Short Fiction - Algis Budrys (chrysanthemum read aloud .TXT) 📗

And what do you want?” the Martian asked. Sollenar stood half-ringed by them, in a room whose corners he could not see in the uncertain light.

“I offer you Terrestrial currency.”

The English-speaking Martian⁠—the Martian who had admitted to speaking English⁠—turned his head slightly and spoke to his fellows. There were clacking sounds as his lips met. The others reacted variously, one of them suddenly gesturing with what seemed a disgusted flip of his arm before he turned without further word and stalked away, his shoulders looking like the shawled back of a very old and very hungry woman.

“What did Burr give you?” Sollenar asked.

“Burr.” The Martian cocked his head. His eyes were not multifaceted, but gave that impression.

“He was here and he dealt with you. Not long ago. On what basis?”

“Burr. Yes. Burr gave us currency. We will take currency from you. For the same thing we gave him?”

“For immortality, yes.”

“Im⁠—This is a new word.”

“Is it? For the secret of not dying?”

“Not dying? You think we have not-dying for sale here?” The Martian spoke to the others again. Their lips clattered. Others left, like the first one had, moving with great precision and very slow step, and no remaining tolerance for Sollenar.

Sollenar cried out: “What did you sell him, then?”

The principal engineer said: “We made an entertainment device for him.”

“A little thing. This size.” Sollenar cupped his hands.

“You have seen it, then.”

“Yes. And nothing more? That was all he bought here?”

“It was all we had to sell⁠—or give. We don’t yet know whether Earthmen will give us things in exchange for currency. We’ll see, when we next need something from Aresia.”

Sollenar demanded: “How did it work? This thing you sold him.”

“Oh, it lets people tell stories to themselves.”

Sollenar looked closely at the Martian. “What kind of stories?”

“Any kind,” the Martian said blandly. “Burr told us what he wanted. He had drawings with him of an Earthman device that used pictures on a screen, and broadcast sounds, to carry the details of the story told to the auditor.”

“He stole those patents! He couldn’t have used them on Earth.”

“And why should he? Our device needs to convey no precise details. Any mind can make its own. It only needs to be put into a situation, and from there it can do all the work. If an auditor wishes a story of contact with other sexes, for example, the projector simply makes it seem to him, the next time he is with the object of his desire, that he is getting positive feedback⁠—that he is arousing a similar response in that object. Once that has been established for him, the auditor may then leave the machine, move about normally, conduct his life as usual⁠—but always in accordance with the basic situation. It is, you see, in the end a means of introducing system into his view of reality. Of course, his society must understand that he is not in accord with reality, for some of what he does cannot seem rational from an outside view of him. So some care must be taken, but not much. If many such devices were to enter his society, soon the circumstances would become commonplace, and the society would surely readjust to allow for it,” said the English-speaking Martian.

“The machine creates any desired situation in the auditor’s mind?”

“Certainly. There are simple predisposing tapes that can be inserted as desired. Love, adventure, cerebration⁠—it makes no difference.”

Several of the bystanders clacked sounds out to each other. Sollenar looked at them narrowly. It was obvious there had to be more than one English-speaker among these people.

“And the device you gave Burr,” he asked the engineer, neither calmly nor hopefully. “What sort of stories could its auditors tell themselves?”

The Martian cocked his head again. It gave him the look of an owl at a bedroom window. “Oh, there was one situation we were particularly instructed to include. Burr said he was thinking ahead to showing it to an acquaintance of his.

“It was a situation of adventure; of adventure with the fearful. And it was to end in loss and bitterness.” The Martian looked even more closely at Sollenar. “Of course, the device does not specify details. No one but the auditor can know what fearful thing inhabits his story, or precisely how the end of it would come. You would, I believe, be Rufus Sollenar? Burr spoke of you and made the noise of laughing.”

Sollenar opened his mouth. But there was nothing to say.

“You want such a device?” the Martian asked. “We’ve prepared several since Burr left. He spoke of machines that would manufacture them in astronomical numbers. We, of course, have done our best with our poor hands.”

Sollenar said: “I would like to look out your door.”

“Pleasure.”

Sollenar opened the door slightly. Mr. Ermine stood in the cleared street, motionless as the shadow buildings behind him. He raised one hand in a gesture of unfelt greeting as he saw Sollenar, then put it back on the stock of his rifle. Sollenar closed the door, and turned to the Martian. “How much currency do you want?”

“Oh, all you have with you. You people always have a good deal with you when you travel.”

Sollenar plunged his hands into his pockets and pulled out his billfold, his change, his keys, his jeweled radio; whatever was there, he rummaged out onto the floor, listening to the sound of rolling coins.

“I wish I had more here,” he laughed. “I wish I had the amount that man out there is going to recover when he shoots me.”

The Martian engineer cocked his head. “But your dream is over, Mr. Sollenar,” he clacked drily. “Isn’t it?”

“Quite so. But you to your purposes and I to mine. Now give me one of those projectors. And set it to predispose a situation I am about to specify to you. Take however long it needs. The audience is a patient one.” He laughed, and tears gathered in his eyes.

Mr. Ermine waited, isolated from the cold, listening to hear whether the rifle stock was slipping out of