Dear Devil

  Dear Devil

  Eric Frank Russel

  From Robert Silverberg’s “Earthmen and Strangers” anthology, 1966:

  Eric Frank Russell is a towering Englishman whose first science-fiction stories were published in 1937. In the decades since then he has written dozens of notable short stones and such classic novels as Sinister Barrier and Three to Conquer. Cheerfully irreverent in person, Russell as a writer is usually breezy and hard-boiled, a teller of tough, fast-paced tales. He has dealt often and excellently with the theme of Earthman versus Alien, generally against a backdrop of an intergalactic war, and his sly spies were performing slick tricks long before James Bond first saw print.

  But there is nothing breezy, hard-boiled, tough, military, or sly about Dear Devil. Seldom has a being from another world been portrayed in science fiction with such warmth and compassion. Readers are grateful to Eric Frank Russell for his lively stories of action and adventure, but they will cherish him forever for the unique and wonderful Martian “devil” of this unforgettable story.

  Dear Devil

  by Eric Frank Russell

  The first Martian vessel descended upon Earth with the slow, stately fall of a grounded balloon. It did resemble a large balloon in that it was spherical and had a strange buoyance out of keeping with its metallic construction. Beyond this superficial appearance all similarity to anything Terrestrial ceased.

  There were no rockets, no crimson Venturis, no external projections other than several solaradiant distorting grids which boosted the ship in any desired direction through the cosmic field. There were no observation ports. All viewing was done through a transparent band running right around the fat belly of the sphere. The bluish, nightmarish crew was assembled behind that band, surveying the world with great multifaceted eyes.

  They gazed through the band in utter silence as they examined this world which was Terra. Even if they had been capable of speech they would have said nothing. But none among them had a talkative faculty in any sonic sense. At this quiet moment none needed it.

  The scene outside was one of untrammeled desolation. Scraggy blue-green grass clung to tired ground right away to the horizon scarred by ragged mountains. Dismal bushes struggled for life here and there, some with the pathetic air of striving to become trees as once their ancestors had been. To the right, a long, straight scar through the grass betrayed the sterile lumpiness of rocks at odd places. Too rugged and too narrow ever to have been a road, it suggested no more than the desiccating remnants of a long-gone wall. And over all this loomed a ghastly sky.

  Captain Skhiva eyed his crew, spoke to them with his sign-talking tentacle. The alternative was contact-telepathy which required physical touch.

  “It is obvious that we are out of luck. We could have done no worse had we landed on the empty satellite. However, it is safe to go out. Anyone who wishes to explore a little while may do so.”

  One of them gesticulated back at him. “Captain, don’t you wish to be the first to step upon this world?”

  “It is of no consequence. If anyone deems it an honor, he is welcome to it.” He pulled the lever opening both air-lock doors. Thicker, heavier ah- crowded in and pressure went up a little. “Beware of overexertion,” he warned as they went out.

  Poet Pander touched him, tentacles tip to tip as he sent his thoughts racing through their nerve ends. “This confirms all that we saw as we approached. A stricken planet far gone in its death throes. What do you suppose caused it?”

  “I have not the remotest idea. I would like to know. If it has been smitten by natural forces, what might they do to Mars?” His troubled mind sent its throb of worry up Pander’s contacting tentacle. “A pity that this planet had not been farther out instead of closer in; we might then have observed the preceding phenomena from the surface of Mars. It is so difficult properly to view this one against the Sun.”

  “That applies still more to the next world, the misty one,” observed Poet Pander.

  “I know it. I am beginning to fear what we may find there. If it proves to be equally dead, then we are stalled until we can make the big jump outward.”

  “Which won’t be in our lifetimes.”

  “I doubt it,” agreed Captain Skhiva. “We might move fast with the help of friends. We shall be slow—alone.” He turned to watch his crew writhing in various directions across the grim landscape. “They find it good to be on firm ground. But what is a world without life and beauty? In a short time they will grow tired of it.”

