Finders Keepers

Startling Stories - Summer 1954

(1954) *

Margaret St. Clair

I t wasn’t easy for Pa u la to have the last word ...

-

“EAT your mashed wattroes, darling,” George said fondly. “They’re good for you.”

Obediently Paula prodded at the mess on her p late. Wattroes had many virtues : they were easy to tank-grow, easy to store, and they broke down into amino acids with singular ease in the digestive tract. But their flavors were nauseous, like that of very sweet hominy, and when they were mashed their bristly texture turned into a slimy mucilage. Paula hated them.

George was wat ching her. She scooped up two more blobs of wattroe with her chopsticks and swallowed them. They tasted as bad as she had thought they would. She pushed the plate from her and lit a cigarette to kill the wattroe-taste.

George frowned slightl y. “Don’t you think you’re smoking too much, honey ?” he said. “It makes you nervous. And besides, every cigarette is just that much more of a strain on the ship’s air filtering system.”

Paula snubbed her cigarette out in an ash tray. She exhaled in a sort of snort. She looked at George.

“Look here, George,” she said, “why do you give me orders all the time?”

As always when a question was asked him, George considered. “Well,” he said at last, “I love you. And I hate to see you do things wrong.”

Paula snorted again. “Do things wrong? What makes you think I’d do them wrong if you stopped ordering me ? For heaven’s sake!” She looked darkly at her husband.

“Do you have any idea how many or ders you give me in a day? You tell me-how to clean my teeth when I get up, what to have for breakfast and how to eat it. You tell me what clothes to wear, and how much make-up. You even tell me how to do course computations, though I’ve got my junior astrogation certificate. About the only thing you don’t tell me h ow to do is how to make love, and I suppose you just haven’t thought of it yet. Why, when we were going through the asteroid belt and were standing watch for watch at the screens because it was so dangerous, you even —you actually had the nerve—to remind m e to go to bed before I went up for my watch!”

“Thought you might overlook it,” George mumbled.

“... For God’s sake! You’ll be tag ging me in to see if I’m properly but toned up next!”

George said nothing. Paula got up and walked around the cabin angri ly. She was breathing hard. At last she sat down diagonally across from George.

“There’s something I want to tell you,” she said. “I suppose I ought to have told you before we were married, but we were busy getting the ship ready to hunt up the trove, and I just didn’t think of it. I guess I never thought it would come up.—George, the psycholo gists who did my prime estimate told me that I have a potential dual personality.”

“Dual personality?” George echoed absently. Paula didn’t seem to know it, but she w as sitting in a draught. Per haps he ought to warn her. She might take cold.

“Yes, a dual personality. It’s often associated with clairvoyance, you know. And—” she paused impressively—“and they were sure it was the transforming type.”

-

GEORGE was silent. Paula said, “Haven’t you ever heard of that?”

“H’um ?” George rubbed his lip. “No, I don’t think I have. There are so many things to know nowadays that no one person can have even a smattering of all of them. And I never have been much interested in psycholo gy.”

“I know you’re not,” Paula said rather grimly. “Well, the transforming type of dual—or multiple—personality is what lies at the bottom of the old stories about werewolves and weretigers and so on.—It’s not limited to just those animals, of course—peo ple can turn into anything. In an ordinary case of dual personality there is often a considerable physical change as one personality or another be comes uppermost. A little shy, modest woman will change into a big brazen huzzy and back again. But in the re al transforming type the physical change is complete. It’s an actual theriomorphism .”

“You mean you may turn into another woman physically?”

“Not into another woman,” Paula cor rected. She sniffled. “Into an animal.”

“Oh. Into what animal?”

Paula shook her head. “The psycholo gists didn’t know. They were afraid to provoke the change because, though you can usually get back the first few times, each change makes the danger greater of getting permanently stuck in the ani mal form. They just didn’t have any i dea what form I might take. But they warned me to be careful.”

“What’s the mechanism of the trans formation, though?”

Once more Paula shook her head. “It isn’t thoroughly understood yet—or wasn’t when I was interested in it. They know there’s a—they call it a transform ing dynamic—involved and the gross chemistry of the changes is fairly well understood.

