October 8, 2025 • 23 mins
A surreal sci-fi series exploring speculative concepts, dreams, and philosophical what-ifs. Each episode is a cerebral journey into the mind’s deepest questions.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:36):
Mind Way. Welcome to a half hour of mind Ways
Short stories from the world of Speculati section Oh this
(01:04):
is Michael Hanson. The story this evening is Game for
a Motel Room by Fritz Lieber, copyright nineteen sixty three
by Mercury Press. Sonya moved around the warm, deeply carpeted
(01:35):
motel room and the first great trickle of dawn, as
if to demonstrate how endlessly beautiful a body can be
if only its owner will let it, even the body
of a woman in well, perhaps your forties. Burton, smiling
at himself, lazy, would proof for having thought that grudging word.
Even it occurred to him that bodies did not automatically
(01:56):
grow less beautiful with age, but that a lot of
bodies are neglect, abused, even hated by their owners. Women
in particular, are have to grow contemptuous and ashamed of
their flesh. As always shows, they start thinking old and ugly,
and pretty soon they look it like a car. A
body needs tender, constant care, regular tune ups, an occasional
(02:18):
small repair, and above all, it needs to be intimately
loved by its owner, and from time to time by
an admiring second party. And then it never loses beauty
and dignity, even when it corrupts in the end and dies. Oh,
the dawns a cold hour for philosophy, Burton told himself.
And somehow philosophy always gets around the cold totics, just
(02:42):
as love making and all the rest of the best
of life make one remember death and even worse things.
His lean arm snaked out to the bedside table, came
back with a cigarette and an empty folder of matches.
Sonya noticed, she rummaged in her pale ivory traveling case
and tossed him a black pair shape lighter. Burton caught
(03:02):
the thing, lit his cigarette, and then studied it. It
seemed to be made of black ivory and shaped rather
like the grip of a revolver. While the striking mechanism
was a blued steel, the effect was sinister like it.
Sonya asked from across the room. Uh, frankly, no, it
(03:25):
doesn't really suit you.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
You show good taste to her sound instinct. It's a
vacation present from my husband.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, he has bad taste and married you.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
He has bad everything.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Hush baby, Burton didn't mind not talking. Let him concentrate
on watching Sonya slam and crop haired. She looked as
tremely beautiful as her classic cream colored, hard topped Italian
sports car in which she had driven into this cozy
hideaway from the bar where they had picked each other up.
Her movements now stooping to retrieve a smoke blue stocking
(03:59):
and trail it across chair, momentarily teasing apart two ribs
and the upward slanting Venetian blinds to appear at the
cold gray world outside, executing the fraction of a dance figure,
stopping the smile at emptiness. These movements had it up
to nothing but the rhythms and symbolisms of a dream.
Yet it was the sort of dream in which actor
and onlooker might float forever in the morning twilight. She
(04:22):
looked now like a schoolgirl, now like a witch, now
like an age outwitting ballerina out for her twenty fifth season,
but still in every way the prima ballerina. As she moved,
she hummed in a deep and trouttled voice, a tune
that Burton didn't recognize, And as she hummed, the dim
air in front of her lower face seemed to change color,
(04:45):
very faintly, the deep purples and blues and browns, matching
the tones of the melody pure illusion. Burton was sure
like that which some hush heish eaters and wet smokers
experienced during their ecstasy when they hear words as colors,
but most enjoyable to exercise his mind. Now that his
(05:05):
body had had its fill, and while his eyes were
satisfyingly occupied, Burton began to set in order the reasons
why a mature lover is preferable the one within you
hooing distance of twenty in either direction. Reason one, she
does quite as much of the approach work as you do.
Sonya had been both heartwarmingly straightforward and remarkably intuitive at
(05:27):
the bar last night. Reason two. She's generally well equipped
for adventure. Sonya had provided both sports car and motel room.
Reason three. She doesn't go into an emotional tail spin
after the act of love, even if her thoughts trend
toward death. Then what yours do? Sonya seemed both lovely
(05:49):
and sensible, the sort of woman it was good to
think of getting married to and having children by. Sonya
turned to him with a smile.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
IM sorry, baby, but that's quite impot especially your second.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Notion, Hey did you did you really read my mind.
