Read Ebook: Do Unto Others by Clifton Mark Emshwiller Ed Illustrator

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Ebook has 218 lines and 12062 words, and 5 pages

I had hardly more than--ah--freshened up a bit myself in my hotel room, when I heard a discreet knock on my door. I opened it and saw Johnny McCabe.

"May I come in, Hap?" he asked. As if against his will, he glanced quickly down the hall toward the suite where aunt and her committee had been put.

"Sure, Johnny," I said, and opened the door wide. I pointed to an aluminum tube torture rack, government issue's idea of a chair. "You can have the chair," I said. "I'll sit on the edge of the bed."

"I'm sorry about the furnishings," he said apologetically as he sat down and I closed the door. "It's the best government will issue us in this hole."

"Aunt Mattie would be disappointed if it were better," I said as I sat on the edge of the bed, which was little softer than the chair. "She expects to rough it, and finds special virtue in doing her duty as uncomfortably as possible."

He looked sharply at me, but I had merely stated an accepted fact, not an opinion, and was therefore emotionless about it.

"I'm in trouble, Hap," he said desperately. He leaned forward with his clasped hands held between his knees.

"Well, old man," I answered. "You know me."

"Yes," he said. "But there isn't anybody else I can turn to."

"Then we understand each other," I agreed. He looked both resentful and puzzled.

"No, I never did understand you," he disagreed. "I suppose it's all those billions that act as shock insulation for you. You never had to plan, and scheme, and stand alert indefinitely like a terrier at a rat hole waiting for opportunity to stick out its nose so you could pounce on it. So I don't see how you can appreciate my problem now."

"I might try," I said humbly.

"This job," he said. "It's not much, and I know it. But it was a start. The department doesn't expect anything from me but patience. It's not so much ability, you know, just a matter of who can hang on the longest without getting into trouble. I've been hanging on, and keeping out of trouble."

"But you're in trouble now."

"I will be when your aunt fails to put mother hubbards on the natives."

"She won't fail," I said confidently.

"And when she storms into the State Department with fire in her eye and starts turning things upside down, it'll be my fault--somehow," he said miserably.

"So let her put some clothes on some natives," I said. "She'll go away happy and then, for all you care, they can take 'em off and burn 'em if they insist on going around naked. Just swing with the punch, man. Don't stand up and let 'em knock your block off. Surely you have some influence with the natives. I don't hear any war drums, any tom-toms. I don't see them trying to tear holes in the sides of your bubble to let the air out. You must be at peace with them. You must have some kind of mutual cooperation. So just get a tribe or so to go along with the idea for a while."

He looked at me and shook his head sadly. Sort of the way Aunt Mattie shook her head after a conference with my psychiatrist. But Johnny didn't seem somehow happier. He had a pretty good chest, but it didn't look enormous enough to carry any burden.

"I've been pretty proud of myself," he said. "After five years of daily attempts, and after using everything I ever learned in school courses on extraterrestrial psychology, plus some things I've made up myself, I established a kind of communication with the natives--if you could call it communication. I'd go out in my spacesuit into their chlorinated atmosphere, I'd stand in front of one of them and talk a blue streak, think a blue streak. After about five years of it, one of them slowly closed his eye and then opened it again. I invited one of them to come inside the bubble. I told him about the difference in atmosphere, that it might be dangerous. I got one of them to come in. It made no difference to him."

"Well, fine, then," I said. "Just get some of them to come in again, let Aunt Mattie put some clothes on them, and everybody's happy."

He stood up suddenly.

"Take a walk with me, Hap," he said. It was more of a command than an invitation. "Over to the edge of the bubble. I want to show you some natives."

I was willing.

On the way around to the back of the building, over the crunching salt, I had a thought.

"If all he did was close an eye," I said. "How did you learn their language, so you could invite him inside, explain about the atmosphere?"

"I don't even know they have a language," he said. "Maybe he learned mine. I used to draw pictures in the salt, the way they taught us at school, and say words. Maybe it took him five years to put the thoughts together, maybe they don't have any concept of language at all, or need it. Maybe he was thinking about something else all those five years, and just got around to noticing me. I don't know, Hap."

