Star Spring Read online

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  NIETZSCHE said nothing.

  Kant had ranted. He had to be shut off. Lao Tzu had gone with the flow, the Buddha just laughed at the questions, and Aristotle had been so distracted by the loop-de-loops of gadgetry arrayed about him that he answered the questions in monosyllables.

  Jesus Christ had tried to storm out in total disgust.

  “You see,” Plato said, “there’s this cave.” He did not wear Athenian clothing. Rather, they had fitted him in plain khaki coveralls. “We’re all sitting in this cave, staring at the shadows of ourselves flickering on the wall.” Utilizing the spotlight shining upon him, he executed a very good shadow rabbit. “Now, if we had the wits, we’d realize that the world is not shadows. We’d turn around, see the fire behind us. We’d figure out how to knock the manacles off our feet. We’d troop on out and realize, by God, there’s this whole other world around us, lit by the true fire, the Sun. Thus, we poor deluded creatures are merely Forms temporarily reflecting the World of Ideas, of the Good.”

  The Arachnid looked up from his guitar.

  “Gotta good beat. I can dance to it. I’ll give it a seventy percent.” With a set of digits he tapped cacophony into a keyboard bank. “You haven’t got your science right, though. We’ll have to fit you somewhere in the fantasy scenarios. Oh, and Mister P.” The Arachnid gave a mechanical smile. “Watch it with the boys, huh? This will be a G-rated level I’m slotting you in. At least until the Change.”

  As the philosopher slumped back to the Waiting Bench, the spindly creature behind the consoles phased him out. He picked up his worn Gibson. With only half of its sixty-six fingers or articulated toes, he again attempted to pick out Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.

  A bulb-room, suspended on gossamer wire, aglow with shivering colors, descended behind the biobot. From it stepped a bearded man wrapped in casual robes. “Interesting,” he said. “Try these now.” He placed a handful of storage crystals on the counter, then strode back to his comfortable null-G harness supports in the bulb.

  One of the Arachnid’s ten ocular units swiveled to survey the labels. “My God. This stuff is all Greek to me.” He gave a rattly chortle. “I drink, therefore I am.”

  The dark-haired man raised a leonine eyebrow, shrugged, and got back into his chamber.

  “Lemme see,” the creature said, casting a few eyes over labels to the tapes. “William James. Søren Kierkegaard. Alan Watts. Lazarus Long. All the hits of the hot one hundred.” Oculars leaped up with gleaming enthusiasm. “So, munchkins, let’s blow your brains with a Mystery Song!”

  A spindly limb unwound. The previous crystal popped up from its holder. A new one dropped into the hole.

  Particolored lights upon the readout boards did sprightly jigs.

  On the Waiting Bench was a line of figures stretching into the surrounding darkness. A man seated there jerked as though hit with an electric shock. He stood. Slowly, he stepped into the spotlight. He blinked with the brightness.

  The Arachnid strummed a resonant G chord on his guitar. “Ta da! And now, ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment from the entertainment capital of the universe, that ever popular game show, What’s My Philosophy? Well, our Mystery Guest has come into a state of Being. Or is it Becoming? Perhaps Begoing! I’m your insectoid host, about to spin a web of fun. So let’s dive right into it with the first part of the show, ‘Beat the Digital Chronometer!’ Mr. Philosopher, if you can answer these questions satisfactorily before the buzzer beeps, you’ll win an all-expense-paid trip straight from the grave onto the luxury liner Star Fall!”

  The Arachnid fingered a stringed fanfare.

  “Mr. Philosopher, in less than sixty seconds, can you summarize your epistemology?”

  The man in the spotlight shuddered. “I ... I’m very confused. I’m sorry, but I don’t know where I am.”

  “Ah! A Buddhist? A Hindu, maybe? Is the world an illusion, Mr. Mystery Philosopher? Are we all walking around in a state of maya?”

  “Maya? Weren’t they South American or something?”

  “Come, come, sir. The seconds are ticking away. What’s your epistemology?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your theory of knowledge, man. What can be known? How can we be sure that our assumptions about existence are true? How can we be sure about anything?”