What do you mean why couldn't we have children?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I think I'll take a little chance and tell you why.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
She came over and sat on the bed beside him,
and bent down and kissed him on the forehead. That
was nice? Did it mean anything special?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
It was to make you forget everything I'm going to
tell you?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Uh? How how if I'm to understand what you tell
After a while, I will kiss you again on the forehead,
and then you will forget everything I've told you in between.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Or if you're very good, I'll kiss you on the
nose and then you'll remember. But you won't be able
to tell anyone.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Well if you say so. But why what is it
you're you're going to tell me?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Oh, just that I'm from another planet in a distant
star cluster, and I belong to a totally different species.
We could no more start a child than a chihuahua
and a cat or a rhinoceros. Unlike the mayor and
the donkey, we couldn't even get a cute, little sterile
mule with glossy fur and blue bows.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
On his ears.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Burton grinned he had just thought of reason four. A
really grown up lover plays the most delightfully childish nonsense games.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Well go on, well superficially, of course, I'm very like
an earth woman. I have two arms and two legs
and this and these.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Mm yeah, for which I am eternally grateful.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
You like them much?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
M yeah, yeah, I do, especially these.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Watch out if they don't even give me out.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
They're used in esping.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
You see.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Inside, I'm very different. My mind is different too. It
can do mathematics faster and better than any one of
your electric calculating machines.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Oh yeah, w wha, what's two and two?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
About twenty two? And also one hundred in the binary
system and eleven in the trinary and four in the duodecimal.
I have perfect recall. I can remember every least thing
I've ever done, and every word of every book I've
ever leave through. I can read unshielded minds, in fact,
anything up to triple shielding and harmon colors. I can
direct my body heat so that I never really need
(08:14):
clothes to keep me warm at temperatures above freezing. I
can walk on water if I concentrate.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
And even fly, so I don't do it here.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Because it would make me conspicuous.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
M yeah, especially he, especially at the at present moment,
thought it'd be one hell of a sight. Uh uh.
Why are you here, by the way and not behaving
yourself on your home planet.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I'm on vacation, really, but yeah, well, we use your
rather primitive planet for vacations like you use Africa and
the Canadian forest. A little machine teaches us during one
night's sleep several of your languages and implants in our
brains the necessary background information too. My husband surprised me
by giving me the money.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
For this vacation the same time it gave me the
letter y.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Usually he's very stingy, but perhaps he had some little
plot I don't know, an affair with his chief nuclear chemist,
I guess, and wanted.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Me out of the way.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
I can't be sure, though, because he always keeps his
mind quadruple shield, even from me.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So you actually have husbands and your planet too, Oh yes, indeed.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Very jealous and the the other ones too, so watch
your steppe. Uh yeah. Although my planet is much more
advanced than yours, we still have husbands and wives and
a very stuffy system of monogamy that seems to go
on forever and ever everywhere. Oh yes, and on my planet.
We have death and taxes and life insurance and wars and.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
All the rest of the universal idiocy.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
I don't want to talk about that anymore, or about
my husband. Let's let's talk about you. Let's play truth,
deep deep down truth. Okay, what's the thing you're most
afraid of in the whole world?
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Jesus, you really want me to give you, uh an
honest answer to you to that?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Of course, it's the first rule of the game.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Well, I guess I'm most afraid it's something going wrong
with my brain, you know, growing wrong, really something like you,
like a brain tumor, that it'd be it.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Oh, you, poor baby, just it just wait a minute.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Still uneasy from his confession, Burton started nervously to pick
up Sonya's black lighter, but it's black pistol, look repelled him.
Sonya came bustling back with something else in her right hand.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
It's it up, No, none of that. This is serious.
