The Shipshape Miracle: And Other Stories

A cabinet-voice said, “Anything, madam?”

  “Drinks,” said Maxine. “Not too strong. We’ve been hitting the bottle.”

  “Not too strong,” said the cabinet. “Just a moment, madam.”

  “Illusion,” Maxine said. “Every bit of it. But a nice illusion. Want a beach? It’s waiting for you if you just think of it. Or a polar cap. Or a desert. Or an old chateau. It’s waiting in the wings.”

  “Your painting must pay off,” he said.

  “Not my painting. My irritation. Better start getting irritated, Buster. Get down in the dumps. Start thinking about suicide. That’s a sure-fire way to do it. Presto, you’re kicked upstairs to a better suite of rooms. Anything to keep you happy.”

  “You mean the Kimonians automatically shift you?”

  “Sure. You’re a sucker to stay down there where you are.”

  “I like my layout,” he told her. “But this—”

  She laughed at him. “You’ll catch on,” she said.

  The drinks arrived.

  “Sit down,” Maxine said. “Want a moon?”

  There was a moon.

  “Could have two or three,” she said, “but that would be overdoing it. One moon seems more like Earth. Seems more comfortable.”

  “There must be a limit somewhere,” Bishop said. “They can’t keep on kicking you upstairs indefinitely. There must come a time when even the Kimonians can’t come up with anything that is new and novel.”

  “You wouldn’t live long enough,” she told him, “for that to come about. That’s the way with all you new ones. You underestimate the Kimonians. You think of them as people, as Earth people who know just a little more. They aren’t that, at all. They’re alien. They’re as alien as a spider-man despite their human form. They conform to keep contact with us.”

  “But why do they want to keep contact with us? Why—”

  “Buster,” she said. “That’s the question that we never ask. That’s the one that can drive you crazy.”

  XV

  He had told them about the human custom of going out on picnics and the idea was one that they had never thought of, so they adopted it with childish delight.

  They had picked a wild place, a tumbled mountain area filled with deep ravines, clothed in flowers and trees and with a mountain brook with water that was as clear as glass and as cold as ice.

  They had played games and romped. They had swum and sunbathed and they had listened to his stories, sitting in a circle, needling him and interrupting him, picking arguments.

  But he had laughed at them, not openly, but deep inside himself, for he knew now that they meant no harm, but merely sought amusement.

  Weeks before he had been insulted and outraged and humiliated, but as the days went on he had adapted to it—had forced himself to adapt. If they wished a clown, then he would be a clown. If he were court fool, with bells and parti-colored garments, then he must wear the colors well and keep the bells ringing merrily.

  There was occasional maliciousness in them, and some cruelty, but no lasting harm. And you could get along with them, he told himself, if you just knew how to do it.

  When evening came they had built a fire and had sat around it and had talked and laughed and joked, for once leaving him alone. Elaine and Betty had been nervous. Jim had laughed at them for their nervousness.

  “No animal will come near a fire,” he said.

  “There are animals?” Bishop had asked.

  “A few,” said Jim. “Not many of them left.”

  He had lain there, staring at the fire, listening to their voices, glad that for once they were leaving him alone. Like a dog must feel, he thought. Like a pup hiding in a corner from a gang of rowdy children who are always mauling it.

  He watched the fire and remembered other days—outings in the country and walking trips when they had built a fire and lain around it, staring at the sky, seeing the old, familiar skies of Earth.

  And here again was another fire.

  And here, again, a picnic.

  The fire was Earth and so was the picnic—for the people of Kimon did not know of picnics. They did not know of picnics and there might be many other things of which they likewise did not know. Many other things, perhaps. Barbaric, folkish things.

  Don’t look for the big things, Morley had said that night. Watch for the little things, for the little clues.

  They liked Maxine’s paintings because they were primitives. Primitives, perhaps, but likewise not very good. Could it be that paintings also had been something the Kimonians had not known until the Earthmen came?

  Were there, after all, chinks in the Kimonian armor? Little chinks like picnics and paintings and many other little things for which they valued the visitors from Earth?

  Somewhere in those chinks might be the answer that he sought for Morley.

  He lay and thought, forgetting to shield his mind, forgetting that he should not think because his thoughts lay open to them.

  Their voices had faded away and there was a solemn night-time quiet. Soon, he thought, we’ll all be going back—they to their homes and I to the hotel. How far away, he wondered. Half a world or less? And yet they’d be there in the instant of a thought.

  Someone, he thought, should put more wood on the fire.

  He roused himself to do it, standing up.

  And it was not until then that he saw he was alone.

  He stood there, trying to quiet his terror.

  They had gone away and left him.

  They had forgotten him.

  But that couldn’t be. They’d simply slipped off in the dark. Up to some prank, perhaps. Trying to scare him. Talking about the animals and then slipping out of sight while he lay dreaming at the fire. Waiting now, just outside the circle of the firelight, watching him, drinking in his thoughts, reveling in his terror.

  He found wood and put it on the fire. It caught and blazed.

