In Space No One Can Hear You Scream Page 5

  Frog glop, I thought. Frog water.

  I had to smile.

  She couldn’t turn off the water.

  She couldn’t tell the ship to save her.

  She couldn’t even scream.

  I watched her in that frog water. She turned from milky white to blue. And when she was blue, I saw something else she was doing. She was forming a picture on the surface of her membrane.

  Not fair.

  It was Mom. Her face. Frowning, the way she’d looked when I hurt her feelings. After she drank the frog water and was gagging over the kitchen sink and I was laughing at her.

  Aleria had stolen enough of me to show me that.

  But I’m eleven. I know real from fake.

  I kept on laughing.

  I mean, she was a blob in a quivery, jiggly coating of froggy, jumpy water. It was the water I was laughing at, the way it moved.

  I kept on laughing while Aleria went from blue to green and from green to brown.

  She stayed brown.

  My laugh turned into a kind of a chuckle, then a wheezing kind of thing, and then it felt like it was going to turn into crying. I didn’t want that, so I stopped as quickly as I’d started and held it all in. After that, I stared at Aleria for a long, long time.

  She drowned—suspended in a quivering coating of water, only a few meters from safety. A dead blob in frog water.

  When I finally spoke, it was a whisper. “Is Aleria dead, ship?”

  “Affirmative. Captain Aleria is dead.” The voice was neutral. No feeling. Gray. And it was a huge relief to hear after Aleria’s honey-sweet Mother voice. I could go with gray for now.

  Of course I didn’t take the ship’s word for it, not entirely. Like I said, the ship wasn’t the brightest brain in the universe. No, I left Aleria floating there for another light cycle. When I woke up from a tired, restless sleep, she hadn’t wiggled free. Hadn’t somehow come back to life. There she hung.

  Aleria was dead. I made double sure of it by expelling her remains via the disposal unit.

  “Space or recycle?” asked the ship.

  You can guess the answer I gave.

  I ate. The stuff the ship fed me through a food maker-bump was gray and didn’t taste like much, but it kept me alive.

  It was time to have a serious talk with the ship.

  I went to the bridge. There were still lots of gobs of water hanging around. I hadn’t managed to suck the place dry yet. Floating around there felt a little like walking in that misty stuff when Da took us on the hike up to that overlook one time. I couldn’t remember the name of the place. Mount Overlook or something like that, but I knew that couldn’t be the right name. Who would call a mountain Mount Overlook? I wished, like I always wished, that I had been paying better attention.

  That’s okay. I was just a kid, I thought.

  And then I realized I wasn’t anymore. Not now.

  So I was all ready to have an argument with ship, for it to be a struggle. The truth was I was expecting to have to figure out some way to sabotage the vessel if I had to. There was no way we were going to the Meeb system. I’d blow us up first.

  “Ship,” I said. “We need to talk.”

  And the ship answered in its neutral, gray tone with maybe the sweetest words I’ve ever heard.

  “Yes, Captain Aleria, how may I serve you?”

  “But ship, you know Aleria is dead. You said she was dead yourself.”

  “Speaker mech signal identifies as Captain Aleria,” the ship replied. “Previous reading has been discarded.”

  I sighed, and felt the tightness and a little bit of the scared-ness and terrified-ness leak out of me.

  And then, I think I started to cry. And I let myself. Just a little. My face was already wet, with all that mist in the air. When I first woke up in the crèche trap and then when Aleria took me on board her ship, I had cried a lot. But then I stopped, and I hadn’t for a long, long time. Maybe this was because tears are hard to deal with in zero g. They kind of stick to your eyes when you don’t wipe them and make little globs. They don’t run down your face and they don’t go away. In zero g, you have to do something about tears or they’ll just, you know, stay.

  “Do you have a fix on the system we recently visited, ship? The one with the crèche trap in orbit around the planet called Earth?”

  “Yes, captain.”

  “If we turned around and started immediately, do we have enough fuel and supplies to make it back there?”