Pretend I'm a very proper lady doctor who just forgot.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
To get dressed. Burton could see her slim back and
his own face over her right shoulder in the wide
mirror of the dresser. She slipped her right hand and
the small object had held behind his head, and there
was a click.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
No, I can't see any sign of something wrong in
your brain or it's likely to grow wrong.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
It's as healthy as an infanst.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
What's the matter being?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Look? Uh, sonya. It's wonderful to play nonsense games and
all that, but when you start magic tricks or hypnotism
to to back 'em up, well that's cheating.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Oh what do you mean?
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Well, I mean when you clicked that that thing, I
saw my head turn into a pinkish skull and then
into like a pulsing blob with folds in it.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Ah, I'd forgotten the mirror, but you really were just
imagining things or having a mild optical spasm and seeing colors. No,
I won't let you see my little X Y Z
ring machine.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
She tossed it across the room into her traveling case.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
It would spoil our little nonsense game.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
As his breathing and thoughts quieted, Burton decided she was
possibly right, or at least that he'd best pretend she
was right. It was the safest and sanest thing to
think of what he'd glimpsed in the mirror as an
illusion like the faint colors he fancied forming in front
of her, humming lips. Perhaps Sony Yeah, had an effect
(12:01):
on him, like hashish or some super marijuana. Plausible enough,
I'd be considering how much more powerful a beautiful woman
is than any drug. Nevertheless, alright, Sonya, tell me what's
your deepest fear.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I don't want to tell you.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Oh, come on, I stuck to the rules.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Oh all right, it's that my husband will go crazy
and kill me. That's a much more dreadful fear on
my planet than yours, because we've conquered all diseases, and we,
each of us can live forever, though it is customary
to disintegrate after forty to fifty thousand years, and we,
each of us have tremendous physical and mental power, so
that the merest thought of any genuine insanity is dreadfully shocking.
(12:45):
Insanity is so nearly unknown to us that even our
advanced intuition doesn't work on it. And what's unknown is
always most frightening.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Eh.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
By insanity, I don't mean minor irrationalities. We have those.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
My husband, for instance, is is' bugged.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Down the number thirty three.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
He he won't.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Begin any important venture except in the thirty third day
of the month, and me, I have a weakness for
a black haired.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Babies from primitive planet.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah. Wait a minute, Uh you said the thirty third
day of the month.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, my planet has a longer months nights too. Y,
you'd love him more time for demonstrating affection and empathy.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Uh. You play this nonsense game pretty seriously, like you'd
read nothing but speculative fiction all your life.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
You know, maybe there's more inspectative fiction than you realize,
but uh, we've had enough of bad game. Come on,
black haired baby, let's play.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute. She drew back,
making a sulky mouth at him. He made his own
grim or perhaps his half emerged thoughts did that for him. Okay, So,
so you've got a husband on your planet and he
he's got tremendous powers, and you're definitely afraid he's gonna
go crazy and try to kill you. And now he
(14:00):
doesn't out of character thing by giving you a vacation
money and oh yes, he's.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Such a dreadful, mixed up superman. He always keeps up
that permissible but uncustomary quadruple shield and he looks at
me with such a secret, gloating viciousness when we're alone
that I'm I'm choked full of fear day and night.
And I've wished, I've wished I could really get something
on him, so that I could run to an officer
of public safety and have the many i'd put away.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
But I can't, I can't. He never makes a slip.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
I begin to feel I'm going crazy, I with my
supremely trained and guarded mind. But I just have to
get away to vacation planets and forget him in loving
someone else. Come on, baby, let's okay.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Wait a minute. You said you've got insurance on your planet, right?
Are you insured for very much?
Speaker 2 (14:47):
A very great deal. A perfect health and a life
expectancy of fifty thousand years makes the premiums really cheap.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
All right? And your husband's a beneficiary, Yes he is.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Come on, Burton, let's not talk about him.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Let's no, Oh, sonya, What does your husband do? I mean,
what is his work?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
He manages a bomb factory. I work there too. I
told you we had wars there between the league our
planet belongs to and another star cluster. You've just started
to discover the super bombs on Earth, the fission bomb,
the fusion bomb. They are clumsy, oversized toys. The bombs
my husband's factory manufacturers. Can each of them destroy a planet.