  The man gulped. “Can I go? I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Ah ha! An existentialist! Having made a choice of free will, you become an authentic individual. You experience the nausea of existence.”

  The man bolted into the shadows. Heaving sounds ensued. When he returned, his face was pale.

  Uneasily, the Arachnid said, “Aren’t you being a little too literal?”

  “Look. Is this some kind of real-fic or something? If it is, I’m not enjoying it very much,” the man said. “I signed up for this voyage to be entertained. Now I’m just scared. Who are you? Where am I?”

  “Hmm. A contemporary philosopher, then, using Socratic methods. A question answered with a question. I am intrigued. You wouldn’t be associated with that new school of Absurdist Yoga, would you?”

  “Where’s the door, please?”

  “Okay. We’ll make this quick. We’ll skip the politics and ethics. The latter bores me, anyway. Tell me what your metaphysics are and I’ll release you.”

  “Metaphysics?”

  “Yes, yes! What is the ultimate nature of reality?”

  The man shook his head despairingly. “I really don’t know. I suppose I used to think I knew. But I wasn’t very happy then, either.”

  Wearily the Arachnid drummed his fingers on the counter. It took a long time.

  Finally, he said, “I give up. What’s your name? You must be extremely modern. I’ve not heard of any of your obscuretant methodologies. I’m not even sure we can really use you. We need concrete ideas to play with. Intimations of the Truth.”

  In a small voice, the man said, “My name is Todd Spigot, and I’m sure there must be some kind of mistake, because I’m not a philosopher. I’m just a tourist, for God’s sake!”

  The Arachnid abruptly stood from its chair. The multitude of thin limbs radiating from the squat black body bristled like the quills of an excited porcupine. Its voice became scratches upon ice. “What ... what did you say your name was?” Flesh sacks dangling from its side ballooned, purpling. Saliva dripped from its inadvertently exposed mouth.

  “Todd Spigot. I’m from a planet called Deadrock, and if you don’t let me out of here I’m going to ask for some kind of refund and—”

  Without warning, the Arachnid leaped. Previously sheathed scalpels and knives erupted. Its digits became claws.

  The man didn’t even have time to scream. The Arachnid tore him apart.

  The bulb-chamber descended. The dark man emerged. The colors which backed him were subdued now, even somber.

  He regarded the mess and scratched his beard. “Oh dear me,” he said, but without emotion.

  The Arachnid canted its oculars. Blood pooled about the bits of body lying at its feet. “I think I broke my nose,” he said, rubbing a particular protrusion.

  The dark man popped the crystal. “I shouldn’t have given you this one. My mistake.” He stooped, scooped up a chunk of apparatus and wires from the gore. “Well, you didn’t harm the equipment anyway. You’re just lucky the body was one of our few tabula rasas.”

  “You promised me the real one,” the Arachnid said.

  “And so I did,” the robed man replied.

  “And the man named Amber.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the woman.”
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  “We just happen to have constructed a personality mockup of Spigot. I was reviewing the crystal and it got mixed up with that particular set of tapes I gave you. You imprinted the persona onto the body through this set of Reality Suspenders.”

  “You realize we’re due to leave orbit soon,” the Arachnid said. “Spigot. Amber. Shepherd. They’re still on the surface.”

  The dark man smiled. His robes whispered as he turned and walked away. As he approached the bulb-chamber, azure and orange glowed like a halo around his head.

  “Arrangements are being made, my friend. Arrangements are being made.”

  Wisps of mist flowed out from the chamber, touching him tenuously, then swallowing him in white and gray and mystery.

  The Arachnid heaved a sigh, then went to call for a janitor.

  NINETY percent of the time, Ace Technician and Sanitary Engineer Second Class Charley Haversham figured, life was unfair.

  “But I got my ten percent all at once, my friends!”

  The vacuum cleaner moved his Black Pawn to Queen’s Knight Four.

