Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley Read Free

limb.
    â€œGod above,” Gilrig, an intermediate-age male gasped.
    â€œWe should kill them and put them out of their misery!” Other men seemed to feel the same way, and the villagers flowed forward.
    â€œWait!” one of the youngsters shouted. “Let’s communicate with them, if such is possible. They might still be moral beings. The Outside is wide, remember, and anything is possible.”
    Cordovir argued for immediate extermination, but the villagers stopped and discussed it among themselves. Hum, with characteristic bravado, flowed up to the thing on the ground.
    â€œHello,” Hum said.
    The thing said something.
    â€œI can’t understand it,” Hum said, and started to crawl back. The creature waved its jointed tentacles—if they were tentacles—and motioned at one of the suns. He made a sound.
    â€œYes, it is warm, isn’t it?” Hum said cheerfully.
    The creature pointed at the ground, and made another sound.
    â€œWe haven’t had especially good crops this year,” Hum said conversationally.
    The creature pointed at itself and made a sound.
    â€œI agree,” Hum said. “You’re as ugly as sin.”
    Presently the villagers grew hungry and crawled back to the village. Hum stayed and listened to the things making noises at him, and Cordovir waited nervously for Hum.
    â€œYou know,” Hum said, after he rejoined Cordovir, “I think they want to learn our language. Or want me to learn theirs.”
    â€œDon’t do it,” Cordovir said, glimpsing the misty edge of a great evil.
    â€œI believe I will,” Hum murmured. Together they climbed the cliffs back to the village.
    That afternoon Cordovir went to the surplus female pen and formally asked a young woman if she would reign in his house for twenty-five days. Naturally, the woman accepted gratefully.
    On the way home, Cordovir met Hum, going to the pen.
    â€œJust killed my wife,” Hum said, superfluously, since why else would he be going to the surplus female stock?
    â€œAre you going back to the creatures tomorrow?” Cordovir asked.
    â€œI might,” Hum answered, “if nothing new presents itself.”
    â€œThe thing to find out is if they are moral beings or monsters.”
    â€œRight,” Hum said, and slithered on.
    There was a Gathering that evening, after supper. All the villagers agreed that the things were nonhuman. Cordovir argued strenuously that their very appearance belied any possibility of humanity. Nothing so hideous could have moral standards, a sense of right and wrong, and above all, a notion of truth.
    The young men didn’t agree, probably because there had been a dearth of new things recently. They pointed out that the metal object was obviously a product of intelligence. Intelligence axiomatically means standards of differentiation. Differentiation implies right and wrong.
    It was a delicious argument. Olgolel contradicted Arast and was killed by him. Mavrt, in an unusual fit of anger for so placid an individual, killed the three Holian brothers and was himself killed by Hum, who was feeling pettish. Even the surplus females could be heard arguing about it, in their pen in a corner of the village.
    Weary and happy, the villagers went to sleep.
    The next few weeks saw no end of the argument. Life went on much as usual, though. The women went out in the morning, gathered food, prepared it, and laid eggs. The eggs were taken to the surplus females to be hatched. As usual, about eight females were hatched to every male. On the twenty-fifth day of each marriage, or a little earlier, each man killed his woman and took another.
    The males went down to the ship to listen to Hum learning the language; then, when that grew boring, they returned to their customary wandering through hills and forests, looking for new things.
    The alien monsters stayed close to their ship, coming out only when Hum was there.
    Twenty-four days after the