(15:27):
They're really fuses for starting the matter of the planet
disintegrating spontaneously so that it flashes into a little star.
If the bombs are so tiny, you can hold one
in your hand. In fact, this cigarette lighter is an
exact model of one of them. The models were used
for Cosmo State Presence to top officials.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
My husband gave me this along with.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
The vacation money, Burton, which mean one of those foul
Earth cigarettes. Will you if you're going to refuse the
other excitements, I've got to have something.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Okay, tell me one more thing, sonya. Now you say
you've got a perfect memory. How many times have you
struck that cigarette lighter since your husband gave it to you? Uh?
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Thirty one times, counting the one time you used it.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
She flicked it on and touched the tiny blue flame
to her cigarette and hailed deeply. Let the tiny snuffer
snap down on the flame. Twin plumes of faint smoke
wreathed from her nostrils.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
That's thirty two.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Now she held the black pear shaped object towards him,
her thumb on the neuraled steel blue trigger.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Shall I give you a light?
Speaker 1 (16:36):
No, sonya, as you value your life and mine and
the lives of three billion other primitives, don't work that
lighter again? Put it down?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
All right, all.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Right, baby? She smiled nervously and dropped the black thing
on the white sheets.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Wise, baby's so.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Excited, Sonya. Look, maybe I'm crazy, or maybe you are
only playing a nonsense game backed up with hypnotism, But
what is it if you really do come from another
planet where there's almost no insanity, homicidal or otherwise, What
I'm going to tell you'll be news, Sonya. We've just
lately had several murders here on Earth where a man
(17:14):
plants a time bomb on a big commercial airplane to
explode it in the air and kill all the passengers
and crew, just to do away with a single person,
generally for the sake of collecting a big insurance policy. Now,
if an Earth murderer could be cold blooded or mad
enough to do that, why couldn't a super.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Murderer, Oh oh no, not blow up a whole planet
to get bit of just one person?
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Well, why not. Your husband is crazy, only you can't
prove it. He hates you, right, He stands a collective
fortune if you die in an accident, like on a
primitive vacation planet that explodes. He gives you the money
for a vacation on such a planet. And at the
same time he gets you a cigarette lighter that's an
exact model of it, which I can't believe it not
(18:04):
a whole planet, But that's the sort of thing insanity
can be, Sonya. And what's more, you can check it.
Use that x y z ray gadget thing of yours
to look through the lighter.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
But he couldn't, not even he could.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Look through the lighter, will you? Sonya picked up the
black thing by its base and carried it over to
her traveling case. Remember not to flick it. You told
me he was bugged on the number thirty three, and
I imagine that would be about the right number to
allow to make sure that you were settled on your
vacation planet before anything happened. He saw the shiver traveled
(18:41):
down her back as he said that, and suddenly Burton
was shaking so much himself he couldn't possibly have moved
Sonya's hands were on the other side of her body
from him, busy above her traveling case. There was a click,
and her pinkish skeleton showed through her. It was not
quite the same the skeleton of an Earth human. There
(19:02):
were two long bones in the upper arms and upper legs,
fewer ribs, and what looked like two tiny skulls in
the chest. She turned around, not looking at him.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
You were right, and now I've got the evidence to
put my husband away forever. I can't wait.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
She whirled into action, snatching articles of clothing from the
floor chairs and dresser, whipping them into her traveling case.
The whole frantic little dance took her less than ten seconds.
Her hand was on the outside door before she paused.
She looked at Burton, put down her traveling case, and
came over to the bed and sat down beside him.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Poor baby, I'm gonna have to wipe out your memory.
And yet you were so very clever. I really mean that, Burton.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
He wanted to object, but he felt paralyzed. She put
her arms around him and moved her lips towards his forehead. Suddenly,
she said, no.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I can't do that. There's got to be some reward
for you.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
She bent her head and kissed him pertly on the nose.
Then she disengaged herself, hurried to her bag, picked it up,
and opened the door.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Besides, I hate for you to forget.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Any part of me.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Hey, you can't go out like that.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
Why not?
