Screaming Science Fiction (26 page)

No one could have looked at him and felt anything except disgust, or perhaps pity if they’d known him like I had. And if they hadn’t, dread and loathing and…yes, horror. Friendship didn’t come into it; I knew that I wasn’t smiling; I knew that my face must reflect everything I felt.

He nodded the merest twitch of a nod and husked: “Sit down, Peter, before you fall down! Hey, and you think I look bad, right?” Humor! Unbelievable! But his voice was a desiccated whisper, and his grey hands on the desk shook like spindly skating insects resting up after a morning’s hard skimming over a stagnant pond.

I sat down on a dusty chair opposite him, perching myself there, feeling all tight inside from not wanting to breathe the atmosphere, and hypersensitive outside from trying not to touch anything. He noticed and said: “You don’t want to contaminate yourself, right? But isn’t it a bit late for that, Peter?”

From which I could tell that he knew—he
did
know—and a tingle started in my feet that quickly surged through my entire being. Could he see it in me? Sense it in me? Feel some sort of weird kinship with what was under my skin, burgeoning in me? Or was it worse than that? And right there and then I began to have this feeling that things weren’t going according to plan.

“Smiler,” I managed to get started at the second attempt, “it’s…
good
to see you again, pal. And I….” And I stopped and just sat there gasping.

“Yes?” he prompted me in a moment. “And you—?”

“Nerves!’ I gasped, forcing a sickly smile, and forced in my turn to take my first deep breath. “Lots of nerves. It was always the same. It’s why I had to stay behind when you and the others went into space.” And I took out my cigarettes, and also took out the lighter from my pocket. I opened the pack and shook out several cigarettes, which fell on the floor, then managed to trap one between my knees and transfer it shakily to my mouth. And I flipped back the top on my lighter.

Smiler’s eyes—the only genuinely mobile parts he had left—went straight to the lighter and he said: “You brought it in, right?” But should he be saying things like that? Out loud, I mean? Couldn’t Big “C” hear him or sense his mood? And it dawned on me just how little we knew about them, about Big “C” and Smiler—as he was now….

Then…Smiler smiled. Except it wasn’t his smile!

Goodbye, everything,
I
said to myself, pressing the button and holding my thumb down on it. Then releasing it and pressing it again, and again. And finally letting the fucking thing fall from my nerveless fingers when, after two or three more tries,
still
nothing had happened. Or rather, “nothing” hadn’t happened.

“Peter, old buddy, let me tell you how it is.” Smiler got through to me at last, as the cigarette fell from my trembling lips. “I mean, I suspect you now
know
how it is, but I’ll tell you anyway. See, Big ‘C’ changes things. Just about anything he wants to change. He was nothing at first, or not very much—just a natural law of change, mutation, entropy if you like. An ‘emanation.’ Or on the other hand I suppose you could say he was everything—like Nature itself. Whichever, when I went up there to Luna II he got into me and changed my cancer into himself, since when he’s become one hell of a lot. We can talk about that in a minute, but first I want to explain about your bomb. Big ‘C’ changed it. He changed the chemical elements of the explosive charges, and to be doubly sure sucked all the fizz out of the fissionable stuff. It was a firework and he dumped it in a bucket of water. So now you can relax. It didn’t go off and it isn’t going to.”

“You…
are
him!” I knew it instinctively. Now, when it was too late. “But when? And why?”

“When did I stop being Smiler? Not long after that time you met him at the beach. And why the subterfuge? Because you human beings are a jumpy lot. With Smiler to keep you calm, let you think you had an intermediary, it was less likely you’d do something silly. And why should I care that you’d do something silly? Because there’s a lot of life, knowledge, sustenance in this Earth and I didn’t want you killing it off trying to kill me! But now you can’t kill me, because the bigger I’ve got the easier it has become to change things. Missiles? Go ahead and try it. They’ll be dead before they hit me. Why, if I got the idea you were going to try firing a couple, I could even kill them on the ground!

“You see, Peter, I’ve grown too big, too clever, too devious to be afraid any more—of anything. Which is why I have no more secrets, and why there’ll be no more subterfuge. Subterfuge? Not a bit of it. Why, I’m even broadcasting all of this—just so the whole world will know what’s going on! I mean, I
want
them to know, so no one will make any more silly mistakes. Now, I believe you came in here to talk about boundaries—some limits you want to see on my expansion?”

Somehow, I shook my head. “That’s not why I’m here, Smiler,” I told him, not yet ready to accept that there was nothing of Smiler left in there. “Why I’m here is finished now.”

“Not quite,” he said, but very quietly. “We can get to the boundaries later, but there is something else. Think about it. I mean, why should I want to see you, if there’s nothing else and if I can make any further decisions without outside help?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“See, Smiler has lasted a long time. Him and the frogmen that came to kill me, and a couple of farmers who didn’t get out fast enough when they saw me coming, oh, and a few others. And I’ve been instructed by them. Like I said: I’ve learned how to be devious. And I’ve learned anger, too, though there’s no longer any need for that. No need for any human emotions. But the last time you came to see Smiler—and when you would have plotted with him to kill me—that angered me.”

“And so you gave me my cancer.”

“Yes I did. So that when I needed you, you’d
want
to be my volunteer. But don’t worry…you’re not going to die, Peter. Well, not physically anyway, and not just yet a while. For just like Smiler here, you’re going to carry on.”

“But no anger, eh? No human emotions? No…revenge? OK, so let me go free to live out what days I’ve got left.”

“No anger, no revenge, no emotions—just need. I
can’t
let you go! But let me explain myself. Do you know what happens when you find a potato sprouting in your vegetable rack and you plant it in the garden? That’s right, you get lots of new potatoes! Well, I’m something like that. I’m putting out lots of new potatoes, lots of new me. All of the time. And the thing is this: when you dig up those potatoes and your fork goes through the old one, what do you find? Just a wrinkled, pulpy old sack of a thing all ready to collapse in upon itself, with nothing of goodness left in it—pretty much like what’s left of Smiler here. So…if I want to keep growing potatoes, why, I just have to keep planting them! Do you see?”

“Jesus!
Jesus!
”

“It’s nothing personal, Peter. It’s need, that’s all…No, don’t stand up, just sit there and I’ll do the rest. And you can stop biting down on that clever tooth of yours, because it isn’t poison any more, just salt. And if you don’t like what’s happening to Smiler right now, that’s OK—just turn your face away…

“…There, that was pretty easy, now wasn’t it?

“All you people out there, that’s how it is. So get used to it. As for the new boundaries: there aren’t any.

This is Big “C,” signing off.”