We came around the edge of an outbuilding then to an unobstructed view of the bubble edge. Even through dark glasses he'd cautioned me to wear with a gesture, as he put on another pair for himself, the scene through the clear plastic was blinding white. Scattered here and there on the glistening salt were blobs of black.

"Why," I exclaimed. "Those are octopi. I suppose that's what the natives use for food? I've wondered."

"Well," I said after some long moments of staring. "It will be a challenge to the D.T.'s, won't it?"

He looked at me with disgust.

"What do they eat?" I asked. "Salt?"

"I don't know if they eat," he said. "Can't you get it through your thick skull, man, that these things are alien? Completely alien? How do I know?"

"Well you must know some things after five years of study. You must have observed them. They must get food somehow, they must sleep and wake, they must procreate. You must have observed something."

"I've observed the process of procreation," he answered cautiously.

"Well fine, then," I said. "That's what's going to concern Aunt Mattie the most."

"Here's something that may help you understand them," he said, and I felt a bit of the sardonic in his voice, a grimness. "When that one visited me inside here," he said. "I took him into my office, so I could photograph him better with all the equipment. I was explaining everything, not knowing how much he understood. I happened to pick up a cigarette and a lighter. Soon as I flipped the lighter on, he shot up a tentacle and took it out of my hand. I let him keep it, of course. Next day, when I went outside, everyone of them, as far as I could see in the distance, had a lighter, exactly like the one I'd given him. Furthermore, in a chlorinated atmosphere, without oxygen, those lighters burned normally. Does that help you to understand them better?" he asked with no attempt to hide the heavy irony.

I didn't have a chance to answer because we both heard a crunching in the salt behind us. We turned about and there was Aunt Mattie and her two committee women behind her also now in dark glasses. I waited until the ladies had come up to us, then I waved my arm grandly at the scene beyond the plastic.

"Behold the natives in all their nakedness, Aunt Mattie," I said. Then, to soften the blow it must have been, "I'm afraid somebody was pulling your leg when they reported it to the D.T.'s."

Miss Point gasped audibly.

Mrs. Waddle said, "Shocking!"

I couldn't tell whether it was the sight of the natives, or my remark which indicated I knew they had legs to pull.

For the first time in my life I saw uncertainty in Aunt Mattie's eyes as she looked, startled, at me, and then at Johnny. Then her chin squared, her back straightened still more, the shelf of her bosom firmed.

"It really won't be too much of a problem, girls," she said. "Actually simpler than some we've solved. Take a square of cloth, cut a hole in the center for that headlike pouch to come through where its eye is, put in a draw string to cinch it up tight, above those--ah--those protuberances, and let it flow out over those--ah--legs. Simple, and quite attractive, don't you think?"

The girls nodded happily, and Johnny just stood there gasping for breath.

It was simpler than any of us had thought.

Johnny looked at me desperately when Aunt Mattie told him to have one of the natives come in so she could fit a pattern on it, to see if any gussets would be needed for fullness--whatever gussets might be.

"One of them came inside before," I said in answer to Johnny's pleading look. "Ask him again. If he refuses, Mohammed will go to the mountain. I'm sure you have extra space suits. I'm sure the ladies won't mind going out to the natives if the natives won't come to them."

"I don't know," Johnny said miserably. "He may have had sufficient curiosity to come inside once, but not sufficient to bring him in again. You see, ladies," he turned to them desperately. "They don't seem to care about us, one way or the other."

The two committee women looked apprehensively at Aunt Mattie. Not to care about her, one way or the other? This was beyond comprehension. But Aunt Mattie was equal to it.

"Very well," she said crisply. "We shall not ask them to come to us. We shall go to them. It is our duty to carry enlightenment to the ignorant, wherever they may be, so that they can be taught to care. In the performance of our duty, we have no room for pride. We shall go to them, humbly, happily."

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