Speaker 1 (20:23):
You don't have any clothes on on.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
My planet, we don't wear them.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
The door slammed behind her. Burton sprang out of bed
and threw it open again. He was just in time
to see the sports car take off straight up. Burton
stood in the open door for half a minute. Stark
naked himself, looking around at the unexploded Earth, and he
started to say a loud gosh. I didn't even get
(20:50):
the name of her planet, but his lips were sealed.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Talk about to talk at tattists.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
You've heard Fritz Lieber's story game for Motel Room. Copyright
nineteen sixty three by The Mercury Press. This is Michael Hanson,
willis Princess from the United Post. Technical production for this
program by Bob cham Mind Webbs has produced at WHA
(22:47):
Radio in Madison, a service of the University of Wisconsin's
Extension
Mind Way. Welcome to a half hour of mind Ways
Short stories from the world of Speculati section Oh this
(01:04):
is Michael Hanson. The story this evening is Game for
a Motel Room by Fritz Lieber, copyright nineteen sixty three
by Mercury Press. Sonya moved around the warm, deeply carpeted
(01:35):
motel room and the first great trickle of dawn, as
if to demonstrate how endlessly beautiful a body can be
if only its owner will let it, even the body
of a woman in well, perhaps your forties. Burton, smiling
at himself, lazy, would proof for having thought that grudging word.
Even it occurred to him that bodies did not automatically
(01:56):
grow less beautiful with age, but that a lot of
bodies are neglect, abused, even hated by their owners. Women
in particular, are have to grow contemptuous and ashamed of
their flesh. As always shows, they start thinking old and ugly,
and pretty soon they look it like a car. A
body needs tender, constant care, regular tune ups, an occasional
(02:18):
small repair, and above all, it needs to be intimately
loved by its owner, and from time to time by
an admiring second party. And then it never loses beauty
and dignity, even when it corrupts in the end and dies. Oh,
the dawns a cold hour for philosophy, Burton told himself.
And somehow philosophy always gets around the cold totics, just
(02:42):
as love making and all the rest of the best
of life make one remember death and even worse things.
His lean arm snaked out to the bedside table, came
back with a cigarette and an empty folder of matches.
Sonya noticed, she rummaged in her pale ivory traveling case
and tossed him a black pair shape lighter. Burton caught
(03:02):
the thing, lit his cigarette, and then studied it. It
seemed to be made of black ivory and shaped rather
like the grip of a revolver. While the striking mechanism
was a blued steel, the effect was sinister like it.
Sonya asked from across the room. Uh, frankly, no, it
(03:25):
doesn't really suit you.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
You show good taste to her sound instinct. It's a
vacation present from my husband.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, he has bad taste and married you.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
He has bad everything.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Hush baby, Burton didn't mind not talking. Let him concentrate
on watching Sonya slam and crop haired. She looked as
tremely beautiful as her classic cream colored, hard topped Italian
sports car in which she had driven into this cozy
hideaway from the bar where they had picked each other up.
Her movements now stooping to retrieve a smoke blue stocking
(03:59):
and trail it across chair, momentarily teasing apart two ribs
and the upward slanting Venetian blinds to appear at the
cold gray world outside, executing the fraction of a dance figure,
stopping the smile at emptiness. These movements had it up
to nothing but the rhythms and symbolisms of a dream.
Yet it was the sort of dream in which actor
and onlooker might float forever in the morning twilight. She
(04:22):
looked now like a schoolgirl, now like a witch, now
like an age outwitting ballerina out for her twenty fifth season,
but still in every way the prima ballerina. As she moved,
she hummed in a deep and trouttled voice, a tune
that Burton didn't recognize, And as she hummed, the dim
air in front of her lower face seemed to change color,
(04:45):
very faintly, the deep purples and blues and browns, matching
the tones of the melody pure illusion. Burton was sure
like that which some hush heish eaters and wet smokers
experienced during their ecstasy when they hear words as colors,
but most enjoyable to exercise his mind. Now that his
(05:05):
body had had its fill, and while his eyes were
satisfyingly occupied, Burton began to set in order the reasons
why a mature lover is preferable the one within you
hooing distance of twenty in either direction. Reason one, she
does quite as much of the approach work as you do.
