Philip Farmer - Venus on the Half-Shell

The two met at an angle, since it would have been fatal to have turned at right angles to the wind for over a second. The youth spun around and around while the bull wavered as if he were going to fall over. But he held his arms out to maintain his balance, managed to make a turn, and struck the spinning stud a glancing blow on the rim. The youth crashed over, and the leader, flashing his lights triumphantly, called to the herd to follow him.

Simon felt sorry for the youth, so he and Chworktap got him up and sent him on his way. Not, however, before they were sure that he wouldn’t be able to catch up with the herd.

“Such encounters must be rare,” Simon said. “The stud who leaves his herd or is driven out to seek a mate must have a hard time. He might wander around forever before he runs across another herd. Then he has to beat the bull and maybe the young males of the herd, for all I know, before he takes over.”

A week later, while they were driving around, they saw an old male lying on his side. They drove up and jumped out, but there wasn’t much they could do for him. He had had a blowout. His one free arm waved, the three fingers wiggling frantically, and the eyes on the ends of the stalks dripped tears.

Simon tried to patch up the hole with the tire-repairing materials in the jeep. When he started the vulcanizing, the eye-stalks lashed back and forth and the light-organs flashed redly. The Lalorlongian was being badly hurt. In any event, his treads were worn off, and the skin was too thin to take a patch-up job.

Simon could not endure to leave him there to starve to death. He took out his automatic and, with tears running from his own eyes, emptied twelve bullets into the hole in the hub. Anubis ran around barking and Athena flew screeching around and around above the shattered corpse. The male’s arm dropped, folding this and that way, its lights dimmed and died, its stalks crumpled, and its eyes glazed.

After they had returned to the ship, Simon said, “The ethics of euthanasia is one of my minor questions. Is it or isn’t it right to put a sentient creature out of its pain if it’s going to die anyway? You just saw my answer. What do you think?”

“It’s ethically correct if the dying person gives her consent,” Chworktap said. “Actually, if you deny her the right to euthanasia, you’re interfering with her free will. But you didn’t ask that person if he wanted to be killed.”

“I was afraid he’d say no, and I couldn’t stand the thought of his suffering.”

“Then you were wrong,” she said.

“But he was suffering terribly, and I saved him from a lingering death.”

“You should have left it up to him.”

On reflection, Simon agreed with her. But it was too late to correct his error.

Simon spent the next week questioning the members of a dozen herds.

“What’s your basic philosophy?”

“Keep rolling.”

“Why?”

“Keep rolling, and you’ll get there.”

“Where?”

“To the yonder.”

“But on this planet you can only end up where you started.”

“So what? The name of the game is Getting There.”

“But why do you want to get there?”

“Because it’s there.”

“What happens after you die?”

“We go to the Big Track in the Sky. No lack of tumbleweeds there, everyone is the leader of the herd, and only the evil have blowouts.”

“But why were you put on this planet?”

“I told you. To travel around and around while we follow our glorious leader.”

Or, in the case of the leader, “To travel around and around while my herd follows me.”

“But what about those who have blowouts?”

“They’re guilty.”

“Guilty of what?”

“Of harboring bad thoughts.”

“Against whom?”

“Our leader and the Big Repairer in the Sky.”

“But what about the young studs that challenge the leader? Don’t they have bad thoughts?”

“Not if they win.”

“What happens to the bad ones?”

“They’re taken up to the Big Track, too. But they get their just reward. Their tires go flat once a day.”

Simon was disgusted, but Chworktap said, “What did you expect? Look at how poverty-sticken, how bare, this planet is. All the Lalorlongians see is flat hard earth, dust, and tumbleweeds. So, if there’s little outside to see, there’s little to think about inside.”

Simon said, “Yeah, I know. Maybe the next place’ll be better.”

On the way to the planet Dokal, Simon and Chworktap had had their first quarrel. The second day out, Simon had found her wearing a pair of earphones at the control board. Her fingers were dancing over the keys, and the communication screen was flashing messages in Chinese. Simon could read only a few logographs and those slowly, so he had to ask her what she was doing.

She couldn’t hear, of course, but he finally put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed a few times. She looked up and then removed the phones.

“What’s upsetting you?” she said.

Simon had been in a bad enough temper before. Her instant detection of his state of temper made him more angry. He was beginning to find this sensitivity disconcerting. It was too much like mind-reading.

“For one thing,” he said, “I had a hard night, I kept dreaming that a lot of dead people were trying to talk to me all at once. For another thing, I’m getting fed up with stepping in Anubis’ crap. I’ve tried to house-break him, but he’s unteachable. A spaceship is no place for a dog, and when I think that this might go on for a thousand years…”

“Put him in a cage.”

“That’d break his heart,” Simon said. “I couldn’t be cruel to him.”

“Then adjust to it,” Chworktap said. “What’s the third thing that’s bothering you?”

“Nothing,” he said, knowing his denial would be rejected. “I just wanted to know what you’re doing. After all, I am captain of this ship, and I don’t want you monkeying around with the navigation.”

“You’re jealous because I’m smarter than you and so can read Chinese so easily,” she said. “That’s why you’re questioning me.”

“If you’re so smart, you’d know better than to tell me that.”

“I thought you liked a candid woman.”

“There are reasonable limits to candor,” he said, his face reddening.

“O.K.,” she said, “I won’t mention that again.”

“Dammit, now you’re accusing me of having a swollen male ego!”

“And you like to think you don’t,” Chworktap said. “O.K., so you’re not perfect.”

“Only a machine can be perfect!”

Simon at once regretted saying this, but it was too late, as always. Tears ran down her cheeks.

“Is that an unconscious or a deliberate reaction?” he said. “Can you turn on the tears when you want me to feel like an ass?”

“My master didn’t like tears, so I always held them back,” she said. “But you’re not my master; you’re my lover. Besides, Earthwomen, so you’ve told me, can turn on tears at will. And they’re not machines.”

Simon put his hand on her shoulder again and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. And I don’t think of you as a machine.”

“Your lying circuits are working overtime,” Chworktap said. “And you’re still angry. Why are you so solicitous about a dog’s feelings but deliberately hurt mine?”

“I suppose because I’m taking out my anger at him on you,” Simon said. “He wouldn’t know why I was chewing him out.”