  Pander said thoughtfully, “Nevertheless, I would like to see more of it. May I take out the lifeboat?”

  “You are a songbird, not a pilot,” reproved Captain Skhiva. “Your function is to maintain morale by entertaining us, not to roam around in a lifeboat.”

  “But I know how to handle it. Every one of us was trained to handle it. Let me take it that I may see more.”

  “Haven’t we seen enough, even before we landed? What else is there to see? Cracked and distorted roads about to dissolve into nothingness. Ages-old cities, torn and broken, crumbling into dust. Shattered mountains and charred forests and craters little smaller than those upon the Moon. No sign of any superior lifeform still surviving. Only the grass, the shrubs, and various animals, two- or four-legged, that flee at our approach. Why do you wish to see more?”

  “There is poetry even in death,” said Fander.

  “Even so, it remains repulsive.” Skhiva gave a little shiver. “All right. Take the lifeboat. Who am I to question the weird workings of the nontechnical mind?”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “It is nothing. See that you are back by dusk.” Breaking contact, he went to the lock, curled snakishly on its outer rim and brooded, still without bothering to touch the new world. So much attempted, so much done—for so poor reward.

  He was still pondering it when the lifeboat soared out of its lock. Expressionlessly, his multifaceted eyes watched the energized grids change angle as the boat swung into a curve and floated away like a little bubble. Skhiva was sensitive to futility.

  The crew came back well before darkness. A few hours were enough. Just grass and shrubs and child-trees straining to grow up. One had discovered a grassless oblong that once might have been the site of a dwelling. He brought back a small piece of its foundation, a lump of perished concrete which Skhiva put by for later analysis.

  Another had found a small, brown, six-legged insect, but his nerve ends had heard it crying when he picked it up, so hastily he had put it down and let it go free. Small, clumsily moving animals had been seen hopping in the distance, but all had dived down holes in the ground before any Martian could get near. All the crew were agreed upon one thing: the silence and solemnity of a people’s passing was unendurable.

  Pander beat the sinking of the sun by half a time-unit. His bubble drifted under a great, black cloud, sank to ship level, came in. The rain started a moment later, roaring down in frenzied torrents while they stood behind the transparent band and marveled at so much water.

  After a while, Captain Skhiva told them, “We must accept what we find. We have drawn a blank. The cause of this world’s condition is a mystery to be solved by others with more time and better equipment. It is for us to abandon this graveyard and try the misty planet. We will take off early in the morning.”

  None commented, but Pander followed him to his room, made contact with a tentacle-touch.

  “One could live here, Captain.”

  “I am not so sure of that.” Skhiva coiled on his couch, suspending his tentacles on the various limb-rests. The blue sheen of him was reflected by the back wall. “In some places are rocks emitting alpha sparks. They are dangerous.”

  “Of course, Captain. But I can sense them and avoid them.”


  “You?” Skhiva stared up at him.

  “Yes, Captain. I wish to be left here.”

  “What? In this place of appalling repulsiveness?”

  “It has an all-pervading air of ugliness and despair,” admitted Poet Pander. “All destruction is ugly. But by accident I have found a little beauty. It heartens me. I would like to seek its source.”

  “To what beauty do you refer?” Skhiva demanded.

  Pander tried to explain the alien in nonalien terms.

  “Draw it for me,” ordered Skhiva.

  Pander drew it, gave him the picture, said, “There!”

  Gazing at it for a long time, Skhiva handed it back, mused awhile, then spoke along the other’s nerves. “We are individuals with all the rights of individuals. As an individual, I don’t think that picture sufficiently beautiful to be worth the tail-tip of a domestic arlan. I will admit that it is not ugly, even that it is pleasing.”