“If a man’s secondary personality is a cat, for instance, when he transforms free oxygen is released, and there’s a heavy deposit of sugar c rystals, or starch granules, on his fur. That’s because a cat is much smaller than a man. But if he transformed into a tiger, he’d have to take up oxygen and starch, or sugar, from his environment. A tiger is bigger than a man, and the extra tiger tissue w ould have to come from somewhere. You don’t get something for nothing, even in theriomorphism .”

He grunted noncommittally. “But don’t you see, George? I’m scared. The psychologists warned me to guard against prolonged nervous strain or anxiety. It’s the me tabolic changes during stress that trigger the transforming dynamic. If you keep on needling me … you don’t know how your ordering me around makes me feel! You wouldn’t want me to change into a wolf, would you?” She tried to smile.

George got up from w here he was sitting and came over to her. He em braced her tenderly. “Poor little thing! I’m sorry you’ve been worrying. Just take it easy, honey, don’t get excited, and everything will be all right. There must be lots of people who have poten tial dual pe rsonalities and who never make the change.”

“Yes, but you’ve got to stop ordering me around.”

“Oh, sure.” He hugged her again.

Paula allowed herself to be kissed. After the third kiss she turned her head to one side and sneezed. George said, in a solicitou s tone, “Honey, don’t you think you’d better move? There’s a draught around that chair.”

After a moment Paula got up and obeyed him, a peculiar expression on her face.

-

DURING the next few days Paula was quiet and remote, though she had a tendency to overs et pitches and drop plates. The ship touched at Lladros , at Perbert , at Gwynton , at Glath. Glath was the last port before they went out into the other side of the asteroid belt, and Paula and her husband spent several days there checking over the condition of their ship and getting in supplies.

Ennalis was still a long way ahead of them, and they didn’t know how long a stay they might have to make there. They might find the Eunnalid trove in a day, or a week, or a couple of months, or they might never find it at all.

Glath, an arti-grav planetoid, was a dull little place except for its excellent port facilities. On the third day Paula, who did not take the passionate interest in seeing supplies being loaded on the Jasper II that George did, began to get rath er bored.

She shopped for curios in the stores that ringed the port, stopped in a bar or two to sample the local liquor, and wound up sitting in the park under the potted cycads and yawning until her jaws ached. At last, in a desperation of ennui, she stro lled by the local post office and asked whether any letters had come for George or Paula Farnsworth.

To her amazement, the file clerk handed her three envelopes. The writing on them was a little fuzzy, for all of them had reached Garth by matter transmit ter ; but all three were addressed in the same hand—a big, sprawling, sloppy woman’s hand—and all three were un mistakably addressed to George Farns worth, Esquire, General Delivery, Glath.

Who could have sent them ? Paula took the envelopes from the file clerk and walked back toward the Jasper II. It wasn’t any of her business, but—George was standing near one of the hatches, directing the installation of a tank of nutrient solution. She handed the envelopes to him. “For you,” she said.

“For me ?” His forehead wrinkled up. He examined the letters one by one, care fully. “Who could be sending me letters ? Nobody knew we were coming here.”

Paula shrugged. “I don’t know. I imagine the best way of finding out would be to open them.” She carefully turne d her back while he tore open the envelopes.

“Oh,” she heard. There was a silence, and then another soft, surprised, “Oh.”

Paula could stand it no longer. She whirled around. “Who sent them?” she asked.

George shook his head. His brow was still wrinkled up ; surprise always gave him a stupid expression. “This is very strange,” he said. “I don’t understand it—no, robby ,” (this to one of the Glath robot stevedores), “put the wattroes over here —as I was saying, it’s odd. I don’t understand it. Look.” He held out the contents of the envelopes for Paula to see.

They were all three greeting cards of a sort. That is, they were the cheap, gar ish sort of card which the purchaser could design and emboss for himself in the automatic coffin-size “studios” tha t you found in most ports. The cards were strictly quarter-arcade stuff.

The first card said.

“Don’t you wish you kne w?

Your Secret Pal, that’s who!”

The second read, “I’m really on the way!

You’ll find me some day!”

And the legend on the third ran: “I ma y be big And I may be rough But I bet that you’ll say I’m quite enough!”

The signature printed on all three cards in glowing red and black ink, was “Your Secret Pal.”