  He sat down nonchalantly, but he found that his shoulders were hunched instinctively, that the terror of aloneness in an alien world still sat by the fire beside him.

  Now, for the first time, he realized the alienness of Kimon. It had not seemed alien before except for those few minutes he had waited in the park after the gig had landed him, and even then it had not been as alien as an alien planet should be, because he knew that he was being met, that there would be someone along to take care of him.

  That was it, he thought. Someone to take care of me. We’re taken care of—well and lavishly. We’re sheltered and guarded and pampered—that was it, pampered. And for what reason?

  Any minute now they’d tire of their game and come back into the circle of the firelight.

  Maybe, he told himself, I should give them their money’s worth. Maybe I should act scared, maybe I should shout out for them to come and get me, maybe I should glance around out into the darkness, as if I were afraid of those animals that they talked about. They hadn’t talked too much, of course. They were too clever for that, far too clever. Just a passing remark about existent animals, then on to something else. Not stressing it, not laying it on too thick. Not overdoing it. Just planting a suggestion that there were animals one could be afraid of.

  He sat and waited, no as scared as he had been before, having rationalized away the fear that he first had felt. Like an Earth campfire, he thought. Except it isn’t Earth. Except it’s an alien planet.

  There was a rustle in the bushes.

  They’ll be coming now, he thought. They’ve figured out that it didn’t work. They’ll be coming back.

  The bushes rustled again and there was the sound of a dislodged stone.

  He did not stir.

  They can’t scare me, he thought.

  They can’t scare—

  He felt the breath upon his neck and leaped into the air, spinning as he leaped, stumbling
as he came down, almost falling in the fire, then on his feet and scurrying to put the fire between him and the thing that had breathed upon his neck.

  He crouched across the fire from it and saw the teeth in the gaping jaws. It raised its head and slashed, as if in pantomime, and he could hear the clicking of the teeth as they came together and the little moaning rumble that came from the massive throat.

  A wild thought came to him: It’s not an animal at all. This is just part of the gag. Something they dreamed up. If they can build a house like an English wood, use it for a day or two, then cause it to disappear as something for which they would have no further use, surely it would be a second’s work to dream up an animal.

  The animal padded forward and he thought: Animals should be afraid of fire. All animals are afraid of fire. It won’t get me if I stay near the fire.

  He stooped and grabbed a brand.

  Animals are afraid of fire.

  But this one wasn’t.

  It padded round the fire. It stretched out its neck and sniffed.

  It wasn’t in any hurry, for it was sure of him.

  Sweat broke out on him and ran down his sides.

  The animal came with a smooth rush, whipping around the fire.

  He leaped, clearing the fire, to gain the other side of it. The animal checked itself, spun around to face him.

  It put its muzzle to the ground and arched its back. It lashed its tail. It rumbled.

  He was frightened now, cold with a fright that could not be laughed off.

  It might be an animal.

  It must be an animal.

  No gag at all, but an animal.

  He paced back toward the fire. He danced on his toes, ready to run, to dodge, to fight if he had to fight. But against this thing that faced him across the fire, he knew, there was no fighting chance. And yet, if it came to fighting, he could do no less than fight.

  The animal charged.

  He ran.

  He slipped and fell and rolled into the fire.

  A hand reached down and jerked him from the fire, flung him to one side, and a voice cried out, a cry of rage and warning.

  Then the universe collapsed and he felt himself flying apart and, as suddenly, he was together once again.

  He lay upon a floor and he scrambled to his feet. His hand was burned and he felt the pain of it. His clothes were smoldering and he beat them out with his uninjured hand.

  A voice said, “I’m sorry, sir. This should not have happened.”

  The man was tall, much taller than the Kimonians he had seen before. Nine feet, perhaps. And yet not nine feet, actually. Not anywhere near nine feet. He was no taller, probably, than the taller men of Earth. It was the way he stood that made him seem so tall, the way he stood and looked and the way his voice sounded.

  And the first Kimonian, Bishop thought, who had ever shown age. For there was a silvering of the temple hairs and his face was lined, like the faces of hunters or of sailors may be lined from squinting into far distances.

  They stood facing one another in a room which, when Bishop looked at it, took his breath away. There was no describing it, no way to describe it—you felt as well as saw it. It was a part of you and a part of the universe and a part of everything you’d ever known or dreamed. It seemed to thrust extensions out into unguessed time and space and it had a sense of life and the touch of comfort and the feel of home.

  Yet, when he looked again, he sensed a simplicity that did not square with his first impressions. Basic simplicities that tied in with the simple business of living out one’s life, as if the room and the folks who lived within its walls were somehow integrated, as if the room were trying its best not to be a room, but to be a part of life, so much a part of life that it could pass unnoticed.

  “I was against it from the first,” said the Kimonian. “Now I know that I was right. But the children wanted you—”

  “The children?”

  “Certainly. I am Elaine’s father.”

  He didn’t say Elaine, however. He said the other name—the name that Elaine had said no Earthman could pronounce.

  “Your hand?” asked the man.

