Search the Sky by C. M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl (the best electronic book reader .txt) 📖

he said two women and one man. But Paul Jones picked them up right at the rendezvous, so it must’ve been the right ones.”

He glowered suspiciously at Ross and the others. “Come to think of it,” he said, “maybe not. Tell you what, Sam, you just sit tight here for twenty minutes or so.” And he hurried out of the room.

One of the other Joneses said curtly, “Sit down.” Ross, Bernie, and Helena found chairs lined up against a wall; they sat. A different Jones rummaged in a stack of papers on a table; he handed something to each of them. “Relax,” he advised. Obediently the three spacefarers opened the magazines he gave them. When they were settled, most of the Joneses, after a whispered conference, went out. The one that was left said, “No talking. If we made a mistake, we’re sorry. Meanwhile, you do what you’re told.”

Ross found that his magazine was called By Jones; it seemed to be a periodical devoted to entertaining news and gossip of sports, fashion, and culture. He stared at an article headed “Be Glad the People’s Police Are Watching YOU!”, but the words made little sense. He tried to think; but somehow he couldn’t find a point at which to grasp the flickering mass of impressions that were circling through his brain. Nothing seemed to make a great deal of sense any more; and Ross suddenly realized that he was very, very tired.

His mind an utter blank, he sat and waited.

115It was twenty minutes and a bit more. Then the door flew open and half a dozen Joneses burst in. Even at first sight, Ross could tell that three of them were newcomers. For one thing, two were women; and the third, though red-haired, tall and gangling, had a nose a full centimeter shorter than any of the others, and his hair was crisply curled.

“All right, you Peepeece!” snarled the first Jones. “You found what you were looking for—now try to get out!”

Helena did the talking. It wasn’t Ross’s idea, but when her heel crunched down on his instep he was too startled to object, and from then on he didn’t get a chance to get a word in edgewise.

He had to admit that her act was getting across with the audience. Long before she had finished reporting their meeting, their flight to Azor, the escape from “Minerva,” and the flight here, most of the Joneses had put their guns away, and all were showing signs of stupefaction. “——And then,” she finished, “we saw this truck, and that very good-looking man picked us up. And so we’re here on Earth; and, honest to goodness, that’s the exact truth.”

There was silence while the Joneses looked at each other. Then the plastic-surgeon-type Jones, Sam with the white shirt front, stepped forward. “Hold still, my dear,” he ordered. Helena bravely stood rigid while the surgeon raked searchingly through the roots of her hair, peered into her eyes, expertly traced the configuration of her ribs.

He stepped back, shaken. “One thing is for sure,” he told the others, “they’re not Peepeece. Not with those bones. They’d never get in.”

Ben Jones beat his forehead and moaned. “How do I get into these things?” he demanded.

One of the female Joneses said shrilly, “We didn’t expect anything like this. We’re honest Jones-fearing Joneses and——”

“Shut up!” Ben Jones roared. “What about the other two, Sam? They all right too?”

“Oh, for Jones’s sake, Ben,” Sam said disgustedly, “just look at them, will you? Do you think the police would take in a five-inch height deviation like that one——” he pointed 116to Bernie——“or a half-bald scarecrow like that?” Ross, stung, opened his mouth to object; but swiftly closed it again. Nobody was paying much attention to him, anyhow, except as Exhibit A.

“So what do we do?” Ben demanded.

Sam shrugged. “The first thing we do,” he said wearily, “is to take care of our, uh, clients here. We get them out of the way, and then we decide what to do next.” He looked around at the other Joneses. “If you three will come this way,” he said, “we’ll finish up your job and get you back home. I needn’t remind you, of course, that if you should happen to mention anything you’ve seen here tonight to the Peepeece it would——” His voice was cut off by the closing door before Ross could catch the nature of the threat.

Ben Jones stayed behind, scowling to himself. “You people got any Joneses?” he demanded abruptly.

“You mean money? Not any at all,” Helena said honestly. Ross could have kicked her.

Ben Jones growled deep in his throat. “Always it happens to me!” he complained. “I suppose we’re going to have to feed you, too.”

“Well,” Helena said diffidently, “we haven’t eaten in a long time——”

Ben Jones swore to his god, whose name was Jones, but he stepped to the door and ordered food. When it came it was surprisingly good; each of the three, with their diverse backgrounds, found it delicious. While they were eating, Ben Jones sat watching them, refreshing himself from time to time with a greenish bubbling liquid out of a jug. He offered some to Ross; who clutched his throat as though he’d swallowed molten steel.

Ben Jones guffawed till his eyes ran. “First taste of Jones’s Juice, hey? Kind of gets right down inside, doesn’t it?” He wiped his eyes, then sobered. “I guess you people are all right,” he admitted. “What I’m going to do with you I don’t know. I can’t take you to Earth, and I can’t keep you here, and I can’t throw you out on the street—the Peepeece would have you in the stockade in ten minutes.”

Ross, startled, said, “Aren’t we on Earth?”

117“Naw,” Ben Jones said disgustedly. “Didn’t you hear me? You’re on Jones, halfway between Jones’s Forks and Jonesgrad. But you came pretty close, at that. Earth’s about fifty miles out the Jones Pike past Jonesgrad, turn right at Jonesboro Minor.”

Ross said bewilderedly, “The planet Earth is fifty miles along the Pike?”

“Not a planet,” Ben Jones said. “It’s an old city, kind of. Nobody lives there any more; the Peepeece don’t permit it. I’ve never been there, but they say it’s kind of, you know, different. Some of the buildings——” he seemed actually to be blushing——“are as much as fifteen, twenty stories high; and the walls aren’t even all green. Excuse me,” he added, looking at Helena.

