Venus on the Half-Shell (22 page)

They can’t do it because their technology is at the level of 15th-century Europe. In fact, they can’t even get him out of his suit. Fortunately, his helmet visor is open enough for him to be fed. But this leads to another problem.

An astute Shagrinnian has noticed that, whenever the bottom rear of Clyter’s suit opens, the suit spins furiously for about ten minutes. He doesn’t know why, but the reason is that another malfunction in the control apparatus has developed. The suit’s rear opens whenever the excrement tank inside is full, and the refuse is dumped out. Its control wires have gotten crossed with those controlling the little jets that keep the suit stabilized. When the dump section opens, a jet is activated for a little while. Clayter spins around and around helplessly, only kept from falling over by the suit’s gyroscope.

The Shagrinnian owns a grain mill nearby which uses four oxen to turn the huge millstone. He sells the oxen for a profit and connects the suit to a rope connected to a big flywheel. The spinning of the suit turns the flywheel, which stores up energy to run the millstone. But the suit doesn’t spin enough to keep the mill working twenty-four hours a day. The owner force-feeds Clayter, which makes the rear section open more often, which makes the suit spin, which runs the millstone steadily.

To hasten matters, the owner also crams laxatives down the spaceman’s throat.

Clayter has to solve his problems fast. Even with his diarrhoea he’s gaining weight. Within a month, he’ll be squeezed to death inside the suit. Meanwhile, he’s so dizzy he can’t think straight.

His only hope is to learn the language swiftly and talk the maidservant who’s feeding him into helping him. Between mouthfuls and whirling, he masters enough of the language to plead for her help. He also learns about the plight of the Shagrinnians from her.

He instructs her to let a wire down inside the front of his suit and into the secondary control cylinder. She does so and tries to get the end of the wire, which is looped, into the cylinder. Clayter hopes she’ll be able to pull his organ out and then use the wire to exert pressure inside the tube. If she can apply just the proper pressure, he’ll fly back up to his ship, which is stationed just outside the atmosphere. Of course, he’ll have to hold his breath for a few minutes during the transit from air to space to the ship. It’s a desperate gamble.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, considering the odds if she succeeds, she fails. The wire hurts Clayter so much that he has to tell her to stop.

The next morning, while he’s still sleeping, he gets an erection from an excess of urine. Technically, this is called a piss hard-on. It is the only kind a human male can get on Shagrinn during the solar flare. But his jubilation is short-lived. The uncontrolled expansion inside the tube activates the suit’s jets. He takes off at a slant and lands on top of his head in a barnyard twenty miles away. The flywheel he’s trailed behind him misses him by an inch. The head of the suit is buried in the muck just enough to keep him from toppling over. Clayter now has a new problem. If he can’t get upright, the increased blood pressure in his head will kill him.

However, the faulty connection between the dump section and the stabilizing jet has been broken. He no longer spins around. And the force of the impact has sprung open the suit’s lower front section, which in his position is now the upper front. And it has jarred him loose from the control cylinder.

He sees a nursing calf eye him, and he thinks, “Oh, no!”

A few minutes later, the farmer’s daughter chases the calf away. As randy and desperate as the other women on this planet, she takes advantage of the gift from the heavens. She does, however, turn him upright afterward with the aid of a block and tackle and two mules. Clayter tries to instruct her in how to use the lower control. She can use her finger to set it so that his suit will return to the ship, orbiting above the atmosphere. Once in it, he can tell the ship’s computer to take him to a system where such peculiar solar flares don’t exist.

The farmer’s daughter ignores his instructions. Each morning, just before dawn, she sneaks out of the house and waits for all the beers she’s been feeding him to work on him. One morning, the farmer’s wife happens to wake up early and catches her daughter. Now, the daughter has to alternate morning shifts with her mother.

Early one day, the farmer wakes up and sees his wife with Clayter. Enraged, he begins beating on the helmet with a club. Clayter’s head is ringing, and he knows that the farmer will soon start thrusting a pitchfork into the helmet or, worse, into the opened lower section. Desperately, though knowing it’s useless, he rams his tongue against the upper control. To his surprise, and the farmer’s, the suit takes off.

Clayter figures out that the impact of the fall, or perhaps the farmer’s club, had jarred the circuits back into working order. He talks a smith into welding the lower section shut and flies back to the ship. A few months later, he finds a planet where his suit can be fixed. He is so sore about his adventures on Shagrinn that he has almost decided to leave its people in their mess. But he does have a big heart, and besides, he wants to shame them for their scurvy treatment of him.

He returns to Shagrinn and calls its leaders in for a conference. “Here’s the way it is,” he says. “The whole trouble is caused by the wrong attitude of mind.”

“What do you mean?” they say.

“I’ve studied your history, and I find that the founder of your religion made a prediction two thousand years ago. He said that the day would come when you would have to pay for your wicked ways, right?”

“Right.”

“He was specific, or as specific as prophets ever get. He said that some day the sun would start having big flares, and when that evil day came, women’s sexual desires would increase fourfold. But men wouldn’t be able to get it up. Right?”

“Right! He was a true prophet! Didn’t it happen?”

“Now, before the first time the sun flared so brightly, you had had many small flares?”

“True!”

“But the first time the sun really had a huge solar storm was when?”