  “Yes, captain.”

  Was this really what I wanted? I was more than half a Meeb, or the ship wouldn’t have recognized me as captain. I was afraid to have the ship make a mirror. I was afraid to look myself in the face. My skin was gray and glinted a little from the mech. What would the rest of me look like?

  But I was still me. Still Megan. I was just—different, now.

  And I had to make sure that the next time a Meeb scout showed up to steal a human child, she got met by some very angry very dangerous moms and dads.

  I wiped my tears. Oh, whatever. I was gray. Okay, maybe I was half-human, half-Meeb. This was the way things were. I had to deal with it. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was eleven. Practically a teenager.

  “Take us to Earth, ship.”

  Take me home.

  Peter Phillips

  Say you’re an intrepid space explorer and your ship happens to crash on an uncharted planet—but then you receive radio transmissions from someone outside who’s actually speaking your language. Your obvious reaction would be to take heart and await help. And the ones sending those transmissions are very eager to help, but unfortunately both you and they have not understood the grim realities of the situation . . .

  Peter Phillips (1920-2012) was born in London, England. He made a big splash with his story, “Dreams are Sacred” in the September 1948 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction. The story, in which the narrator’s psyche is sent into the mind of a patient who has withdrawn from reality, is now recognized as a classic, and was soon followed by another remarkable story, Manna, in the February 1949 issue of the same magazine. The two stories were noted for striking originality of concept and cheerfulness of outlook. The first quality is certainly true of the story which follows, but “Lost Memory” has an outlook which is anything but cheerful.

  LOST MEMORY

  Peter Phillips

  I collapsed joints and hung up to talk with Dak-whirr. He blinked his eyes in some discomfort.

  “What do you want, Palil?” he asked complainingly.

  “As if you didn’t know.”

  “I can’t give you permission to examine it. The thing is being saved for inspection by the board. What guarantee do I have that you won’t spoil it for them?”

  I thrust confidentially at one of his body-plates. “You owe me a favor,” I said. “Remember?”

  “That was a long time in the past.”

  “Only two thousand revolutions and a reassembly ago. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be eroding in a pit. All I want is a quick look at its thinking part. I’ll vrull the consciousness without laying a single pair of pliers on it.”

  He went into a feedback twitch, an indication of the conðflict between his debt to me and his self-conceived duty.

  Finally he said, “Very well, but keep tuned to me. If I warn that a board member is coming, remove yourself quickly. Anyway how do you know it has consciousness? It may be mere primal metal.”

  “In that form? Don’t be foolish. It’s obviously a manufacture. And I’m not conceited enough to believe that we are the only form of intelligent manufacture in the Universe.”

  “Tautologous phrasing, Palil,” Dak-whirr said pedanticðally. “There could not conceivably be ‘unintelligent manufacture.’ There can be no consciousness without manufacture, and no manufacture without intelligence. Therefore there can be no consciousness without intelligence. Now if you should wish to dispute—”

  I tuned off his frequency abruptly and hurried away. Dak-whirr is a fool an
d a bore. Everyone knows there’s a fault in his logic circuit, but he refuses to have it traced down and repaired. Very unintelligent of him.

  The thing had been taken into one of the museum sheds by the carriers. I gazed at it in admiration for some moments. It was beautiful, having suffered only slight exterior damage, and was obviously no mere conglomeration of sky metal.

  In fact, I immediately thought of it as “he” and endowed it with the attributes of self-knowing, although, of course, his consciousness could not be functioning or he would have attempted communication with us.

  I fervently hoped that the board, after his careful disðassembly and study, could restore his awareness so that he could tell us himself which solar system he came from.

  Imagine it! He had achieved our dream of many thousands of revolutions—space flight—only to be fused, or worse, in his moment of triumph.

  I felt a surge of sympathy for the lonely traveller as he lay there, still, silent, non-emitting. Anyway, I mused, even if we couldn’t restore him to self-knowing, an analysis of his construction might give us the secret of the power he had used to achieve the velocity to escape his planet’s gravity.