Sonya had been both heartwarmingly straightforward and remarkably intuitive at
(05:27):
the bar last night. Reason two. She's generally well equipped
for adventure. Sonya had provided both sports car and motel room.
Reason three. She doesn't go into an emotional tail spin
after the act of love, even if her thoughts trend
toward death. Then what yours do? Sonya seemed both lovely
(05:49):
and sensible, the sort of woman it was good to
think of getting married to and having children by. Sonya
turned to him with a smile.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
IM sorry, baby, but that's quite impot especially your second.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Notion, Hey did you did you really read my mind.
What do you mean why couldn't we have children?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I think I'll take a little chance and tell you why.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
She came over and sat on the bed beside him,
and bent down and kissed him on the forehead. That
was nice? Did it mean anything special?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
It was to make you forget everything I'm going to
tell you?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Uh? How how if I'm to understand what you tell
After a while, I will kiss you again on the forehead,
and then you will forget everything I've told you in between.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Or if you're very good, I'll kiss you on the
nose and then you'll remember. But you won't be able
to tell anyone.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Well if you say so. But why what is it
you're you're going to tell me?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Oh, just that I'm from another planet in a distant
star cluster, and I belong to a totally different species.
We could no more start a child than a chihuahua
and a cat or a rhinoceros. Unlike the mayor and
the donkey, we couldn't even get a cute, little sterile
mule with glossy fur and blue bows.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
On his ears.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Burton grinned he had just thought of reason four. A
really grown up lover plays the most delightfully childish nonsense games.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Well go on, well superficially, of course, I'm very like
an earth woman. I have two arms and two legs
and this and these.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Mm yeah, for which I am eternally grateful.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
You like them much?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
M yeah, yeah, I do, especially these.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Watch out if they don't even give me out.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
They're used in esping.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
You see.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Inside, I'm very different. My mind is different too. It
can do mathematics faster and better than any one of
your electric calculating machines.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Oh yeah, w wha, what's two and two?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
About twenty two? And also one hundred in the binary
system and eleven in the trinary and four in the duodecimal.
I have perfect recall. I can remember every least thing
I've ever done, and every word of every book I've
ever leave through. I can read unshielded minds, in fact,
anything up to triple shielding and harmon colors. I can
direct my body heat so that I never really need
(08:14):
clothes to keep me warm at temperatures above freezing. I
can walk on water if I concentrate.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
And even fly, so I don't do it here.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Because it would make me conspicuous.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
M yeah, especially he, especially at the at present moment,
thought it'd be one hell of a sight. Uh uh.
Why are you here, by the way and not behaving
yourself on your home planet.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I'm on vacation, really, but yeah, well, we use your
rather primitive planet for vacations like you use Africa and
the Canadian forest. A little machine teaches us during one
night's sleep several of your languages and implants in our
brains the necessary background information too. My husband surprised me
by giving me the money.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
For this vacation the same time it gave me the
letter y.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Usually he's very stingy, but perhaps he had some little
plot I don't know, an affair with his chief nuclear chemist,
I guess, and wanted.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Me out of the way.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
I can't be sure, though, because he always keeps his
mind quadruple shield, even from me.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So you actually have husbands and your planet too, Oh yes, indeed.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Very jealous and the the other ones too, so watch
your steppe. Uh yeah. Although my planet is much more
advanced than yours, we still have husbands and wives and
a very stuffy system of monogamy that seems to go
on forever and ever everywhere. Oh yes, and on my planet.
We have death and taxes and life insurance and wars and.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
All the rest of the universal idiocy.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
I don't want to talk about that anymore, or about
my husband. Let's let's talk about you. Let's play truth,
deep deep down truth. Okay, what's the thing you're most
afraid of in the whole world?