  “No, no!” the spritely window washer said. “Castle! Castle!” Droplets of ammoniated water shed from its nozzles and brushes with its vexation.

  “Too late,” Charley Haversham said, sliding his Bishop from behind his Queen. “Check. Mate in three.”

  The vacuum cleaner robot quivered with mechanical indignation. “Just because I’m not programmed for the Russian variations, you take advantage!”

  Behind him, a multidigited compu-clean robot named Hank chattered in agreement, its filaments wiggling languidly like some sea urchin’s tentacles. “Yeah. You know, you’re not exactly playing with the big leagues, Charley.”

  “Well, fellas,” the man in the gray uniform and standard Model G 85 endomorph body announced. “I won’t be around to plague you delightful machines much longer. May I introduce you to Sanitation Engineer Mate Fourth Class Charles Harrington Haversham, ready to ship out day after tomorrow upon the luxury liner Star Fall. No more rocket fins to scrub, pals. I’m going to see the universe!”

  Humming happily to himself, he rose from his chair and repaired to his computer console to complete his monthly report on floor wax and furniture polish consumed by the Greater Nyark Spaceport. All about him were the machines and supplies that kept the great terminal brushed up and sparkling. Settling down to his task, he glanced around. No, he wouldn’t miss this. Not a bit. He realized that even with his upper B IQ, he was lucky to have this job, since employment opportunities were at a premium. He could have been a C or a D, good only for computer supplement plug-in duty, but that could hardly be considered work. You just rented out part of your brain for municipal storage, basically. Naw. He liked to work with his head and his hands, and this job wasn’t all that bad for that. Closest thing he could get ten years ago in the way of something to do with space. He’d always wanted to ship out to some strange and exotic planet. Not many Earthsiders got that chance. At least here, he got a glimpse of the colonists and the aliens trooping through the starport on their way to wherever.

  All his bland life he’d had to resort to whatever the Fics Kicks people were dishing out in the way of outer space episodes to satisfy his desire to explore something beyond his commune-home in Chemical Swamp, Joisy. As soon as he’d managed to latch onto this job, though, and gotten an eyeful of a real Aslasi padding along on its floppy feet, or an actual Nork hoarsely breathing through its respirator/adaptor as it headed for its sightseeing bus, all his previous impressions of alien life turned to dust and blew away. He knew he had to get out to the starways somehow. When the maintenance position for the Star Fall, choicest plum possible, opened up he applied as he always did for such vacancies, not really expecting it, but digging out his dusty Karma Prayer Wheel and feeding it nickels, just in case.

  In fact, at first he did not make it.

  But when Jim Michaels’ psych-tests came up MAL-ADJUST for long-term space service, a desperate Charley Haversham had diddled with the selection computer with the help of one of his robot friends, and his name as replacement had come out on top.

  Debbie, one of his line-mates, had complained, and he would miss her more than any of the others of his family in Joisy, but, after all, it would only be a year. Right?

  Right. A year’s cruise on the famous Star Fall. So what if it meant sewage detail? He could live with that a few hours a day, if it meant milling about with people from different worlds, perhaps even being able to set his feet on alien soil!

  This, then, would be his last stretch of equipment sitting. Each day, when the starport was at its busiest and automatic maintenance was at its lightest, the cleaning robots would report back here for stasis, diagnostic tests, refueling, self-cleaning and general social kibitzing.

  Haversham grabbed a clipboard for his usual checkpoint run of the machines. He strolled along the rank and file, taking great pleasure in noting the quantities of grit and grime the boys had scraped up from the mammoth terminal last night. Scrape and shine! Brush and polish! The vast industry of these wondrous mechanisms pleased him greatly. He looked forward to getting a look at the systems aboard the Star Fall. Hard to believe he was shipping up tomorrow evening.

  Something scampered across his path.

  Something about knee-level.

  What was that?

  Striding forward, he turned into the small alcove into which the thing had disappeared.

  The Multipurpose Cleaners’ Section.

