The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Strories (28 page)

“It’s just fine,” Hoagland Rae said, miserably. He seated himself halfheartedly at his workbench, picked up a screwdriver and began to tinker with a malfunctioning autonomic tractor guidance-turret.

“Look,” General Wolff said, and pointed.

In a corner of the workshop, almost invisible against the dusty wall, a microrob crouched watching them.

“Jeez!” Hoagland wailed, groping around on his workbench for the old .32 revolver which he had gotten out and loaded.

Long before his fingers found the revolver the microrob had vanished. General Wolff had not even moved; he seemed, in fact, somewhat amused: he stood with his arms folded, watching Hoagland fumbling with the antiquated side arm.

“We’re working on a central device,” General Wolff said, “which would cripple all of them simultaneously. By interrupting the flow of current from their portable power-packs. Obviously to destroy them one by one is absurd; we never even considered it. However—” He paused thoughtfully, his forehead wrinkling. “There’s reason to believe they—the outspacers—have anticipated us and have diversified the power-sources in such a way that—” He shrugged philosophically. “Well, perhaps something else will come to mind. In time.”

“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.

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 settlement. “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.

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…”