Venus on the Half-Shell (16 page)

“And so am I,” Simon said. “So you got your freedom because of a malfunctioning circuit?”

“I suppose so. And that worries me. What if another accident makes the circuit function again?”

“It’s not likely.”

“Of course,” she said, “I’m by no means entirely unprogrammed. But then who, robot or human, is? I have certain tastes in food and drink, I loathe birds...”

“Why do you hate birds?”

“Zappo was frightened by one when he was a child. And so he had all his robots programmed to hate birds. He didn’t want us to be superior to him in any respect.”

“You can’t really blame him for that,” Simon said. “Well, how about it, Chworktap? Would you like to come with me?”

“Where are you going?”

“Everywhere until I find the answer to my primal question.”

“What’s that?”

“Why are we born only to suffer and die?”

“What you’re saying is this,” she said. “Nothing else matters if we have immortality.”

“Without immortality, the universe is meaningless,” he said. “Ethics, morality, society as a whole are just means to get through life with the least pain. They can all be reduced to one term: economy.”

“An economy that is nowhere more than thirty percent efficient,” she said.

“You don’t know that. You haven’t been everywhere.”

“But you’re going everywhere?”

“If possible. I’ve already eliminated my galaxy, though. I know from what I’ve read that the answer is not there. But what about you, Chworktap? What about your genes? Most of them are artificial. So you shouldn’t have any gene pattern to predetermine your reactions to philosophical problems.”

“I’m a crazy quilt of chromosomes,” she said. “All my genes are based on those which once existed. Each is copied after a certain person’s, though each is an improved model. But I have the genes of many individuals. You might say I have a thousand parents, a hundred thousand grandparents.”

They were interrupted at this point by a loud crash outside the ship. They hurried out to see, a quarter of a mile away, a female and a male Giffardian lying in ruins. The male had burst into flame, and both were burning away under a strong wind.

This wasn’t the first crash of this type, nor was it likely to be the last. The females’ insistence that they be given rides was causing many accidents, usually fatal. The weight of the female at the nose-end made the male upend. To sustain altitude, he had to jet his drive-gas through his fore opening at full speed. The two would go straight up, and then the male would get exhausted. And down they would come.

“And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put them together again,” Simon murmured.

“Why don’t they just quit that?” Chworktap said.

“Their genes drive them to their actions,” Simon said maliciously.

“If they keep this up, they’ll become extinct,” she said. “Even if there weren’t any crashes, they’ll die out. The air-time keeps the females from browsing, and so the young aren’t getting enough food. Look how thin they’ve become!”

What the Giffardians did was none of Simon’s business, but that didn’t keep him from interfering. At dusk, when the males had come down, and males and young were locked into the females, he went into the meadow. And there he proposed that they should settle their conflict. Let them choose him as an objective judge and abide by his decision.

He was, of course, rejected. But a few days later, after three couples had fallen to their death, a female and a male approached him. The former he called Amelia and the latter Ferdinand. Graf and Gräfin, the leader and his wife, had been smashed to bits only the day before. Amelia and Ferdinand, as next in line in the pecking order, had become the chiefs. A funeral had been held, at which Simon had brought flowers. The preacher of the flock had given a eulogy. Graf was praised for his outstanding leadership, though everyone knew he had been a lazy bully who had delegated most of his administrative work to underlings. He was praised for his faithfulness as a mate, though everyone knew he was always luring females to the other side of the forest and half of the herd could call him father. The preacher spoke of what an exemplary family man he was, although everyone knew that he had not spoken to his children unless they were irritating him and then it was to blow them end over end with a mighty fart.

Gräfin was praised as a patient hard-working wife and mother. She had certainly been hard-working, but her loudmouthed bitchings about her husband and her backbiting gossip were well known.

Simon didn’t find anything strange in this. He had attended many such.

At the end of the funeral, Amelia and Ferdinand had asked to see Simon the next day. And so here they were.

What they wanted was simple but not easy. Simon was to decide whether or not the sky-rides should continue. The females still wanted to go up, and the males were still dead-set against it.

Simon said that he would accept the appointment, but it might be a few days before he could come to a decision.

After two days and nights, Simon retreated into the
Hwang Ho.
The females had sidled up to him on their hundred legs and offered all they had if he’d judge in their favor. Simon didn’t think their offers were very attractive even if he had been corruptible. If he had tried sexual intercourse with them, he would have fallen down their huge apex-hole into their stomachs. Nor did he like the idea of eating regurgitated food from their apex-organs.

The males offered day-long rides. He could even smoke during them. They’d dangle him as far away as possible from the end of a mid-body tentacle. They couldn’t guarantee, of course, that they could keep a grip on him. As an additional incentive, they’d elect him leader of the herd. Ferdinand wouldn’t like that but he could just blow it out as far as the others were concerned.

Simon could keep the ship’s ports closed and so block out the entreaties of the females, who stood around the ship and whistled fumes at him. But he had to look through the viewscreens from time to time to cool his cabin fever. When he did so, he saw the huge black dot-and-dash clouds the males were laying out in the air above him. This was the first time he had seen obscene skywriting.

“Whichever way you decide, your life won’t be safe,” Chworktap said. “Why don’t we just leave?”

“I gave my word.”

“And what would happen if you didn’t keep it?”