  Standing by one of the units was a severed leg. Metal hands were already embedded in the cleaner’s guts. Odds and ends were strewn all over the floor. Nearby sat an empty box labeled ACME ROCKET IMPULSE ENGINE.

  The leg swiveled. Ocular units aligned upon the new arrival. “Oh. Hullo. You must be Charley Haversham.”

  Haversham stared at the leg. “Who are you? What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Come here,” the leg said. “I want to show you something.”

  Baffled, racking his brain as to why someone would make a robot leg, wondering if there was some poor humanoid robot hopping around out there without one, Charley Haversham stepped forward.

  “Charley,” the leg said with a voice that sounded like a Bronx pixie with a cold, “the fate of the known universe hangs in the balance.”

  “Huh?” Clearly the leg was deranged. God knew what it would do. He’d have to coax it into an analysis cabinet to check on the status of its programming.

  “Charley,” the leg said, lifting an insta-solder tool delicately in its digits. “You may not realize it now, but you are about to become a key player in a game where there are great things at stake.”

  This thing was crazed! Maybe, Charley thought, he should just run and get some help. That might be—

  With a mechanical hum, a thing that looked like nothing so much as a child’s toy cannon lifted from the top of the robot leg.

  A pink stun-beam streaked from its nozzle, striking Charley Haversham between the eyes.

  Beatific visions streaked through his brain before a curtain of darkness dropped midway through the act. He, however, remained standing. “Okay, Charley,” the leg said. “This is what we have to do.”

  TODD SPIGOT stared morosely through the window. Sunlight winked back at him from the skyline of Greater Nyark City. Miracles of architecture, the buildings reared and tilted and twisted in defiance of gravity, like God’s showcase garden for His universe’s minerals. Hovercraft hung, drifted or whisked by in regular patterns, following force-field flow. The sun was high. The day was clean, clear, a crystal glass set down to preserve the perfection.

  “What’s the meaning of life, anyway?” Todd Spigot asked the psychiatric engineer.

  The Doctor placed the rare, expensive poison from Altair II in a cup. “Don’t you think you’re gripping the broad end of the bat with that question, Mr. Spigot?”


  “Seems to me with the money this is costing me, I should go straight to the heart of the matter.” Todd Spigot let the sentence go with a sigh. He adjusted the polarity of the window, darkening it. His reflection faded into existence, a ghost in the glass.

  Not a bad-looking ghost, either. A couple of shifts in the DNA mix had thinned his new endomorph-G body’s chin and nose, raised the cheekbones. The accelerated cloning process had whisked the altered genetics through adolescence and the Valley of the Shadow of Acne. His skin was smooth now, his brown hair curly and well-kept. His somatotype had shifted a little closer to ectomorphic, regular exercise had been able to build up a reasonably proportioned body. Nothing approaching the contours of the MacGuffin, but then Todd had more than willingly shed that particular mortal coil after the difficulties it had dragged him through.

  “Coffee?” the lady PE asked.

  “Makes me jumpy,” Todd returned.

  “I’ve adjusted the mix to match your metabolism’s ability to cope with it. A little lift, Mr. Spigot. That’s all.”

  “Okay.”

  The Doctor poured. The poison foamed only a little. It had specifically adjusted to match Todd Spigot’s metabolism as well, only not designed to give him much of a lift. An hour after ingestion, he would drop, his viscera converted to the consistency of oatmeal. “I promise you, Mr. Spigot. With our methods of treatment, your problems will soon be over.”

  “The damnable aspect,” Todd said, shaking his hands above his head as he turned back to his therapist. “The frustrating thing is that I shouldn’t be feeling this way.”

  “That’s what we’re here to talk about, Mr. Spigot,” the Doctor said with an encouraging smile. She had a soothing voice. Her machines hummed in harmony behind her, sucking in the conversation, analyzing Todd’s body chemistry and brainwaves for possible imbalances. Maladjustment was a sin on Earth. Remedies for the mildest depression were only a pill away, a house-call shrink distant. Psychoanalysis and psychiatry had ceased being scientific pursuits so much as the vendors of the latest in pacifiers.