The Science Fiction of Mark Clifton Read online

  “If you do not assist us, then it is obvious that we will eventually be discovered. You are aware of the difficulty of even blending from one country on Earth to another. How much more difficult it is where there is no point of contact at all. And if we are discovered, destruction would be the only step left.”

  He smiled and all the force of his charm hit me again. “I know you will want to think it over for a time. I’ll return.”

  He walked to the door, then smiled back at me. “And don’t bother to trouble that poor little woman in that house again. Her doorway is only one of many entrances we have opened. She doesn’t see us at all, and merely winders why her latch doesn’t work sometimes. And we can open another, anywhere, anytime. Like this—”

  He was gone.

  I walked over and opened the door. Margie was all prettied up and looking expectant and radiant. When she didn’t see him come out she got up and peeked into my office. “But where did he go?” she asked with wide eyes.

  “Get hold of yourself, girl,” I answered. “You’re so dazed you didn’t even see him walk right by you.”

  “There’s something fishy going on here,” she said.

  “Well, I had a problem. A first rate, genuine, dyed in the wool dilemma.

  What was I to do? I could have gone to the local authorities and got locked up for being a psycho. I could have gone to the college professors and got locked up for being a psycho. I could have gone to maybe the FBI and got locked up for being a psycho. That line of thinking began to get monotonous.

  I did the one thing which I thought might bring help. I wrote up the happenings and sent it to my favorite science-fiction magazine. I asked for help and sage counsel from the one place I felt awareness and comprehension might be reached.

  The manuscript bounced back so fast it might have had rubber bands attached to it, stretched from California to New York. I looked the little rejection slip all over, front and back, and I did not find upon it those sage words of counsel I needed. There wasn’t even a printed invitation to try again some time.

  And for the first time in my life I knew what it was to be alone—genuinely and irrevocably alone.

  Still, I could not blame the editor. I could see him cast the manuscript from him in disgust, saying, “Bah! So another evil race comes to conquer Earth. If I gave the fans one more of those, I’d be run out of my office.” And like the deacon who saw the naughty words written on the fence, saying, “And misspelled, too.”

  The fable of the boy who cried “Wolf! Wolf!” once too often came home to me now. I was alone with my problem. The dilemma was my own. On one hand was immediate extermination. I did not doubt it. A race which can open doors from one star system to another, without even visible means of mechanism, would also know how to—disinfect.

  On the other hand w-as extinction, gradual, but equally certain, and none the less effective in that it would not be perceived. If I refused to assist, then acting as one lone judge of all the race, I condemned it. If I did assist, I would be arch traitor, with an equal final result.

  For days I sweltered in my miasma of indecision. Like many a man before me, uncertain of what to do, I temporized. I decided to play for time. To play the role of traitor in the hopes I might learn a way of defeating them.

  Once I had made up my mind, my thoughts raced wildly through the possibilities. If I were to be their instructor on how to walk unsuspected among men, then I would have them wholly in my grasp. If I could build traits into them, common ordinary traits which they could see in men all about them, yet which would make men turn and destroy them, then I would have my solution.

  And I knew human beings. Perhaps it was right, after all, that it became my problem. Mine alone.

  I shuddered now to think what might have happened had this being fallen into less skilled hands and told his story. Perhaps by now there would be no man left upon Earth.

  Yes, the old and worn-out plot of the one little unknown guy who saved Earth from outer evil might yet run its course in reality.

  I was ready for the Arcturan when he returned. And he did return.

  Einar Johnson and I walked out of my office after I had sent a tearful Margie on a long vacation with fancy pay. Einar had plenty of money, and was liberal with it. When a fellow can open some sort of fourth-dimensional door into a bank vault and help himself, money is no problem.

  I had visions of the poor bank clerks trying to explain things to the examiners, but that wasn’t my worry right now.

  We walked out of the office and I snapped the lock shut behind me. Always conscious of the cares of people looking for work, I hung a sign on the door saying I was ill and didn’t know when I would be back.

  We walked down the stairs and into the parking lot. We got into my car, my own car, please note, and I found myself sitting in a sheltered patio in Beverly Hills. Just like that. No awful wrenching and turning my insides out.

  No worrisome nausea and emptiness of space. Nothing to dramatize it at all. Car—patio, like that.

  I would like to be able to describe the Arcturans as having long snaky appendages and evil slobbering maws, and stuff like that. But I can’t describe the Arcturans, because I didn’t see any.

  I saw a gathering of people, roughly about thirty of them, wandering around the patio, swimming in the pool, going in and out of the side doors of the house. It was a perfect spot. No one bothers the big Beverly Hills home without imitation.

  The natives wouldn’t be caught dead looking toward a star’s house. The tourists see the winding drive, the trees and grass, and perhaps a glimpse of a gabled roof. If they can get any thrill out of that then bless their little spending money hearts, they’re welcome to it.