“That was three hundred years ago, Mr. Clayter. Before then we only had the prophet’s word that there were storms on the sun. But when telescopes were invented, three centuries ago, we could see the small flares. About ten years later, we saw the first big one.”

“And that’s when your troubles started?”

“Ain’t it the truth!”

“Did the men get impotent and the women itchy when the flare reached its peak? Or when it was still small but looked as if it was going to get big?”

“When it was small but looked as if it might get big.”

“There you are,” Clayter says. “You have it all backward.”

The leaders look stunned. “What do you mean?”

“Suppose you have a piece of string each end of which is held by a person,” Clayter says. “When one tugs the string, it goes toward him. When the other pulls, it goes to him. You and the solar flare are connected with a string. But you’re all screwed up about who’s pulling it.”

“What in hell are you talking about?” the leaders say.

“It wasn’t the sun that made the flare get so much bigger,” John Clayter says.

“What did then?”

“Your ancestors saw a slight increase in the storm, so, of course, the anticipated reaction happened.”

“We still don’t get you,” the flabbergasted leaders say.

“Well, that flare would probably have been only a little bigger than normal. But you thought it was the promised big one.”

“Yeah?”

“Like I said,” Clayter says, “your ancestors had it backward. And succeeding generations have perpetuated the error. You see, it isn’t the giant solar flares that have been causing limp pricks and hot twats. It’s actually just the reverse.”

16

Simon told this story to his host. Mofeislop and Odiomzwak laughed until they fell out of their chairs. When the sage had wiped his tears and blown his nose, he said, “So this Somers independently arrived at the same conclusion I did. He must have been a very wise man.”

“Everybody thought so,” Simon said. “After all, he made a lot of money.”

The next four days, Simon toured the area with Odiomzwak hobbling and bobbling along as guide. He inspected the big garden which filled up the part of the plateau not occupied by the house. He climbed down the steep slope to another plateau a thousand feet below, a meadow where goats grazed and bees buzzed in and out of their hives. Odiomzwak milked the goats and collected honey, and then the two followed a stream, which was mostly cataracts. Odiomzwak checked the traps along this and was rewarded with a half a dozen jackrabbit-sized rodents.

“These’ll make a welcome addition to our diet,” the assistant said. “We get tired of goat cheese and an occasional piece of goat meat in our stew.”

“I’ve wondered how you two got along,” Simon said. “You have to be entirely independent, since you’re so isolated. But you seem to be doing all right. Your fare is simple but adequate.”

“Oh, we vary it from time to time,” Odiomzwak said.

The sage was waiting for them on the roof of the house. Part of this had been made into a recreation area. There was a pool table and a court where master and servant played the Dokalian version of badminton. Mofeislop’s big telescope was on a tripod near the east edge of the roof, and he was looking through it when Simon climbed out from the stairway. Simon stopped. He was embarrassed. The telescope was partly swiveled around so he could see the master, bent over, his eye applied to the instrument. He was holding the end of his tail in one hand, and its tip was in his mouth.

Odiomzwak, coming up from behind Simon, stopped also. He coughed loudly. Mofeislop jumped back, spitting out the tuft of tail on which he had been sucking. He turned red, though no redder than Simon.

Then the sage laughed and said, “It’s an infantile habit, Simon. One that I’ve never been able to overcome. Why should I? I find it very comforting. And it certainly is not dangerous to health, as tobacco smoking is, for instance.”

“Think nothing of it,” Simon said. “I didn’t expect you to be perfect, no matter how wise you are.”

“That’s right,” Mofeislop said. “Wisdom consists of knowing when to avoid perfection.”

While Simon was trying to figure that out, he was asked to sit down in a big overstuffed chair near the telescope. He did so, his heart beating hard. He felt that today was the day, this moment the moment. Mofeislop was going to reveal the Truth now.

Odiomzwak disappeared while the sage paced back and forth, his hands behind him, his tail lashing, his long robe fluttering. When the assistant reappeared with a bottle of wine, Mofeislop stopped and said “Ah!” Simon knew this must be a rare occasion. Instead of the stinking and sharp onion wine, Odiomzwak had brought mead, brewed from the honey of the meadow bees.

Odiomzwak set the bottle and three glasses down on a table. Mofeislop said, “It would be better if the animals were taken downstairs. We want no interruptions.”

The hunchbacked assistant shambled over to the owl, which had been perched behind and above Simon. Instead of coming to him, however, Athena screeched and flew off. She climbed in spirals higher and higher and finally was lost in the sun.

“They both seem uneasy,” Simon said apologetically. Anubis was, in fact, crouched under the table and growling softly in his throat.

“Beasts are very sensitive,” the sage said. “What they lack in intelligence, they make up in psychic perception. They sense that you are about to become a very different person. And they’re not sure that they will like it. Such is the effect of Truth.”

“I’ll take him downstairs,” Simon said. But when he rose and walked toward Anubis, the dog ran out from under the table and dashed behind the chimney.

“Oh, never mind then,” Mofeislop said, waving his hand. “It’s just that I did not want you disturbed by the owl crapping on your shoulder or the dog barking. I wanted your train of thought on schedule.”

Odiomzwak went downstairs again. The sage looked through his telescope and chuckled. Straightening up from it, he said, “Another party of Truth-seekers is approaching. I’ve been watching them for three days. Two men and an exceptionally fat woman. I’m afraid she’s going to lose much weight before she gets here. The road to Truth is a long and hard one.”