“Nothing of cosmic importance. But to me it would mean that I am less than a man. I’d have no dignity, no personal integrity. People wouldn’t trust me because I couldn’t trust myself. Everybody, including myself, would be contemptuous of me.”

“You’d rather die?”

“I think so,” he said.

“But it doesn’t make sense.”

“Society would fall apart if people didn’t keep their words.”

“How many people on Earth kept theirs?”

Simon thought for a moment and then said, “Not many.”

“And Earth society fell apart?”

“Well, no,” he said. “But it didn’t operate very efficiently, either.”

“So what are you going to tell the Giffardians?” she said.

“Come with me, you’ll find out.”

Accompanied by her, the dog, and the owl, he walked through the forest to the meadow. At its edge he shot off a Very rocket, at sight of which the females wobbled toward him and the males sailed toward him. The young continued playing. When all the males had wrapped their tentacles around large rocks to anchor themselves, Simon proposed his new system.

“I hope this will make everybody happy,” he said. “It’s a compromise of sorts, but nothing workable is ever achieved in this world without compromise.”

“Don’t try to soften us males up,” Ferdinand whistled at him. “We know what’s right.”

“Don’t try to take away our hard-earned rights,” Amelia whistled.

“Please!” Simon said, holding up his hand. “I have a plan whereby all you females can get your air-time. And it’ll be absolutely safe. No more crashes. The only thing is, it means that you’ll have to change your system of marriage.”

He waited until the storm of whistles had ceased and the wind had blown the stenches clear.

“You’re monogamous,” he said. “One male married to one female for life. A good system it is, though, if you will pardon the observation of an objective alien, more honored in the breach than in the observance. But if you females want to enjoy flight, you’ll have to change the system.”

There was another storm which deafened him and made him choke and gasp. When it subsided, he said, “Why don’t you set up a polyandrous system?”

“What’s that?” they whistled, among other things.

“Well, you forbid any male to lock into the mouth-vulva of any female unless he’s married to her. But what if one female was married to two males?”

The females were silent. Their eight eyes rolled around and around, which was a Giffardian’s way of showing deep thought. The males were scandalized, and the ripping noises and sulphides drove Simon and Chworktap into the bushes for a moment.

When he came out, Simon said, “It’s a matter of logic. The only way a female can be safely carried is by two males. They can share the burden and easily levitate a female. There won’t be any more crashes.”

“And how can we possibly do that?” Ferdinand said.

“Why, two males can lock into one female, one in the oral opening of the apex-lock and one in the anal. Two males can easily carry one female. On one day, half of the females can fly; the next day the other half take their turns. It’s all so easy; I don’t know why you didn’t figure that out...”

Fortunately, the females were too wide to get through the forest and the males had to fly overhead against a strong wind. Simon and Chworktap fled hand in hand with Anubis howling after them and the owl flying overhead. Even so, the males were only a few feet behind them when Simon and the party broke out of the woods. They reached the spaceship three steps ahead of Ferdinand’s tentacles and threw themselves through the port. Simon closed it and gave orders to the computer to take off for stars unknown.

Chworktap, panting, said, “I hope this teaches you a lesson.”

“How was I to know they’d get so mad?” Simon said.

Years later, he was to run across a being from Shekshekel who had landed on Giffard about fifty years after the Earthman’s visit.

“They told me about you,” the Shekshekel said. “They still refer to you as Simon the Sodomite.”

11

The
Hwang Ho
, after a few days, headed for the planet Lalorlong. Chworktap had told Simon that she had heard that this was inhabited by a very philosophical race.

“They don’t have much else to do but think.”

“Then we’ll go there,” Simon said. “It seems to me that if anybody has the answers, they would.”

Lalorlong hove to. It was a planet about Earth-size which had long ago lost all its surface water except at the poles. Erosion had filled the oceans and cut down the land until the planet was a smooth globe. The difference in temperature between the polar and the warm regions and that created by the tilting of the axis caused general winds. These followed an easily predictable course.

The only object that rose above the surface was the gigantic heart-shaped tower of the Clerun-Gowph. This had fallen over, its base of stone eaten away by the winds. Simon had the ship fly over it so he could take a look at it. There wasn’t any sign of life, but he hadn’t expected any. The tower must have been erected a billion years ago and fallen many millions ago. What a sound its topple must have made!

Who was there to hear it? Only the sentient species of Lalorlong. They were the only animal life left. The only vegetable life was a type of tumbleweed on which the Lalorlongians depended for food and water. The plant apparently had very deep roots that sucked up water from the rocks and broke down the chemicals in them to form its own food. When it grew to a certain height, the upper part would fall off and whirl over and over, borne around the world unless it was intercepted by a hungry Lalorlongian.

The natives resembled automobile wheels with balloon tires. The tires were composed of thin but tough inflated skins with diamond-shaped treads. The wheel part consisted of a rim of bone and twelve bone spokes which grew from the hub. The hub was a ball covered with a hard shell like an ant’s exoskeleton. This contained the brain and the nervous, digestive, and sexual systems. In the center of the right and left side was a round hole. A cartilaginous stalk ran out from each hole horizontally for a few inches and then abruptly curved straight upward. The stalks reached approximately two feet above the tire and each ended in two eyes on separately rotatable auxiliary stalks. Halfway down each was a bulbous organ which could flash a light like a firefly’s. They used these at night for illumination and sometimes in the day to signal turns.