A year had passed, and he’d had very little time to think of secret desires. But perhaps next year. In the meantime—
“Well?” said Tompkins. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, quite all right,” Mr. Wayne said. He got up from the chair and rubbed his forehead.
“Do you want a refund?” Tompkins asked.
“No. The experience was quite satisfactory.”
“They always are,” Tompkins said, winking lewdly at the parrot. “Well, what was yours?”
“A world of the recent past,” Mr. Wayne said.
“A lot of them are. Did you find out about your secret desire? Was it murder? Or a South Seas island?”
“I’d rather not discuss it,” Mr. Wayne said, pleasantly but firmly.
“A lot of people won’t discuss it with me,” Tompkins said sulkily. “I’ll be damned if I know why.”
“Because—well, I think the world of one’s secret desire feels sacred, somehow. No offense ... Do you think you’ll ever be able to make it permanent? The world of one’s choice, I mean?”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. “I’m trying. If I succeed, you’ll hear about it. Everyone will.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Mr. Wayne undid his parcel and laid its contents on the table. The parcel contained a pair of army boots, a knife, two coils of copper wire, and three small cans of corned beef.
Tompkins’s eyes glittered for a moment. “Quite satisfactory,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Good-bye,” said Mr. Wayne. “And thank you.”
Mr. Wayne left the shop and hurried down to the end of the lane of gray rubble. Beyond it, as far as he could see, lay flat fields of rubble, brown and gray and black. Those fields, stretching to every horizon, were made of the twisted corpses of cities, the shattered remnants of trees, and the fine white ash that once was human flesh and bone.
“Well,” Mr. Wayne said to himself, “at least we gave as good as we got.”
That year in the past had cost him everything he owned, and ten years of life thrown in for good measure. Had it been a dream? It was still worth it! But now he had to put away all thought of Janet and the children. That was finished, unless Tompkins perfected his process. Now he had to think about his own survival.
With the aid of his wrist geiger he found a deactivated lane through the rubble. He’d better get back to the shelter before dark, before the rats came out. If he didn’t hurry he’d miss the evening potato ration.
SHALL WE HAVE A LITTLE TALK?
1
THE landing was a piece of cake despite gravitational vagaries produced by two suns and six moons. Low-level cloud cover could have given him some trouble if Jackson had been coming in visually. But he considered that to be kid stuff. It was better and safer to plug in the computer and lean back and enjoy the ride.
The cloud cover broke up at two thousand feet. Jackson was able to confirm his earlier sighting: there was a city down there, just as sure as sure.
He was in one of the world’s loneliest jobs; but his line of work, paradoxically enough, required an extremely gregarious man. Because of this built-in contradiction, Jackson was in the habit of talking to himself. Most of the men in his line of work did. Jackson would talk to anyone, human or alien, no matter what their size or shape or color.
It was what he was paid to do, and what he had to do anyhow. He talked when he was alone on the long interstellar runs, and he talked even more when he was with someone or something that would talk back. He figured he was lucky to be paid for his compulsions.
“And not just paid, either,” he reminded himself. “Well paid, and with a bonus arrangement on top of that. And furthermore, this feels like my lucky planet. I feel like I could get rich on this one—unless they kill me down there, of course.”
The lonely flights between the planets and the imminence of death were the only disadvantages of this job; but if the work weren’t hazardous and difficult, the pay wouldn’t be so good.
Would they kill him? You could never tell. Alien life forms were unpredictable—just like humans, only more so.
“But I don’t think they’ll kill me,” Jackson said. “I just feel downright lucky today.”
This simple philosophy had sustained him for years, across the endless lonely miles of space, and in and out of ten, twelve, twenty planets. He saw no reason to change his outlook now.
The ship landed. Jackson switched the status controls to standby.
He checked the analyzer for oxygen and trace-element content in the atmosphere, and took a quick survey of the local micro-organisms. The place was viable. He leaned back in his chair and waited. It didn’t take long, of course, They—the locals, indigenes, autochthons, whatever you wanted to call them—came out of their city to look at the spaceship. And Jackson looked through the port at them.
“Well now,” he said. “Seems like the alien life forms in this neck of the woods are honest-to-Joe humanoids. That means a five-thousand-dollar bonus for old Uncle Jackson.”
The inhabitants of the city were bipedal monocephaloids. They had the appropriate number of fingers, noses, eyes, ears, and mouths. Their skin was a flesh-colored beige, their lips were a faded red, their hair was black, brown, or red.
“Shucks, they’re just like home folks!” Jackson said. “Hell, I ought to get an extra bonus for that. Humanoidissimus, eh?”
The aliens wore clothes. Some of them carried elaborately carved lengths of wood like swagger sticks. The women decorated themselves with carved and enameled ornaments. At a flying guess, Jackson ranked them about equivalent to Late Bronze Age on Earth.
The talked and gestured among themselves. Their language was, of course, incomprehensible to Jackson; but that didn’t matter. The important thing was that they had a language and that their speech sounds could be produced by his vocal apparatus.
“Not like on that heavy planet last year,” Jackson said. “Those supersonic sons of bitches! I had to wear special earphones and mike, and it was a hundred and ten in the shade.”
The aliens were waiting for him, and Jackson knew it. That first moment of actual contact—it always was a nervous business.
That’s when they were most apt to let you have it.
Reluctantly he moved to the hatch, undogged it, rubbed his eyes, and cleared his throat. He managed to produce a smile. He told himself, “Don’t get sweaty; ’member, you’re just a little old interstellar wanderer—kind of galactic vagabond—to extend the hand of friendship and all that jazz. You’ve just dropped in for a little talk, nothing more. Keep on believing that, sweety, and the extraterrestrial Johns will believe right along with you. Remember Jackson’s Law: all intelligent life forms share the divine faculty of gullibility; which means that the triple-tongued Thung of Orangus V can be conned out of his skin just as Joe Doakes of St. Paul.”
And so, wearing a brave, artificial little smile, Jackson swung the port open and stepped out to have a little talk.
“Well now, how y’all?” Jackson asked at once, just to hear the sound of his own voice.
The nearest aliens shrank away from him. Nearly all of them were frowning. Several of the younger ones carried bronze knives in a forearm scabbard. These were clumsy weapons, but as effective as anything ever invented. The aliens started to draw.
“Now take it easy,” Jackson said, keeping his voice light and unalarmed.
They drew their knives and began to edge forward. Jackson stood his ground, waiting, ready to bolt through the hatch like a jet-propelled jackrabbit, hoping he could make it.