“Who could have sent me cards like that?” George demanded. “We don’t know anybody who would send that sort of thing. And besides, nobody knew we were coming to Glath.”

Paula shrugged. “I can’t imagine.”

George studied her. “Look here, honey, you’re not, unh, sore, are you? Because I got mail like that?”

“No. You wouldn’t even have known they were there if I hadn’t happened to stop in at the post office. I just won der who sent them, that’s all.”

“Good. I mean, I’m glad it doesn’t bother you. You look tired, though, honey. Don’t you think you’d better go in the ship and lie down?”

After a moment Paula turned and went in the ship.

-

I T WAS a little after one the next morning when she woke George by shaking him.

“I know who sent those cards,” she said.

George, always a slow awakener, looked at her with his mouth open until she picked up the alarm clock, worked the lever on it around to one five, and hit him in the face with the stimu -spray. Then he said, “What?”

“I said, I know who sent you those “Who? Mavis?”

“Who’s Mavis? No, she didn’t send them, whoever she is. I sent those cards.”

“You sent them?” George swung his feet around over the edge of his bunk and sat up. “What makes you think that?”

“Look at the post marks.” Paula picked up the cards from the taboret and handed them to him. “They’re blurred, but you can make it out. They were mailed, one each, in LLadros , Perbert , and Gwynton , just the ports we touched at, and the dates coincide.”

“Yes, but—”

“I didn’t tell you, George, but I had a—a sort of pop-off in Perbert . I was walking along one street toward the ship, and the next thing I knew I was on an other street, going in the opposite direc tion. I can’t quite remember, but I think the same thing happened in Lladros and Gwynton . That must have been when I got the cards—I’ve been having the most horrible dreams.”

George was examining the envelopes closely. “I suppose that could be your writing,” he said at last. “If you were writing from the shoulder, and your movements weren’t any too well co ordi nated. The G’s and E’s look like the way you make them. But why did you send the cards?”

Paula had sat down beside George on the bunk. Now she shuddered. “I—oh, I’m so scared. I told you I had been hav ing awful dreams. It’s my secondary per sonality getting ready to show up.”

“I don’t understan d what you’re driv ing at,” George said. He put his arm around her.

“Read the cards, “ Paula answered. “Don’t you see what they say ? ‘I’m really on the way’—‘I may be big and I may be rough’—some big awful thing is coming. It’s my animal personality!” She b egan to cry.

“But—do you have any idea what ani mal?”

“Yes. Yes I do. Yes.” She drew away from him and hid her face in the pillow.

Gently George pried her loose from the pillow and drew her up against his shoul der. “What animal, honey? Don’t you think you ‘d better tell me? Is it what you’ve been having the dreams about?”

“I—yes.” She pulled away from him and faced him. “I keep dreaming I’ve turned into a dinosaur,” she said de liberately, “a great big animal out of the past, weighing tons and tons. It’s aw ful, being buried alive in that thing. Its eyes don’t focus and it moves about an inch a minute. And—and—I’m afraid that after I’ve turned into it I’ll either step on you or eat you up.”

“A dinosaur,” George repeated. He rubbed his chin, which had begun t o bristle. “Well, I suppose there’s no real “reason why an animal personality would have to be a modern animal ...

“What kind of a dinosaur is it, honey? Has it teeth like daggers, about six inches long, and does it walk on its hind legs? That would be tyrannosaur u s.”

-

PAULA shook her head. “No, it’s what the average person thinks of when you say ‘dinosaur.’ It has a small head, a long neck, an enormous egg-shaped body, and four thick legs, like columns. Oh, I hate it so !”

“Has it got a long stringy tail? If it has, it’s diplodocus. You didn’t say anything about the tail.”

“Its tail tapers gradually, but it isn’t stringy.”

“Probably apatosaurus . If it’s apa tosaurus , honey, you needn’t worry about eating me. Apatosaurus never ate anything except rushes and marsh grass.”

Paula was crying quietly. “It makes me so unhappy,” she said dispiritedly. “Tyrannosaurus or apatosaurus —what difference does it make ? I’m afraid that if once I change , I’ll get stuck in the animal. I’ll never get back.”

“Poor baby. Poor little thing.”