  Yet if it should become known that a crowd of strange acting people are wandering around in the grounds, no one would think a thing about it. They don’t come any more zany than the Hollywood crowd.

  Only these w-ere. These people could have made a fortune as life-size puppets. I could see now why it was judged that the lifeless Teutonic I had first interviewed was thought adequate to mingle with human beings. By comparison with these, he was a snappy song and dance man.

  But that is all I saw. Vacant bodies wandering around, going through human motions, without human emotions. The job looked bigger than I had thought. And yet, if this was their idea of how to win friends and influence people, I might be successful after all.

  There are dozens of questions the curious might want answered—such as how did they get hold of the house and how did they get their human bodies and where did they learn to speak English, and stuff. I wasn’t too curious. I had important things to think about. I supposed they were able to do it, because here it was.

  I’ll cut the following weeks short. I cannot conceive of what life and civilization on their planet might be like. Yardsticks of scientific psychology are used to measure a man, and yet they give no indication at all of the inner spirit of him, likewise, the descriptive measurements of their civilization are empty and meaningless. Knowing about a man, and knowing a man are two entirely different things.

  For example, all those thalamic urges and urgencies which we call emotion were completely unknown to them, except as they saw them in antics on TV. The ideals of man w-ere also unknown—truth, honor, justice, perfection—all unknown. They had not even a division of sexes, and the emotion we call love was beyond their understanding. The TV stories they saw must have been like watching a parade of ants.

  What purpose can be gained by describing such a civilization to man? Man cannot conceive accomplishment without first having the dream. Yet it was obvious that they accomplished, for they were here.

  When I finally realized there was no point of contact between man and these, I knew relief and joy once more. My job was easy. I knew how to destroy them. And I suspected they could not avoid my trap.

  They could not avoid my trap because they had human bodies. Perhaps they conceived them out of thin air, but the veins bled, the flesh felt pain and heat and pressure, the glands secreted.

  Ah yes, the glands secreted. They would learn what emotion could be. And I was a master at wielding emotion. The dream of man has been to strive toward the great and immortal ideals. His literature is filled with admonishments to that end. In comparison with the volume of work which tells us what we should be, there is very little which reveals us as we are.

  As part of my training course, I chose the world’s great literature, and painting, and sculpture, and music—those mediums which best portray man lifting to the stars. I gave them first of all, the dream.

  And with the dream, and with the pressure of the glands as kicker, they began to know emotion. I had respect for the superb acting of Einar when I realized that he, also, had still known no emotion.

  They moved from the puppet to the newborn babe—a newborn babe in training, with an adult body, and its matured glandular equation.

  I saw emotions, all right. Emotions without restraint, emotions unfettered by taboos, emotions uncontrolled by ideals. Sometimes I became frightened and all my skill in manipulating emotions was needed. At other times they became perhaps a little too Hollywood, even for Hollywood. I trained them into more ideal patterns.

  I will say this for the Arcturans. They learned—fast. The crowd of puppets to the newborn babes, to the boisterous boys and girls to the moody and unpredictable youths, to the matured and balanced men and women. I watched the metamorphosis take place over the period of weeks.

  I did more.

  All that human beings had ever hoped to be, the brilliant, the idealistic, the great in heart, I made of these. My little 145 I.Q. became a moron’s level. The dreams of the greatness of man which I had known became the vaguest wisps of fog before the reality which these achieved.

  My plan was working.

  Full formed, they were almost like gods. And training these things into them, I trained their own traits out. One point I found we had in common. They were activated by logic, logic carried to heights of which I had never dreamed. Yet my poor and halting logic found point of contact.

  They realized at last that if they let their own life force and motivation remain active they would carry the aura of strangeness to defeat their purpose. I worried, when they accepted this. I felt perhaps they were laying a trap for me, as I did for them. Then I realized that I had not taught them deceit.

  And it was logical, to them, that they follow my training completely. Reversing the position, placing myself upon their planet, trying to become like them, I must of necessity follow my instructor without question. What else could they do?

  At first they saw no strangeness that I should assist them to destroy my race. In their logic the Arcturan was most fit to survive, therefore he should survive. The human was less fit, therefore he should perish.

  I taught them the emotion of compassion. And when they began to mature their human thought and emotion, and their intellect was blended and shaded by such emotion, at last they understood my dilemma.

  There was irony in that. From my own kind I could expect no understanding. From the invaders I received sympathy and compassion. They understand at last my traitorous action to buy a few more years for Man.

  Yet their Arcturan logic still prevailed. They wept with me, but there could be no change of plan. The plan was fixed, they were merely instruments by which it was to be carried out.

  Yet, through their compassion, I did get the plan modified.

  This was the conversation which revealed that modification. Einar Johnson, who as the most fully developed had been my constant companion, said to me one day, “To all intents and purposes we have become human beings.” He looked at me and smiled with fondness, “You have said it is so, and it must be so. For we begin to realize what a great and glorious thing a human is.”