  “But, Captain—”

  “As an individual,” Skhiva went on, “you have an equal right to your opinions, strange though they may be. If you really wish to stay I cannot refuse you. I am entitled only to think you a little crazy.” He eyed Pander again. “When do you hope to be picked up?”

  “This year, next year, sometime, never.”

  “It may well be never,” Skhiva reminded him. “Are you prepared to face that prospect?”

  “One must always be prepared to face the consequences of his own actions,” Pander pointed out.

  “True.” Skhiva was reluctant to surrender. “But have you given the matter serious thought?”

  “I am a nontechnical component. I am not guided by thought.”

  “Then by what?”

  “By my desires, emotions, instincts. By my inward feelings.”

  Skhiva said fervently, “The twin moons preserve us!”

  “Captain, sing me a song of home and play me the tinkling harp.”

  “Don’t be silly. I have not the ability.”

  “Captain, if it required no more than careful thought you would be able to do it?”

  “Doubtlessly,” agreed Skhiva, seeing the trap but unable to avoid it.

  “There you are!” said Pander pointedly.

  “I give up. I cannot argue with someone who casts aside the accepted rules of logic and invents his own. You are governed by notions that defeat me.”

  “It is not a matter of logic or illogic,” Pander told him. “It is merely a matter of viewpoint. You see certain angles; I see others.”

  “For example?”

  “You won’t pin me down that way. I can find examples. For instance, do you remember the formula for determining the phase of a series tuned circuit?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “I felt sure you would. You are a technician. You have registered it for all tune as a matter of technical utility.” He paused, staring at Skhiva. “I know that formula, too. It was mentioned to me, casually, many years ago. It is of no use to me—yet I have never forgotten it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it holds the beauty of rhythm. It is a poem,” Pander explained.

  Skhiva sighed and said, “I don’t get it.”

  “One upon R into omega L minus one upon omega C,” recited Pander. “A perfect hexameter.” He showed his amusement as the other rocked back.

  After a while, Skhiva remarked, “It could be sung. One could dance to it.”

  “Same with this.” Pander exhibited his rough sketch. “This holds beauty. Where there is beauty there once was talent—may still be talent for all we know. Where talent abides is also greatness. In the realms of greatness we may find powerful friends. We need such friends.”

  “You win.” Skhiva made a gesture of defeat. “We leave you to your self-chosen fate in the morning.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  That same streak of stubbornness which made Skhiva a worthy commander induced him to take one final crack at Pander shortly before departure. Summoning him to his room, he eyed the poet calculatingly.

  “You are still of the same mind?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Then does it not occur to you as strange that I should be so content to abandon this planet if indeed it does hold the remnants of greatness?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Skhiva stiffened slightly.

  “Captain, I think you are a little afraid because you suspect what I suspect—that there was no natural disaster. They did it themselves, to themselves.”

  “We have no proof of it,” said Skhiva uneasily.

  “No, Captain.” Pander paused there without desire to add more.

  “If this is their- own sad handiwork,” Skhiva commented at length, “what are our chances of finding friends among people so much to be feared?”

  “Poor,” admitted Pander. “But that—being the product of cold thought—means little to me. I am animated by warm hopes.”

  ’There you go again, blatantly discarding reason in favor of an idle dream. Hoping, hoping, hoping—to achieve the impossible.”

  Pander said, “The difficult can be done at once; the impossible takes a little longer.”

  “Your thoughts make my orderly mind feel lopsided. Every remark is a flat denial of something that makes sense.” Skhiva transmitted the sensation of a lugubrious chuckle. “Oh, well, we live and learn.” He came forward, moving closer to the other. “All your supplies are assembled outside. Nothing remains but to bid you goodbye.”

  They embraced in the Martian manner. Leaving the lock, Poet Pander watched the big sphere shudder and glide up. It soared without sound, shrinking steadily until it was a mere dot entering a cloud. A moment later it had gone.