  In shape and size he was not unlike Swen—or Swen Two, as he called himself after his conversion—who failed so disastrously to reach our satellite, using chemical fuels. But where Swen Two had placed his tubes, the stranger had a curious helical construction studded at irregular intervals with small crystals.

  He was thirty-five feet tall, a gracefully tapering cylinder. Standing at his head, I could find no sign of exterior vision cells, so I assumed he had some kind of vrulling sense. There seemed to be no exterior markings at all, except the long, shallow grooves dented in his skin by scraping to a stop along the hard surface of our planet.

  I am a reporter with warm current in my wires, not a cold-thinking scientist, so I hesitated before using my own vrulling sense. Even though the stranger was non-aware—perhaps permanently—I felt it would be a presumption, an invasion of privacy. There was nothing else I could do, though, of course.

  I started to vrull, gently at first, then harder, until I was positively glowing with effort. It was incredible; his skin seemed absolutely impermeable.

  The sudden realisation that metal could be so alien nearly fused something inside me. I found myself backing away in horror, my self-preservation relay working overtime.

  Imagine watching one of the beautiful cone-rod-and-cylinder assemblies performing the Dance of the Seven Spanners, as he’s conditioned to do, and then suddenly refusing to do anything except stump around unattractively, or even becoming obstinately motionless, unresponsive. That might give you an idea of how I felt in that dreadful moment.

  Then I remembered Dak-whirr’s words—there could be no such thing as an “unintelligent manufacture.” And a product so beautiful could surely not be evil. I overcame my repugðnance and approached again.

  I halted as an open transmission came from someone near at hand.

  “Who gave that squeaking reporter permission to snoop around here?”

  I had forgotten the museum board. Five of them were standing in the doorway of the shed, radiating anger. I recognised Chirik, the chairman, and addressed myself to him. I explained that I’d interfered with nothing and pleaded for permission on behalf of my subscribers to watch their investigation of the stranger. After some argument, they allowed me to stay.

  I watched in silence and amusement as one by one they tried to vrull the silent being from space. Each showed the same reaction as myself when they failed to penetrate the skin.

  Chirik, who is wheeled—and inordinately vain about his suspension system—flung himself back on his supports and pretended to be thinking.

  “Fetch Fiff-fiff,” he said at last. “The creature may still be aware, but unable to communicate on our standard freðquencies.”

  Fiff-fiff can detect anything in any spectrum. Fortunately he was at work in the museum that day and soon arrived in answer to the call. He stood silently near the stranger for some moments, testing and adjusting himself, then slid up the electromagnetic band.

  “He’s emitting,” he said.

  “Why can’t we get him?” asked Chirik.

  “It’s a curious signal on an unusual band.”

  “Well, what does he say?”

  “Sounds like utter nonsense to me. Wait, I’ll relay and convert it to standard.”

  I made a direct recording naturally, like any good reporter.

  “—after planetfall,” the stranger was saying. “Last dribble of power. If you don’t pick this up, my name is Entropy. Other instruments knocked to hell, airlock jammed and I’m too weak to open it manually. Becoming delirious, too, I guess. Getting strong undirectional ultra-wave reception in Inglish, craziest stuff you ever heard, like goblins muttering, and I know we were the only ship in this sector. If you pick this up, but can’t get a fix in time, give my love to the boys in the mess. Signing off for another couple of hours, but keeping this channel open and hoping . . .”

  “The fall must have deranged him,” said Chirik, gazing at the stranger. “Can’t he see us or hear us?”

  “He couldn’t hear you properly before, but he can now, through me,” Fiff-fiff,” pointed out. “Say something to him, Chirik.”

  “Hello,” said Chirik doubtfully. “Er—welcome to our planet. We are sorry you were hurt by your fall. We offer you the hospitality of our assembly shops. You will feel better when you are repaired and repowered. If you will indicate how we can assist you—”

  “What the hell! What ship is that? Where are you?”