“And—and—even if you don’t care anything about me, and aren’t worried that I’ll eat you up, how will you find the Eunnalid treasure without me to help you? You’ve said ov er and over that the map, without a clairvoyant to supplement it, would be useless. Earth people have been .hunting the Eunnalid trove for over five hundred years, and nobody has found even a trace of it.

“Won’t you please stop needling me, George? It’s s erious. I worry about it all the time. Even if you don’t care anything about me, think of the trove!”

“I care a lot about you, honey,” George said. “… And you really think that the nervous strain caused by my, unh, needling you may make you turn into a d inosaur?”

“I know it will,” Paula said simply. She pulled up the edge of the sheet and dried her eyes on it. “I’m so scared.”

George embraced her fiercely. “I’m scared too,” he said solemnly. “So help me God, I’ll stop needling you. I mean it. I promise. I ‘ll never needle you again. I don’t know why I do it anyhow. It’s just nervousness.”

“... That will be wonderful.”

For a long time they clung together. Gradually Paula’s sobs quieted. The embrace in which she held George had in it more affection and l ess desperation. She began to smile.

George, too, was feeling a change of temperature. “You know, honey,” he said’ in a less solemn, more ordinary voice, “I’ve been thinking. I . don’t doubt my needling worries you, but don’t you think other things could c ontribute to nervous strain?

“For example, you don’t get enough sleep. You ought to rest more. You’re awfully thin—you smoke too much and you don’t eat enough. I was watching you last night. You hardly touched your wattroes. Don’t you think you ought to ea t all the wattroes on your plate?”

Paula tore herself away from him. She jumped to her feet. Her eyes were blazing. “If you say that once more,” she said passionately, “I’ll divorce you. I won’t stand it. Do I have to be turned into a dinosaur or some horr ible monster just because you like to give orders?

“I won’t stand for it. You’re driving me crazy. You’re turning me into a dinosaur. You’re spoiling my clairvoy ancy . You’re driving me mad.”

-

SHE put her head down and howled. When George came up and tried to pet her, she kicked him as hard as she could on the shin with her bare feet, and fled. When he followed her into the galley, she kicked him again.

None the less, her outburst seemed to have done some good. During the next ten days or so George made a genuine effort to hold his hand. The Jasper II left Glath, passed Eschaton , and reached the beginning of the asteroid belt with out his having made a single suggestion or given a single command, and this even though Paula’ had handled the course computations. She had looked forward to the passage through the belt with dread, but she needn’t have; far from reminding her to go to the head, George did not even tell her to be sure her air hose was con nected. By the time the ship had got through the aster oid belt, Paula had begun to relax. Her face was less tense and her eyes had lost their harassed look.

George was calmer too. He had found that if, every time he felt inclined to make a suggestion to Paula he told her something about the Eunnalid trove in stead, it worked pretty well. The con sequence was that long before they picked up Ennalis in the viewers she knew as much about the trove as he did.

Ennalis is a chunk of rock about eighty miles in di ameter, situated on the ex treme outer edge of the asteroid belt. Of no natural interest or importance in itself, yet it has been the object of the passionate interest of generations of treasure seekers because it was once the religious center of th e fabul ous Eunnalid confederacy.

As soon as earth people got outside the solar system they began to hear stories about the Eunnalid confederacy —about its wealth, its power, its over whelming artistic pre-eminence. The stories, judging from the remains that have been found, rather understate things. And Ennalis was the religious center of the Eunnalid confederacy.

Each year each of the member states was required to make an offering of the best that it had—an art treasure, dis tinguished for beauty, for inherent va lue, for workmanship—at Ennalis (Ennalis had an efficiently-functioning arti-grav system then, and considerably more at mosphere than it has at the present day). Once every hundred years the ruling Eunnalid king went through the offer ings and selected the one that he con sidered the most choice of all that had been offered in the century. This unique treasure was then dedicated, with great ceremony, to the tutelary divinity of the confederacy, Fortune That Preserves. And the resultant accumulation of these centenary treasures over several millenia constitutes what has come to be known as the Eunnalid trove. No wonder treasure seekers have always been interested in Ennalis.