  The light of nobility shone from him like an aura as he told me this, “Without human bodies, and without the emotion-intelligence equation which you call soul, our home planet cannot begin to grasp the growth we have achieved. We know now that we will never return to our own form, for by doing that we would lose what we have gained.

  “Our people are logical, and they must of necessity accept our recommendation, as long as it does not abandon the plan entirely. We have reported what we have learned, and it is conceived that both our races can inhabit the Universe side by side.

  “There will be no more migration from our planet to yours. We will remain, and we will multiply, and we will live in honor, such as you have taught us, among you. In time perhaps we may achieve the greatness which all humans now have.

  “And we will assist the human kind to find their destiny among the stars as we have done.”

  I bowed my head and wept. For I knew that I had won.

  Four months had gone. I returned to my own neighborhood. On the comer Hallahan left the traffic to shift for itself while he came over to me with the question, “Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been sick,” I said.

  “You look it,” he said frankly. “Take care of yourself, man. Hey—Lookit that fool messing up traffic.” He was gone, blowing his whistle in a temper.

  I climbed the stairs. They still needed repainting as much as ever. From time to time I had been able to mail money to Margie, and she had kept the rent and telephone paid. The sign w-as still on my door. My key opened the lock.

  The waiting room had that musty, they’ve-gone-away look about it. The janitor had kept the window’s tightly closed and there was no freshness in the air. I half hoped to see Margie sitting at her desk, but I knew there was no purpose to it. When a girl is being paid for her time and has nothing to do, the beach is a nice place to spend it.

  There was dust on my chair, and I sank down into it without bothering about the seat of my pants. I buried my head in my arms and I looked into the human soul.

  Now the whole thing hinged on that skill. I know human beings. I know them as well as anyone in the world, and far better than most.

  I looked into the past and I saw a review of the great and fine and noble and divine tom and burned and crucified by man.

  Yet my only hope of saving my race was to build these qualities, the fine, the noble, the splendid, into these thirty beings. To create the illusion that all men were likewise great. No less power could have gained the boom of equality for man with them.

  I look into the future. I see them, one by one, destroyed. I gave them no defense. They are totally unprepared to meet man as he genuinely is—and they are incapable of understanding.

  For these things which man purports to admire the most—the noble, the brilliant, the splendid—these are the very things he cannot tolerate when he finds them.

  Defenseless, because they cannot comprehend, these thirty will go down beneath the ravening fury of rending and destroying man always displays whenever he meets his ideal face to face.

  I bury my head in my hands.

  What have I done?

  STAR, BRIGHT

  There is no past or future, the children said; it all just is! They had every reason to know!

  Friday—June 11th

  At three years of age a little girl shouldn’t have enough functioning intelligence to cut out and paste together a Moebius strip.

  Or, if she did it by accident, she surely shouldn’t have enough reasoning ability to pick up one of her crayons and carefully trace the continuous line to prove it has only one surface.

  And if by some strange coincidence she did, and it was still just an accident, how can I account for this generally active daughter of mine—and I do mean active—sitting for a solid half hour with her chin cupped in her hand, staring off into space, thinking with such concentration that it was almost painful to watch?

  I was in my reading chair, going over some work. Star was sitting on the floor, in the circle of my light, with her blunt-nosed scissors and her scraps of paper.

  Her long silence made me glance down at her as she was taping the two ends of the paper together. At that point I thought it was an accident that she had given a half twist to the paper strip before joining the circle. I smiled to myself as she picked it up in her chubby fingers.

  “A little child forms the enigma of the ages,” I mused.

  But instead of throwing the strip aside, or tearing it apart as any other child would do, she carefully turned it over and around—studying it from all sides.

  Then she picked up one of her crayons and began tracing the line. She did it as though she were substantiating a conclusion already reached!

  It was a bitter confirmation for me. I had been refusing to face it for a long time, but I could ignore it no longer.

  Star was a High I.Q.

  For half an hour I watched her while she sat on the floor, one knee bent under her, her chin in her hand, unmoving. Her eyes were wide with wonderment, looking into the potentialities of the phenomenon she had found.

  It had been a tough struggle, taking care of her since my wife’s death. Now this added problem. If only she could have been normally dull, like other children!

  I made up my mind while I watched her. If a child is afflicted, then let’s face it, she’s afflicted. A parent must teach her to compensate. At least she could be prepared for the bitterness I’d known. She could learn early to take it in stride.

  I could use the measurements available, get the degree of intelligence, and in that way grasp the extent of my problem. A twenty-point jump in I.Q. creates an entirely different set of problems. The 140 child lives in a world nothing at all like that of the 100 child and a world which the 120 child can but vaguely sense. The problems which vex and challenge the 160 pass over the 140 as a bird flies over a field mouse. I must not make the mistake of posing the problems of one if she is the other. I must know. In the meantime I must treat it casually.

  “That’s called the Moebius strip, Star,” I interrupted her thoughts.