Robert Sheckley: Options

The rules of normalcy will be temporarily suspended while new rules are being drawn.

The new rules may not be the same as the old rules. No hints can be given concerning the new rules.

The best thing to do might be to avoid conflict situations, spend the rest of the day in bed, cool out.

Or, if that sounds boring, I could take you for a ride.

Tom Mishkin was tooling along through the Lesser Magellanic Cloud at a low multiple of the speed of light, moving along smartly but not really pushing it. His ship, the Intrepid III, was loaded with frozen South African lobster tails, tennis shoes, air conditioners, malted milk makers, and other general stores, bound for the settlement on Dora V. Mishkin was catnapping in a big command chair, lulled by the light patterns rippling across the control board and by the quiet snap and crackle of the circuit breakers. He was thinking of a new apartment he planned to buy in the town of Perth Amboy-bas-mer, ten miles due east of Sandy Hook. You could get a little peace and quiet in the suburbs, although the problem of commuting by submarine…

One of the snaps turned into a clank.

Mishkin sat upright, his pilot's ear always attuned for the Malfunction That Could Not Happen but frequently did.

Clank, clank, clank, crunch.

Yes. It had happened.

Mishkin groaned — that special pilot's groan compounded of foreknowledge, fatalism, and heartburn. He could hear bad things happening deep in the guts of the ship. The Malfunction Telltale (supposedly for external impingement only) went violet, then red, then purple, then black. The ship's computer awoke from its dogmatic slumber long enough to growl, "Malfunction, malfunction, malfunction."

"Thanks, I already got the idea," Mishkin said. "Where is it and what is it?"

"Malfunction in Part L-1223A. Catalogue name: Port Side Crossover Lock Valve Assembly and Retainer Ring. Proximate cause of malfunction: 8 (eight) sheered bolts plus spiral fracture in retainer ring housing. Intermediate cause: angular pressure on aforesaid parts resulted in molecular changes in metal composition of aforementioned parts, resulting in the condition known as metal fatigue."

"Yeah. But why?" Mishkin asked.

"Conjecture as to primary cause: various bolts in said assembly torqued to unacceptable pressures, thus reducing the assembly's life to 84.3 hours rather than the 195.441 working years called for in the specifications."

"Very nice," Mishkin said. "What's happening now?"

"I have cut out the unit and shut down the main drive."

"Up space creek without a paddle," Mishkin commented. "Can I use the main drive at all, just long enough to get to the nearest Ship Service Centre?"

"Negative. Use of aforementioned malfunctioned Part would cause immediate and cumulative distortions in other parts of Main Drive, resulting in total disablement, implosion, and death, and a permanent black mark on your service record. You would also be billed for a new spaceship."

"Well, I certainly don't want any black marks on my record," Mishkin said. "What should I do?"

"Your only feasible option is to remove and replace the malfunctioned Part. Caches of spare parts have been established on various uninhabited planets to cover such a necessity. The planet nearest to your present coordinates is Harmonia II, 68 hours from here by secondary drive."

"That sounds simple enough," Mishkin said.

"It is, theoretically."

"But practically?"

"There are always complications."

"Such as?"

"If we knew that," the computer told him, "the complications wouldn't be very complicated, would they?"

"I suppose not," Mishkin said. "All right, cut a course and let's get going!"

"To hear is to obey," the computer said.

USE OF "MULTIPLE PREMISES" TERMED CONFUSING

In an exclusive press interview yesterday, Professor David Hume of Harvard declared that sequence did not imply causality. When asked to amplify, he pointed out that sequence is merely additive, not generative.

We asked Dr Emmanuel Kant for his opinion on this statement. Professor Kant, in his Cal Tech study, looked badly shaken. "This," he said, "has awakened me from my dogmatic slumber."

Mishkin leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. That was bad: derangement of various sense ratios, ideas of reference, hot flashes. He opened his eyes. That was not so good either. He reached for the Turn-off Bottle. It had a label that read, IF THE TRIP GOES BAD, DRINK THIS. He drank it, then noticed a label on the other side of the bottle that read, IF THE TRIP GOES BAD, DO NOT DRINK THIS.

One of the radios was moaning softly to itself, "Oh, God, I'll be killed. I just know I'll be killed. Why did I ever go on this crazy trip? It wasn't good enough for me to just sit in the window at the Hallicrafters and dig the scene. No, I had to get active about it and where in hell am I now?"

Mishkin had no time for the radio. He had problems of his own. At least he assumed that they were his own. It was difficult to be sure.

He found that he had only imagined opening his eyes. Therefore he opened his eyes.

But had he really? He considered opening his eyes again, in case he had only imagined it again, but stopped himself, thus avoiding a really nasty form of infinite regression.

The radio was babbling again: "God, I don't know where I'm going. But if I knew where I was going I wouldn't go there. But not knowing where I'm going, I don't know how not to go there because I don't know where I'm going. Damn it, this isn't the way it's supposed to be. They told me it would be fun."

Mishkin quickly drank the contents of the Turn-off Bottle. It couldn't get much worse he decided, which showed how much he knew.

Firmness seemed called for. Mishkin sat up straight in his chair. He said, "Now hear this. We will proceed to act on the premise that we all are what we seem to be at this moment and that we will remain this way indefinitely. That is an order. Is it understood?"

The turntable said, "Everything's going to goddamn hell and he's giving orders, yet. What's with you, Jack, you think this is a goddamned submarine or something?"

"We must all pull together," Mishkin said, "else we shall all be pulled apart."

"Platitudes, yet," the armchair said. "We could all be killed and he's spouting platitudes."

Mishkin shuddered and drank the contents of the Turn-on Bottle, then put it down quickly before the bottle had a chance to drink him. Bottles had been known to do that; you could never tell when it was role-reversal time.

"Now I shall land this ship," Mishkin said.

"It's a dreary premise," the control board said. "But go ahead and play games if you want to."

"Shut up," Mishkin said. "You're a control board."

"What would you say if I told you that I am a middle-aged psychiatrist from New York City and that your act of labelling me a control board — by which you mean a to-be-controlled board — or bored — shows where your head is at, powerstrugglewise?"

Mishkin decided to drink the contents of the Turn-on Bottle. He was in enough trouble as it was. With an enormous effort he blew his nose. Lights flashed.

A man in a blue uniform came through the baggage room and said, "All tickets, please." Mishkin gave him his ticket, which the man punched.

Mishkin punched a button, which took it like a man. There were groans and squeaks.

Was he coming down?