George, like a lot of other people, had been interested in the planetoid. He had list ened to stories, collected rumors, read books. His interest had become more def inite after he had bought, for a couple of drinks and all the money in his pockets, a map of Ennalis that the seller, a disappointed treasure-seeker, had bit terly insisted was no damn good. But it was not until he had met Paula, fallen for her, and learned that she was clair voyant, that he had had his big idea.

-

ENNALIS is all ruins; ruins and rocks. George set the Jasper II down in the only clear space he had been able to loc ate from the air, a paved temenos in front of the Gallery of For tune. It was only a few miles from the place they were hunting, and walking would be easy in the weak gravity. Then he and Paula got into space suits—the atmosphere on Ennalis is thin—slung s hovels about their waists, and started on their trek. George was trundling a self-powered dredger-spade in front of him.

The selfishness of generations of treasure-seekers has left a palimpsest of ditches over most of Ennalis; everything has been disturbed ; archaeologists curse w h en the name of the planetoid is men tioned. On the first day George and Paula dug where the man who had sold George the map had dug. A number of other people had dug there before them. On the second day they dug around the spots of the first day’s dig ging. On the third day they dug accord ing to hunches, usually supplied by George. On the fourth day, more of the same. On the fifth day, Paula called a halt.

“It’s not here,” she said after they had been digging for two or three hours. “We’re wasting our time. It’s not on Ennalis.”

“The trove?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s always been supposed to be here—how do you know?”

“I can see its not being here.”

“Well, I guess a clairvoyant could. But where is it, then?”

“Out there.” She made a gesture that described the plane of the asteroid belt they had come through on their way to Ennalis. “It’s on one of the asteroids.”

George drew several short, quick breaths . “Honey; can you tell which one?”

Paula shook her head. “No. Nobody could. The best clairvoyant in the world couldn’t. It’s worse than hunting a needle in a haystack. There’s too much stuff in the way.”

There was a silence. Then George sighed. “… I gu ess we might as well think about starting for home.”

“Yes—wait a minute, George. Let me think.” She sat down on one of the mounds of earth. “It was here once,” she said musingly, “and they sent it away because the confederacy was be ginning to break up. Th ey thought the trove might be in danger. But they’d want to be able to get it back again, when times had improved. Get it back in a hurry. Now, how would they send it away?”

She was silent. George watched her intently, leaning on his shovel. Then she said, “There’s still something here, George. I can tell that.”

“Lesser treasures?” George asked hopefully.

“No, not that. It’s—it feels like—the letters I sent. From the different ports, you know. Now, what could there be in common between those cards and some thing on Ennalis?” She chewed her lip thoughtfully, her head drooping.

-

GEORGE’S hands clenched on the shovel. He was almost too absorbed to remember to breathe. At last Paula raised her head. “It’s a matter transmit ter,” she said almost briskly. “That’s what the Eunnalid trove and the cards I sent have in common. They used the matter transmitter to send the trove to the asteroid. Then they took the trans mitter to pieces and buried the pieces. But some of the pieces are still here.”

She got up from the mo und where she had been sitting, and began to scrabble in the dirt with her gloved fingers. She dug down about six inches before she came up with a wishbone shaped piece of very light silvery metal. “This is part of it.”

George took it from her and ex amined it. “I don’t recognize—oh, yes I do. This is a part of the scanning beam mechanism. It ought to hold a mirror in the fork. Listen, baby, do you know where any other pieces are?”

“Well, there’s one there ... and one there … and one over there.” She pointed. George set the shovel where she indicated, and began to dig.

Ennalis, because of its small size, ro tates rapidly. The third of its days, for that day, was drawing to a close when George fitted the last piece of the Eun nalid matter transmitte r in place. “There,” he said.

Paula looked at it foggily. She was feeling extra-ordinarily tired. “Will it work?” she asked. “After all these years?”

“I don’t know why not,” George ans wered. “There’s only one setting pos sible, and it’s razor-sharp. They didn’t want to risk having the trove~ come back a little hazy and off-focus. As far as power goes, it probably ran on uranium salts.

“The best way to find out is to try it. Let’s see, now. Umm ... there.”

The Eunnalid trove was at their feet. There was an absolute simultaneity about it; it did not appear an instant after George turned the switch, or a frac tion of an instant, or a fraction of a frac tion of an instant later. It was there, at their feet.

“Oh,” Paula sighed. She sank on her knees in front of it.

