: The Rag and Bone Men by Budrys Algis - Science fiction; Short stories Science Fiction

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THE RAG AND BONE MEN

Unfortunate castaway! Marooned far from home--with nothing to share his loneliness but humans!

The other one--Charpantier, he called himself--he and I were going back up the hill to the Foundation, carrying our bags, when I happened to remark I didn't think the Veld was sane anymore.

Charpantier said nothing for a moment. We kept walking, up the gravel path between the unimaginatively clipped hedges. But he was frowning a little, and after a while he said in an absent way: "Now, how would one determine that?" He looked straight into my eyes, which is something that has always upset me, and challenged: "I don't think one could."

I felt the shock of inadequacy. Words come out of me--perfectly accurate words, I know; but I never know how, and sometimes when asked I forget.

Now I must be very lucid; I must be his kind of man, I thought, and picked my way among my words. "These things he's had us get," I said, putting the burlap bag down and stopping so as to hold Charpantier in one place.

"He wants to build something unEarthly," Charpantier said, annoyed because I was playing his kind of trick on him, and so baldly. "What standards do you propose to judge by?"

But I was right and he was wrong. Now it remained to make him see how. "Yes. He wants to build something unEarthly. Out of Earthly parts. He wants to take six radio tubes for an Earthly radio, three pieces of Earthly Lucite exactly 1/4 Earthly inch thick, a roll of Earthly 16-gauge wire, a General Electric heat lamp, and all these other things--the polystyrene foam blocks, the polyurethane plastic sheeting, the polyvinyl insulating tape; what have you in your bag, Charpantier? Out of all this, he wants to make a Veldish thing."

"He's spent years learning about Earthly things," Charpantier pointed out. "For years, we've brought him books. Men. Everything he needs. Now he's learned what the Earthly equivalents of Veldish materials are, and he's ready to make his new transporter." Charpantier had a dark face--dark hair, dark beard, dark eyes. When his dark brows drew together it was easy to see that his best expression was dark scorn.

"I think he's desperate," I said. "I think he's learned all he can. He's learned what the nearest Earthly equivalents to Veldish things are. And he's learned that all Earth can give him nothing closer. I don't see how he could do better. Even he. You cannot make apples of cabbages. But he wants to get home--you know he wants so much to leave here and get home--and now he's desperate, and is going to try making a new transporter out of materials nothing like those in the one that broke and marooned him here."

"And it won't function?" Charpantier asked. "There is that risk. But why shouldn't he try? What's insane in that?"

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