  “It’s all right,” said Bishop. “Only burned a little.”

  And it was as if he had not spoken, as if he had not said the words—but another man, a man who stood off to one side and spoke the words for him.

  He could not have moved if he’d been paid a million.

  “This is something,” said the Kimonian, “that must be recompensed. We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Please, sir,” said the man who talked for Bishop. “Please, sir, just one thing. Send me to my hotel.”

  He felt the swiftness of the other’s understanding—the compassion and the pity.

  “Of course,” said the tall man. “With your permission, sir.”

  XVI

  Once there were some children (human children, naturally) who had wanted a dog—a little playful puppy. But their father said they could not have a dog because they would not know how to treat him. But they wanted him so badly and begged their father so that he finally brought them home a dog, a cunning little puppy, a little butterball, with a paunchy belly and four wobbly legs and melting eyes, filled with the innocence of puppyhood.

  The children did not treat him as badly as you might have imagined that they would. They were cruel, as all children are. They roughed and tumbled him; they pulled his ears and tail; they teased him. But the pup was full of fun. He liked to play and no matter what they did he came back for more. Because, undoubtedly, he felt very smug in this business of associating with the clever human race, a race so far ahead of dogs in culture and intelligence that there was no comparison at all.

  But one day the children went on a picnic and when the day was over they were very tired, and forgetful, as children are very apt to be. so they went off and left the puppy.

  That wasn’t a bad thing, really. For children will be forgetful, no matter what you do, and the pup was nothing but a dog.

  The cabinet said, “You are very late, sir.”

  “Yes,” said Bishop, dully.

  “You hurt somewhere, sir. I can sense the hurt.”

  “My hand,” said Bishop. “I burned it in a fire.”

  A panel popped open in the cabinet.

  “Put it in there,” said the cabinet. “I’ll fix it in a jiffy.”

  Bishop thrust his hand into the opening. He felt fingerlike appendages going over it, very gentle and soothing.

  “It’s not a bad burn, sir,” said the cabinet, “but I imagine it is painful.”

  Playthings, Bishop thought.

  This hotel is a dollhouse—or a doghouse.

  It is a shack, a tacked-together shack like the boys of Earth build out of packing cases and bits of board and paint crude, mystic signs upon.

  Compared to that room back there it is no more than a hovel, although come to think of it, a very gaudy hovel.

  Fit for humans, good enough for humans, but a hovel just the same.

  And we? he thought.

  And we?

  The pets of children. The puppy dogs of Kimon.

  Imported puppy dogs.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” said the cabinet. “You are not puppy dogs.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You will pardon me, sir. I should not have spoken out. But I wouldn’t have wanted you to think—”

  “If we aren’t pets, what are we?”

  “You will excuse me, sir. It was a slip, I quite assure you. I should not have—”

  “You never do a thing,” said Bishop bitterly, “without having it all figured out. You or any of them. For you are one of them. You spoke because they wanted you to speak.”

  “I can assure you that’s not so.”

  “You wou
ld deny it, naturally,” said Bishop. “Go ahead and do your job. You haven’t told me all they wanted you to tell me. Go ahead and finish.”

  “It’s immaterial to me what you think,” the cabinet told him. “But if you thought of yourselves as playmates…”

  “That’s a hot one,” Bishop said.

  “Infinitely better,” said the cabinet, “than thinking of yourself as a puppy dog.”

  “So that’s what they want me to think.”

  “They don’t care,” the cabinet said. “It is all up to you. It was a mere suggestion, sir.”

  So, all right, it was a mere suggestion.

  So, all right, they were playmates and not pets at all.

  The kids of Kimon inviting the dirty, ragged, runny-nosed urchins from across the tracks to play with them.

  Better to be an invited kid, perhaps, than an imported dog.

  But even so, it was the children of Kimon who had engineered it all—who had set up the rules for those who wished to come to Kimon, who had built the hotel, had operated it and furnished it with the progressively more luxurious and more enticing rooms, who had found the so-called jobs for humans, who had arranged the printing of the credits.

  And if that were so, then it meant that not merely the people of Earth, but the government of Earth, had negotiated, or had attempted to negotiate with the children of another race. And that would be the mark of the difference, he thought, the difference between us.

  Although, he told himself, that might not be entirely right.

  Maybe he had been wrong in thinking, in the first flush of his bitterness, that he was a pet.

  Maybe he was a playmate, an adult Earthman downgraded to the status of a child—and a stupid child, at that. Maybe, if he had been wrong on the pet angle, he was wrong in the belief, as well, that it had been the children of Kimon who had arranged the immigration of the Earth folk.

  And if it hadn’t been simply a childish matter of asking in some kids from across the tracks, if the adults of Kimon had had a hand in it, what was the setup then? A school project, a certain phase of progressive education? Or a sort of summer camp project, designed to give the deserving, but underprivileged, Earthman a vacation away from the squalor of their native planet? Or simply a safe way in which the children of Kimon might amuse and occupy themselves, be kept from underfoot?