Truly Human

The thing was, Nick Russell told himself irritably, he had not been that drunk. He remembered coming back to the hotel, hanging up his clothes, piling into bed. So why was his collar too tight and what in God’s name was he doing in a chair?

He opened one eye, wincing at the light. What he saw made no sense, and he closed the eye again.

He had been to two of those places in Pig Alley where the girls took off everything except their hats. Next had come that little bar on the side street and the snooty brunette in the low-cut dress - boy, he had told her off – then he had said the hell with it and had gone to bed.

Now he had on all his clothes and the damn things were too tight. He grunted, opened both eyes. The walls were funny. TV screens, gadgets everywhere. He tried to get up but could not.

He stared incredulously at himself. Broad white straps crossed his chest and thighs. Under them he wore a brown sports jacket and the pants of his good blue suit, a red necktie and a bright yellow sports shirt.

“Is this supposed to be funny?” he asked out loud. He pulled at the straps. They would not give. He filled his lungs.

“Hey, let me out of here.”

A voice at his left elbow made him jump.

“Wer spracht? Was ist los hier?”

Another voice came from his right.

“Qu’est-que-c’est que se passe? Qui parle? Laissez-moi, je vous En prie.”

“Talk English, dammit.”

His necktie was choking him. It was in some kind of crazy knot he had to untie it to get off the tie. He squirmed around in his chair as far as he could but it was not far enough. The buckles must be in back.

His heart was thumping.

“Listen,” he said loudly, “I’m an American citizen and if I don’t get out of here pretty damn quick there’s going to be hell to pay.” This little room, no door, yellow walls, all those gadgets. “You out there, you hear me?”

The other voices started again. They seemed to come from grilles in the walls - under the two big TV screens.

“Je suis ingenieur du R.T.F. On me cherchera, je vous assure si je n’irai pas a mon travail. Pourquoi m’avez-vous enleve?”

“Wer spracht, ich hab’ Sie gefragt! Sprechen Sie niche Deutsch?”

Both voices sounded as upset and bewildered as Russell himself felt. Could there be three of them, tied down to chairs in little rooms like this one? And if so, what for? Russell stared around, trying to Figure it out. The wall in front of him was curved, like part of an upright cylinder only about a yard wide. The cylinder was covered with gadgets. The wall behind him was curved, too - he could just make it out by straining around in the chair. The two side walls, the ones with the TV screens, slanted toward each other. The room was shaped like a wedge of cheese, with a hunk cut off at the point. Put three rooms just like this one together and what would you get? A disk, with a cylinder in the middle.

“Flying disk,” he said aloud. “Oh, God.”

“Comprends pas. Je ne parle ni I’anglais ni I’aUemand. Parlez frangais, nom de Dieut”

Parlay fransay, he knew that much. And du vang, and voolay voo cooshay avec mwah? That was all you needed to get along in Paris-the Frogs all spoke English, anyhow.

“Ich verlange das Sie-”

The German voice cut off and Russell grabbed the arms of his chair. All the wall gadgets had just lit up. Red ones, yellow, green. The TV screen at the right showed A picture of the Earth, a green-and-yellow ring around it. There was a yellow blip where the green and yellow met and after a moment he could see that the blip was moving slowly. The screen to his left was divided into three segments, with a bunch of colored dots in each one, Now what? The dots seemed to be arranged in the same pattern as the gadgets in front of him.

“Green, red, yellow,” he said. At the sound of his voice, one segment of the screen blinked yellow. “That’s funny.”

It blinked again.

“Was bedeutet das Licht?”

One of the other segments blinked.

“C’est bizarre, ca - ” Now the third segment blinked. “Attention, c’est nous! Nous trois! Id le boche, la I’americain…”

In the other screen, the yellow blip had advanced a little farther, trailing its green line, eating up the yellow line ahead of it.

Russell cleared his throat.

“Look, you two guys. My name is Russell - Nick Russell. Don’t either one of you speak any English?”

“Content de faire votre connaissance. Monsieur Russell. Permettez que je me presente aussi: je m’appelle Duvoisin. Mais, a repondre a votre question - non, je n’ai que quelques mots d’anglais. Parlons francais?”

“Ich sprache nur Deutsch. Das ist fiir mich genug. Ich heisse Kalbmann.”

“Kalbmann? Glad to know you.”

“Enchante.”

“Look, I don’t know what this is all about but it seems like we’re all in it together. There’s got to be some way to get out of this thing, if we just - woop!”

A distant roaring, more felt than heard. A heavy weight was pressing him back into the chair. It lasted for a few seconds, then cut off abruptly. He felt himself swing forward against the straps again. In the right-hand screen, the track of the yellow blip was no longer traveling in a circle. The yellow line dipped down in a long curve until it touched the Earth. The blip began to travel along it.

“Attention, pour I’amour de Dieu! Nous tombons!”

Russell stared at one screen, then the other. In the left-hand screen dots in two of the segments were blinking urgently - yellow in one, green in the other.

“Versteh’ nicht. Versteh’ nicht. Warum dann -”

Yellow, that was the one that was blinking as the German talked. Green must be the Frenchman, In his own segment, the bottom one, nothing was happening.

“Mais pourquoi attendez-vous? Appuyez sur les boutons, mon Dieu!”

The right-hand screen’s blip was sliding down its yellow arc. Russell began to feel alarmed. Could that mean what he thought it meant? He swung to the left-hand screen again. A yellow button and a green one, the same as the gadgets in front of him. He leaned forward and tried to press them but they wouldn’t go in. Must be the other two people were supposed to press them – so why didn’t they?

“Hey, you guys, press the buttons!”

The yellow blip was sliding inexorably down its arc. Now the other two were both yelling. He put his hands over his ears and tried to think. His own segment remained blank. They were supposed to push the buttons - a horrible thought. Suppose their segments were blank, too, and Russell knew which buttons they were supposed to press but they didn’t. And they knew - the dots of color went on blinking.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Listen, you what’s – your - name, the Frenchy! Push the green button, the one in the third row, you understand me? Push the green button!”

“Monsieur, c’est absolument inutile de purler dans une langue que nous ne comprenons pas. Reflechez-vous, en ce moment nous tombons vers la terre! Il faut que nos agissions avec resolution, et au premiere, que vous appuyiez sur le bouton jaune - ”

“Warum konnen Sie nicht sprachen wie den Menschen? Achtung, Ami, auf den ersten gelben Knopf Drucken!”

“Listen to me, for God’s sake. You, the German, push the yellow button, you hear me? The one on top! Push it, you, dumb Kraut!”

“Monsieur Russell, je vous en prie - appuyez -”

“Don’t keep talking Frog to me. Goddamn it. You give me a pain-just press the green button in the third row! In the third row!”

“Lasst mich auch etwas sagen. Ami. Sie machen ein solcher Larme, das man nicht denken kann. Wollen Sie das Leben oder der Todt haben? Lieber Gott, auf den gelben Knopf-”

“Mais pourquoi ne m’entendez-vous pas? Vos ecoles n’ont-ils pas vous enseigne un seul mot de francqis, nom de Dieu?”

“You’re like all the rest of them - you can speak English all right if you want to but you’re too damn snooty. Look, for Chrissake -”

“Wir keine Zeit Ubrig haben! Franzose, bitte - “

“Will you shut up? Listen, Frenchy, the hell with him – you and me, maybe that’s enough. Will you please just give one little push-”

“Espice d’un cretin! Si nous eumes seulement une langue commune, tout c’ela n’eut pas arrive. Mais evidemment ce langue doit etre franqais, la plus precise, la plus logique- “

“Oh, God!”

Silence