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Jesus, you really want me to give you, uh an
honest answer to you to that?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Of course, it's the first rule of the game.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Well, I guess I'm most afraid it's something going wrong
with my brain, you know, growing wrong, really something like you,
like a brain tumor, that it'd be it.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Oh, you, poor baby, just it just wait a minute.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Still uneasy from his confession, Burton started nervously to pick
up Sonya's black lighter, but it's black pistol, look repelled him.
Sonya came bustling back with something else in her right hand.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
It's it up, No, none of that. This is serious.
Pretend I'm a very proper lady doctor who just forgot.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
To get dressed. Burton could see her slim back and
his own face over her right shoulder in the wide
mirror of the dresser. She slipped her right hand and
the small object had held behind his head, and there
was a click.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
No, I can't see any sign of something wrong in
your brain or it's likely to grow wrong.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
It's as healthy as an infanst.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
What's the matter being?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Look? Uh, sonya. It's wonderful to play nonsense games and
all that, but when you start magic tricks or hypnotism
to to back 'em up, well that's cheating.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Oh what do you mean?
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Well, I mean when you clicked that that thing, I
saw my head turn into a pinkish skull and then
into like a pulsing blob with folds in it.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Ah, I'd forgotten the mirror, but you really were just
imagining things or having a mild optical spasm and seeing colors. No,
I won't let you see my little X Y Z
ring machine.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
She tossed it across the room into her traveling case.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
It would spoil our little nonsense game.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
As his breathing and thoughts quieted, Burton decided she was
possibly right, or at least that he'd best pretend she
was right. It was the safest and sanest thing to
think of what he'd glimpsed in the mirror as an
illusion like the faint colors he fancied forming in front
of her, humming lips. Perhaps Sony Yeah, had an effect
(12:01):
on him, like hashish or some super marijuana. Plausible enough,
I'd be considering how much more powerful a beautiful woman
is than any drug. Nevertheless, alright, Sonya, tell me what's
your deepest fear.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I don't want to tell you.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Oh, come on, I stuck to the rules.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Oh all right, it's that my husband will go crazy
and kill me. That's a much more dreadful fear on
my planet than yours, because we've conquered all diseases, and we,
each of us can live forever, though it is customary
to disintegrate after forty to fifty thousand years, and we,
each of us have tremendous physical and mental power, so
that the merest thought of any genuine insanity is dreadfully shocking.
(12:45):
Insanity is so nearly unknown to us that even our
advanced intuition doesn't work on it. And what's unknown is
always most frightening.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Eh.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
By insanity, I don't mean minor irrationalities. We have those.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
My husband, for instance, is is' bugged.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Down the number thirty three.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
He he won't.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Begin any important venture except in the thirty third day
of the month, and me, I have a weakness for
a black haired.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Babies from primitive planet.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah. Wait a minute, Uh you said the thirty third
day of the month.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, my planet has a longer months nights too. Y,
you'd love him more time for demonstrating affection and empathy.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Uh. You play this nonsense game pretty seriously, like you'd
read nothing but speculative fiction all your life.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
You know, maybe there's more inspectative fiction than you realize,
but uh, we've had enough of bad game. Come on,
black haired baby, let's play.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute. She drew back,
making a sulky mouth at him. He made his own
grim or perhaps his half emerged thoughts did that for him. Okay, So,
so you've got a husband on your planet and he
he's got tremendous powers, and you're definitely afraid he's gonna
go crazy and try to kill you. And now he
(14:00):
doesn't out of character thing by giving you a vacation
money and oh yes, he's.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Such a dreadful, mixed up superman. He always keeps up
that permissible but uncustomary quadruple shield and he looks at
me with such a secret, gloating viciousness when we're alone
that I'm I'm choked full of fear day and night.
And I've wished, I've wished I could really get something
on him, so that I could run to an officer
of public safety and have the many i'd put away.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
But I can't, I can't. He never makes a slip.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
I begin to feel I'm going crazy, I with my
supremely trained and guarded mind. But I just have to
get away to vacation planets and forget him in loving
someone else. Come on, baby, let's okay.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Wait a minute. You said you've got insurance on your planet, right?
