Дональд Уэстлейк - Collected Stories

Hafter Kass was going on, saying, “Is it any wonder most of us chose suicide?”

“No,” Ensign Benson told him. An odd, uncomfortable feeling had crept over him, a warmth he rarely experienced. Could it be sympathy? He watched the long-gone Hafter Kass with suspiciously moist eyes.

“That’s the only way, finally, we can tell us from them ,” Kass went on. “When they die, they revert to their real shape. At first, we tried shooting them — each of us shooting his own imitations, because those were the only ones anybody could be sure of — but there’s just too many of them, an entire species . They never fight back, never try to shoot us , but it doesn’t matter. Violence isn’t part of their nature, because it doesn’t matter. They’ve found the ultimate defensive weapon.”

Again, Kass rubbed a shaking hand across his mouth. “One of the worst things,” he said, “is that after one of us dies, they still go on with the imitation. Your husband, your wife… You know they’re dead, but there they are, walking around. And again. And again. Hundreds of them. Smiling at you, calling you by the pet name that only the two of you knew.”

The door behind Kass opened, and a cluster of people, a dozen or more, came in, looking concerned, saying, “ There you are, Hafter,” or “Why are you hiding in here . Hafter?”

Kass didn’t even turn as the people gathered around him. His expression bleak, he faced the camera. Beneath the friendly cries of the newcomers — two of them, Ensign Benson realized with a sudden shiver, identical Hafter Kasses — beneath their voices but clear and passionate, Kass said to the camera, “Get away from here. This is hell. This is the worst you can imagine. I may even be the last human alive here, there’s no way to know. I’m surrounded by people, and I’ve been in solitary confinement for three years.”

“Oh, Hafter,” one of the others cried, happy and careless, “you’re taping! Can I tape, too? Shall I sing?”

“No,” Hafter said. Rising, he moved the table, shoving the others out of his way as though they were dummies on rollers — none objected — and darkness descended as he approached the camera. There was a click, and the recording ended.

“Oh, boy,” Ensign Benson said. “Not good.” Decisively, he got to his feet, left Hester’s workroom, hurried through the ship to the exit and went down the ramp, looking around for the rest of the crew.

The nearest was Pam, walking diagonally away toward the ruined colony. “Pam!” Ensign Benson called, and when she turned, he waved to her to stop, to wait for him. “We’ve got to get into the ship!” he cried, trotting up to her.

She frowned as he approached. “Kybee? What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you later. Just get into the ship; I’ll go after the others.” And he hurried past her toward the ruins. But when he looked back after a few half-running paces, she was still standing there, frowning at him. “For God’s sake, Pam!” he yelled. “Get going!”

“Kybee?” Pam said. “What’s wrong?” But her voice came from behind him.

When Pam saw the strange woman beyond Kybee, she couldn’t understand who it might be. A survivor from the colony, for 500 years? One of the three without graves? But that was impossible. This attractive-looking woman was young, was certainly no more—

Was herself.

Dread touched Pam. All at once, she was not an astrogator, not a scientist, not a rational, civilized person, but a primitive creature feeling a sudden surge of the most basic fear. She stared, not understanding, and the woman stared back at her with an expression of horror. “Kybee!” they cried together. “What’s happening?”

He stared from one to the other. “Which— Which—”

“Kybee, it’s me! It’s Pam!” But it was the other one who said that.

Pam hurried toward Kybee, crying, “Don’t listen to her! She’s— She’s— I don’t know what she is!”

“The ship,” Kybee muttered, dazed. “Save the ship.”

“Yes,” Pam said, reaching for his arm, her terror deepening when he pulled away. “We’ll go into the ship,” she said. “We’ll figure out—”

But he was backing away, staring from her to the impostor, his eyes terrified. “How do I— How can I— You don’t get inside the ship!” And he turned and ran.

The Billys and the Hesters and the Ensign Bensons were building sheds and lean-tos. The Councilman Luthgusters were sorting through the food supplies Kybee had pushed out of the ship the day before so that the real crew members wouldn’t starve to death. The Pams were cooking on the makeshift stoves the Hesters had constructed. Most of the Captain Standforths had quit banging on the Hopeful’s door and yelling on the monitor cameras and had wandered off across the landscape, presumably in search of birds suitable for taxidermy.

In a horrible way, it was fascinating to see how the creatures worked it. The fear and disbelief and repugnance that were the natural reaction of the real crew members were perfectly mirrored in all the imitations. Then, as time went by without any change in the situation, with no further events, no escalation of threat, as horror became dulled, that, too, was echoed, the real and the fakes all calming together, getting used to this madness together.

If he were out there with the rest of them, would he behave any differently from the headshaking wide-eyed Ensign Bensons he watched on the viewscreens? No, he would not.

It was two days since Kybee had run back into the ship and sealed the entrance behind him, and he had not yet slept. What was he going to do? What were any of them going to do? They were doomed here, just like the original colonists. He couldn’t fly the ship alone, and even if he could, what about the others? He couldn’t just abandon them here, in this hell on Earth. Or hell on Matrix. “In this case,” Kybee muttered to himself, watching the mobs on the viewscreens, “hell really is other people.”

It was strange how circumstances changed attitudes. Kybee had always felt impatient loathing toward his shipmates, knowing himself to be the only truly sharp — and sharp-edged — person on the ship. He had thought it miserably unfair that he should be assigned to this team of losers on this mission into oblivion; what did he have in common with them ?

It was only now, in this extremity, that he found himself drawing parallels, that he saw his own social prickliness as much of a liability as Hester’s bluntness or Pam’s unworldliness or the councilman’s pomposity. Damn it, somehow, damn it, in the course of their voyage, damn it, they had become a team, damn it, a unit, while his back was turned, damn it, some kind of stupid tribe. His shipmates were in trouble out there, damn it, and he was the only one in the universe who could help.

Except, of course, that he couldn’t. What was there to do? Forty colonists had spent four years trying to solve this problem, without success. How could he hope to do anything but keep the interior of the ship free of impostors by banning everything ?

There’s something comforting about despair. When Kybee realized that there truly was no way out, that they were all stuck on Matrix for the rest of their lives, himself inside the ship and the rest of the crew outside amid the crowds of ersatz, A kind of peace descended on him. There’s nothing to be done; doom is at hand; no point struggling. Yawning, easy at last in his mind, warmed by the hopelessness of their situation, Kybee left the view screens and went to bed.

It was dark. He was suddenly wide awake. Sitting up, he spoke into the black room. “It isn’t the same. The colonists had to live here, somehow, live with those creatures forever. All I have to do is find the right five people and get them on the ship. That’s all.”