Her earlier fatigue had been replaced by an intense—an almost painfully in tense—happiness. It was not that she and George would be rich, though they certainly would. It was not that they would be famous, though from now on their names were in the h istory books. It was not even that their eyes were the first, in more than two thousand years, to look upon the Eunnalid trove. It was —it was—“Oh,” she said once more. She held out her hand to it.

George turned a beaming face on her. “Do you realize what this means, honey?” he demanded. “Do you realize that we’ve found—we’ve found—the Eunnalid trove! It’s wonderful! I knew you were a good clairvoyant, but I never knew you had anything up your sleeve like this!

“And it’s beautiful. Lord, it’s beauti ful. Worth a lot of money too. All the museums ... we’ll be rich.”

“Yes,” Paula answered.

-

SOMETHING in her tone caught George’s attention despite his ex citement. He switched on the torch and held her impaled in the beam from it. “Just as I thought. You ‘re all worn out,” he announced. “Honey, don’t you think you’d better go back to the ship?”

Paula held out her hands again to the trove. It seemed to her that a ra diance that was not quite of the senses was trembling around it. “I don’t want to go back to the ship. I want to stay here. With the trove.”

George fidgeted. “Yes, but, honey, it’s getting dark. Pretty soon you won’t be able to see the trove anyway. Don’t you think you’d better go back?”

“No. Stop it, George.”

“Well ...” He brightened. “I know , I’ll fix the torches so you can see the trove no matter how dark it gets.” He fussed with the torches, propping them up at various angles and changing the focus on the beams, until they satis fied him. “There. Lord, it’s beautiful. I certainly am excited. I feel like yelling or giving three cheers.

“Listen, honey, it’s been a long time since morning. Are you getting un comfortable? I mean, did you remem ber to go to—” Paula turned and looked at him. Something in the look made George realize what he had done. “I forgot,” he said helplessly. “I’m sorry. I was excited. I forgot.”

Paula said nothing. At his last words an intense pain had gone through her skull. It felt as if somebody had chopped into it with an axe made of light. She moa ned. She put her hands up to her head.

The pain withdrew. For a moment nothing happened. Then Paula’s brain seemed to expand and grow dark.

She had a sense of masses of packed and yet ghostly flesh pressing in upon her. It seemed to arch above her in a static wave. She was stifling, she was being immured, she was being buried alive in it. She—the person called Paula—was being overwhelmed by to n upon ton of sodden, clammy, unre sponsive reptilian flesh.

She uttered a muffled, desperate sob. She made a pushing motion with her hands. She didn’t want—she passionate ly didn’t want—to become a dinosaur. Her whole being rejected it.

The transformation failed at the last moment. Partly it failed because of the intensity of Paula’s resistance, but main ly because there was at hand no adequate supply of oxygen, and starch or sugar, upon which a transformation into a dinosaur could be based.

There was a se nse of something hover ing, enormous and suspended, in the air. For a second anything at all was pos sible. Then it seemed to withdraw. The transforming dynamic, in default of oxygen, sugar, or starch, had fastened upon someone else. It had fastened upon George.

It took Paula a while to realize what had happened. The event she had ex pected was so different from what had actually occurred that she was dazed and benumbed. She looked at George, who was sitting on a rock, surrounded by a heavy circle of white crystalline grains, unbelievingly. She opened her helmet cautiously and touched some of the white powder to her tongue. It was sweet. She began to cry.

She cried for a long time. At last she stopped crying. She looked at the Jasper II thoughtfully. It was a well-designed ship, though a little large for one person to handle, and she had plenty of supplies. She could get home all right.

The Eunnalid trove was another prob lem, but she could decide what to do about it later. If she couldn’t think of a plausib le story to account for it, she could always send it back.

Once more Paula looked at George. He was still sitting on the rock, but he had begun to move up and down, doing push-ups, in the curious way that liz ards have. The sun was coming up for the fourth time that day; when it was in the middle of the heavens again, the temperature among the rocks would be rather high, though perhaps not too high for a lizard. Still …

Paula addressed her quondam hus band. Her voice was pleasant, and her lips wore a not unkindly smile. “Why don’t you crawl under a rock, George? Wouldn’t that be better?” she said.

The End

Table of Contents

Finders Keepers