  “We’re here,” said Chirik. “Can’t you see us or vrull us? Your vision circuit is impaired, perhaps? Or do you depend entirely on vrulling? We can’t find your eyes and assumed either that you protected them in some way during flight, or dispensed with vision cells altogether in your conversion.”

  Chirik hesitated, continued apologetically: “But we cannot understand how you vrull, either. While we thought that you were unaware, or even completely fused, we tried to vrull you. Your skin is quite impervious to us, however.”

  The stranger said: “I don’t know if you’re batty or I am. What distance are you from me?”

  Chirik measured quickly. “One meter, two-point-five centimeters from my eyes to your nearest point. Within touching distance, in fact.” Chirik tentatively put out his hand. “Can you not feel me, or has your contact sense also been affected?”

  It became obvious that the stranger had been pitifully deranged. I reproduce his words phonetically from my record, although some of them make little sense. Emphasis, puncðtuative pauses and spelling of unknown terms are mere guesswork, of course.

  He said : “For godsakemann stop talking nonsense, whoever you are. If you’re outside, can’t you see the airlock is jammed? Can’t shift it myself. I’m badly hurt. Get me out of here, please.”

  “Get you out of where?” Chirik looked around, puzzled. “We brought you into an open shed near our museum for a preliminary examination. Now that we know you’re intelliðgent, we shall immediately take you to our assembly shops for healing and recuperation. Rest assured that you’ll have the best possible attention.”

  There was a lengthy pause before the stranger spoke again, and his words were slow and deliberate. His bewilderment is understandable, I believe, if we remember that he could not see, vrull or feel.

  He asked: “What manner of creature are you? Describe yourself.”

  Chirik turned to us and made a significant gesture toward his thinking part, indicating gently that the injured stranger had to be humoured.

  “Certainly,” he replied. “I am an unspecialised bipedal manufacture of standard proportions, lately self-converted to wheeled traction, with a hydraulic suspension system of my own devising which I’m sure will interest you when we resðtore your sense circuits.”

  There was an even longer silence.

  “You are robots,” the stranger said at last. “Cris
e knows how you got here or why you speak Inglish, but you must try to understand me. I am mann. I am a friend of your master, your maker. You must fetch him to me at once.”

  “You are not well,” said Chirik firmly. “Your speech is incoherent and without meaning. Your fall has obviously caused several serious feedbacks, of a very serious nature. Please lower your voltage. We are taking you to our shops immediately. Reserve your strength to assist our specialists as best you can in diagnosing your troubles.”

  “Wait. You must understand. You are—ogodno that’s no good. Have you no memory of mann? The words you use—what meaning have they for you? Manufacture—made by hand hand hand damyou. Healing. Metal is not healed. Skin. Skin is not metal. Eyes. Eyes are not scanning cells. Eyes grow. Eyes are soft. My eyes are soft. Mine eyes have seen the glory—steady on, sun. Get a grip. Take it easy. You out there listen.”

  “Out where?” asked Prrr-chuk, deputy chairman of the museum board.

  I shook my head sorrowfully. This was nonsense, but, like any good reporter, I kept my recorder running.

  The mad words flowed on. “You call me he. Why? You have no seks. You are knewter. You are it it it! I am he, he who made you, sprung from shee, born of wumman. What is wumman, who is silv-ya what is shee that all her swains commend her ogod the bluds flowing again. Remember. Think back, you out there. These words were made by mann, for mann. Hurt, healing, hospitality, horror, deth by loss of blud. Deth Blud. Do you understand these words? Do you remember the soft things that made you? Soft little mann who konkurred the Galaxy and made sentient slaves of his machines and saw the wonders of a million worlds, only this miserable representative has to die in lonely desperation on a far planet, hearing goblin voices in the darkness.”

  Here my recorder reproduces a most curious sound, as though the stranger were using an ancient type of vibratory molecular vocaliser in a gaseous medium to reproduce his words before transmission, and the insulation on his diaphragm had come adrift.