Sam Jones returned and said to Ben, “It’s all right. All finished. Trivial alterations. Maybe they could have gone along for the rest of their lives on wigs and pads—but we don’t tell them that, do we? And anyway now they won’t worry. Healy Jones, the older man, for instance. Very bright fellow, but it seems he was working as a snathe-handler’s apprentice. Afraid to take the master’s test, afraid to change his line of work—might be noticed and questioned.” He heaved a tremendous sigh and poured himself a tremendous slug of the green fluid. Ben Jones gave Ross a cynical wink and shrug.

“Look at my hand!” the surgeon exploded. It was shaking. He gulped the Jones Juice and poured himself another. “Nothing physical,” he said. “Neurosis. The subconscious coldly counting up my crimes and coldly imposing and executing sentence. I’m a surgeon, so my hand trembles.” He drank. “Jones is not mocked,” he said broodingly. “Jones is not mocked. Think those three are going to be happy? Think they’re going to be folded in Jones’s bosom just because they’re Joneses externally now? No. Watch them five years, ten years. Maybe they’ll sentence themselves to be hateful, vitriol-tempered lice and wonder why nobody loves them. Maybe they’ll sentence themselves to penal servitude and wonder why everybody pushes them around, why they haven’t the guts to hit back—Jones is 118not mocked,” he told the jug of green liquid, ignoring the others, and drank again.

Ben Jones said softly to them, “Come on,” and led them into an adjoining room furnished with sleeping pads. He said apologetically, “The doctor’s nerves are shot tonight. Trouble is, he’s too Jones-fearing. Me, I can take it or leave it alone.” His laugh had a little too much bravado in it. “There’s a little bit of nonJones in the best of us, I always say—but not to the doctor. And not when he’s hitting the Jones juice.” He shrugged cynically and said, “What the hell? L-sub-T equals L-sub-zero e to the minus T-over-two-N.”

Ross had him by his shirt frill. “Say that again!”

Ben Jones shoved him away. “What’s the matter with you, boy?”

“I’m sorry. Would you please repeat that formula? What you said?” he hastily amended when the word “formula” obviously failed to register.

Ben Jones repeated the formula wonderingly.

“What does it mean?” Ross demanded. “I’ve been chasing the damned thing across the Galaxy.” He hastily filled Ben Jones in on its previous appearances.

“Well,” Ben Jones said, “it means what it says, of course. I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” He studied their faces and added uncertainly, “Isn’t it?”

“What does it mean to you, Ben?” Ross asked softly.

“Why, what it means to anybody, pal. Right’s right, wrong’s wrong, Jones is in his Heaven, conform or else—it means morality, man. What else could it mean?”

Ross then proceeded to make an unmannerly nuisance of himself. He grilled their involuntary host mercilessly, shrugging aside all attempted diversions of the talk into what they were going to do with the three visitors. He ignored protestations that Ben was no Jonesologist, Jones knew, and drilled in. By the time Ben Jones exploded, stamped out, and locked them in for the night, he had elicited the following:

Everybody knew the formula; they were taught it at their mother’s knee. It was recited antiphonally before and after Jones Meetings. Ben knew it was right, of course, and some 119day he was going to get right with Jones and live up to it, but not just yet, because if he didn’t make money in the prosthesis racket somebody else would. The formula was everywhere: on the lintels of public buildings, hanging in classrooms, and on the bedroom walls of the most Jones-fearing old ladies where they could see its comforting message last thing at night and first thing in the morning.

From a book? Well yes, he guessed so; sure it was in the Book of Joneses, but who could say whether that was where it started. Most people thought it was just Handed Down. Way back during the war—what war? The War of the Joneses, of course! Anyway, in the war the last of the holdouts against the formula had been destroyed. No, he didn’t know anything about the war. No, not his grandfather’s time or his grandfather’s grandfather’s time. Long ago, that war was. Maybe there were records in the old museum in Earth. The city, of course, not some damn planet he never heard of!

After Ben Jones slammed out and the room darkened Helena and Bernie exchanged comforting words from adjoining sleeping pads, to Ross’s intense displeasure. They fell asleep and at last he fell asleep still churning over the problem.

When he woke he found that evidently the doctor, Sam Jones, had stumbled in during the night and passed out on the pad next to him. The white frill was stiff and green with dried Jones Juice. Helena and Bernie still slept. He tried the door.

It was locked, but there was a tantalizing hum of voices beyond it. He put his ear to the cold steel. The fruits of his eavesdropping were scanty but alarming.

“——cut ’em down mumble found someplace mumble.”

“——mumble never killed yet mumble prosthesis racket.”

“——Jones’s sake, it’s their lives or mumble mumble time to get scared mumble Peepeece are you?”

And then apparently the speakers moved out of range. Ross was cold with sweat, and there was an abnormal hollow in the pit of his stomach that breakfast would never fill.

120He spun around as a Jones voice croaked painfully: “Hear anything good, stranger?”

The surgeon, looking very dilapidated, was sitting up and regarding him through bloodshot eyes. “They’re talking about killing us,” he said shortly.

“They are not really intelligent,” Sam Jones said wearily. “They were just bright enough to entangle me to the point where I had to work for them—and to keep me copiously supplied with that green stuff I haven’t the intelligence to use in moderation.”

Ross said, “How’d you like to break away from this?”

Sam Jones mutely extended his hand. It trembled like a leaf. He said, “For his own inscrutable reason, Jones grants me steadiness of hand during an operation designed to frustrate his grand design. He then overwhelms me with a titanic thirst for oblivion to my shame.”

“There’s no design,” Ross said. “Or if there is, luckily this planet is a trifling part of it. I have never heard