  He remained there, looking at the cloud, for a long, long tune. Then he turned his attention to the load-sled holding his supplies. Climbing onto its tiny, exposed front seat, he shifted the control which energized the flotation-grids, let it rise a few feet. The higher the rise the greater the expenditure of power. He wished to conserve power; there was no knowing how long he might need it. So at low altitude and gentle pace he let the sled glide in the general direction of the thing of beauty.

  Later, he found a dry cave in the hill on which his objective stood. It took him two days of careful, cautious raying to square its walls, ceiling and floor, plus half a day with a powered fan driving out silicate dust. After that, he stowed his supplies at the back, parked the sled near the front, set up a curtaining force-screen across the entrance. The hole in the hill was now home.

  Slumber did not come easily that first night. He lay within the cave, a ropy, knotted thing of glowing blue with enormous, beelike eyes, and found himself listening for harps that played sixty million miles away. His tentacle-ends twitched in involuntary search of the telepathic-contact songs that would go with the harps, and twitched in vain. Darkness grew deep, and all the world a monstrous stillness held. His hearing organs craved for the eventide flip-flop of sand-frogs, but there were no frogs. He wanted the homely drone of night beetles, but none droned. Except for once when something faraway howled its heart at the Moon, there was nothing, nothing.

  In the morning he washed, ate, took out the sled and explored the site of a small town. He found little to satisfy his curiosity, no more than mounds of shapeless rubble on ragged, faintly oblong foundations. It was a graveyard of long-dead domiciles, rotting, weedy, near to complete oblivion. A view from five hundred feet up gave him only one piece of information: the orderliness of outlines showed that these people had been tidy, methodical.

  But tidiness is not beauty in itself. He came back to the top of his hill and sought solace with the thing that was beauty.

  His explorations continued, not systematically as Skhiva would have performed them, but in accordance with his own mercurial whims. At times he saw many animals, singly or in groups, none resembling anything Martian. Some scattered at full gallop when his sled swooped over them. Some dived into groundholes, showing a brief flash of wh
ite, absurd tails, Others, four-footed, long-faced, sharp-toothed, hunted” in gangs and bayed at him in concert with harsh, defiant voices.

  On the seventieth day, in a deep, shadowed glade to the north, he spotted a small group of new shapes slinking along* in single file. He recognized them at a glance, knew them so well that his searching eyes sent an immediate thrill of triumph into his mind. They were ragged, dirty, and no more than half grown, but the thing of beauty had told him what they were.

  Hugging the ground low, he swept around in a wide curve that brought him to the farther end of the glade. His sled sloped slightly into the drop as it entered the glade. He could see them better now, even the soiled pinkishness of their thin legs. They were moving away from him, with fearful caution, but the silence of his swoop gave them no warning.

  The rearmost one of the stealthy file fooled him at the last moment. He was hanging over the side of the sled, tentacles outstretched in readiness to snatch the end one with the wild mop of yellow hair when, responding to some sixth sense, his intended victim threw itself flat. His grasp shot past a couple of feet short, and he got a glimpse of frightened gray eyes two seconds before a dexterous side-tilt of the sled enabled him to make good his loss by grabbing the less wary next in line.

  This one was dark haired, a bit bigger, and sturdier. It fought madly at his holding limbs while he gained altitude. Then suddenly, realizing the queer nature of its bonds, it writhed around and looked straight at him. The result was unexpected; it closed its eyes and went completely limp.

  It was still limp when he bore it into the cave, but its heart continued to beat and its lungs to draw. Laying it carefully on the softness of his bed, he moved to the cave’s entrance and waited for it to recover. Eventually it stirred, sat up, gazed confusedly at the facing wall. Its black eyes moved slowly around, taking in the surroundings. Then they saw Pander. They widened tremendously, and their owner began to make highpitched, unpleasant noises as it tried to back away through the solid wall. It screamed so much, in one rising throb after another, that Pander slithered out of the cave, right out of sight, and sat in the cold winds until the noises had died down.