it appears correctly. And then, sir, a copy of your own edition; the same passage.” Beside the little ancient blue book he laid one of the handsome large wub-fur bound copies which Obelisk Books had turned out.

  “Let me get my copy editor in here,” Masters said. Pressing the intercom button he said to Miss Handy, “Ask Jack Snead to step in here, please.”

  “Yes, Mr. Masters.”

  “To quote from the authentic edition,” Brandice said, “we obtain a metric rendering of the Latin as follows. Ahem.” He cleared his throat self-consciously, then began to read aloud.

  “From sense of grief and pain we shall be free;

  We shall not feel, because we shall not be.

  Though earth in seas, and seas in heaven were lost,

  We should not move, we only should be toss’d.”

  “I know the passage,” Masters said sharply, feeling needled; the man was lecturing him as if he were a child.

  “This quatrain,” Brandice said, “is absent from your edition, and the following spurious quatrain—of God knows what origin—appears in its place. Allow me.” Taking the sumptuous, wub-fur bound Obelisk copy, he thumbed through, found the place; then read.

  “From sense of grief and pain we shall be free;

  Which earth-bound man can neither qualify nor see.

  Once dead, we fathom seas cast up from this:

  Our stint on earth doth herald an unstopping bliss.”

  Glaring at Masters, Brandice closed the wub-fur bound copy noisily. “What is most annoying,” Brandice said, “is that this quatrain preaches a message diametric to that of the entire book. Where did it come from? Somebody had to write it; Dryden didn’t write it—Lucretius didn’t.” He eyed Masters as if he thought Masters personally had done it.

  The office door opened and the firm’s copy editor, Jack Snead, entered. “He’s right,” he said resignedly to his employer. “And it’s only one alteration in the text out of thirty or so; I’ve been ploughing through the whole thing, since the letters started arriving. And now I’m starting in on other recent catalog-items in our fall list.” He added, grunting. “I’ve found alterations in several of them, too.”

  Masters said, “You were the last editor to proofread the copy before it went to the typesetters. Were these errors in it then?”

  “Absolutely not,” Snead said. “And I proofread the galleys personally; the changes weren’t in the galleys, eit
her. The changes don’t appear until the final bound copies come into existence—if that makes any sense. Or more specifically, the ones bound in gold and wub-fur. The regular bound-in-boards copies—they’re okay.”

  Masters blinked. “But they’re all the same edition. They ran through the presses together. In fact we didn’t originally plan an exclusive, higher-priced binding; it was only at the last minute that we talked it over and the business office suggested half the edition be offered in wub-fur.”

  “I think,” Jack Snead said, “we’re going to have to do some close-scrutiny work on the subject of Martian wub-fur.”

  An hour later aging, tottering Masters, accompanied by copy editor Jack Snead, sat facing Luther Saperstein, business agent for the pelt-procuring firm of Flawless, Incorporated; from them, Obelisk Books had obtained the wub-fur with which their books had been bound.

  “First of all,” Masters said in a brisk, professional tone, “what is wub-fur?”

  “Basically,” Saperstein said, “in the sense in which you’re asking the question, it is fur from the Martian wub. I know this doesn’t tell you much, gentlemen, but at least it’s a reference point, a postulate on which we can all agree, where we can start and build something more imposing. To be more helpful, let me fill you in on the nature of the wub itself. The fur is prized because, among other reasons, it is rare. Wub-fur is rare because a wub very seldom dies. By that I mean, it is next to impossible to slay a wub—even a sick or old wub. And, even though a wub is killed, the hide lives on. That quality imparts its unique value to home-decoration, or, as in your case, in the binding of lifetime, treasured books meant to endure.”