Are you insured for very much?
Speaker 2 (14:47):
A very great deal. A perfect health and a life
expectancy of fifty thousand years makes the premiums really cheap.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
All right? And your husband's a beneficiary, Yes he is.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Come on, Burton, let's not talk about him.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Let's no, Oh, sonya, What does your husband do? I mean,
what is his work?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
He manages a bomb factory. I work there too. I
told you we had wars there between the league our
planet belongs to and another star cluster. You've just started
to discover the super bombs on Earth, the fission bomb,
the fusion bomb. They are clumsy, oversized toys. The bombs
my husband's factory manufacturers. Can each of them destroy a planet.
(15:27):
They're really fuses for starting the matter of the planet
disintegrating spontaneously so that it flashes into a little star.
If the bombs are so tiny, you can hold one
in your hand. In fact, this cigarette lighter is an
exact model of one of them. The models were used
for Cosmo State Presence to top officials.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
My husband gave me this along with.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
The vacation money, Burton, which mean one of those foul
Earth cigarettes. Will you if you're going to refuse the
other excitements, I've got to have something.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Okay, tell me one more thing, sonya. Now you say
you've got a perfect memory. How many times have you
struck that cigarette lighter since your husband gave it to you? Uh?
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Thirty one times, counting the one time you used it.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
She flicked it on and touched the tiny blue flame
to her cigarette and hailed deeply. Let the tiny snuffer
snap down on the flame. Twin plumes of faint smoke
wreathed from her nostrils.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
That's thirty two.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Now she held the black pear shaped object towards him,
her thumb on the neuraled steel blue trigger.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Shall I give you a light?
Speaker 1 (16:36):
No, sonya, as you value your life and mine and
the lives of three billion other primitives, don't work that
lighter again? Put it down?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
All right, all.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Right, baby? She smiled nervously and dropped the black thing
on the white sheets.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Wise, baby's so.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Excited, Sonya. Look, maybe I'm crazy, or maybe you are
only playing a nonsense game backed up with hypnotism, But
what is it if you really do come from another
planet where there's almost no insanity, homicidal or otherwise, What
I'm going to tell you'll be news, Sonya. We've just
lately had several murders here on Earth where a man
(17:14):
plants a time bomb on a big commercial airplane to
explode it in the air and kill all the passengers
and crew, just to do away with a single person,
generally for the sake of collecting a big insurance policy. Now,
if an Earth murderer could be cold blooded or mad
enough to do that, why couldn't a super.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Murderer, Oh oh no, not blow up a whole planet
to get bit of just one person?
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Well, why not. Your husband is crazy, only you can't
prove it. He hates you, right, He stands a collective
fortune if you die in an accident, like on a
primitive vacation planet that explodes. He gives you the money
for a vacation on such a planet. And at the
same time he gets you a cigarette lighter that's an
exact model of it, which I can't believe it not
(18:04):
a whole planet, But that's the sort of thing insanity
can be, Sonya. And what's more, you can check it.
Use that x y z ray gadget thing of yours
to look through the lighter.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
But he couldn't, not even he could.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Look through the lighter, will you? Sonya picked up the
black thing by its base and carried it over to
her traveling case. Remember not to flick it. You told
me he was bugged on the number thirty three, and
I imagine that would be about the right number to
allow to make sure that you were settled on your
vacation planet before anything happened. He saw the shiver traveled
(18:41):
down her back as he said that, and suddenly Burton
was shaking so much himself he couldn't possibly have moved
Sonya's hands were on the other side of her body
from him, busy above her traveling case. There was a click,
and her pinkish skeleton showed through her. It was not
quite the same the skeleton of an Earth human. There
(19:02):
were two long bones in the upper arms and upper legs,
fewer ribs, and what looked like two tiny skulls in
the chest. She turned around, not looking at him.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
You were right, and now I've got the evidence to
put my husband away forever. I can't wait.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
She whirled into action, snatching articles of clothing from the
floor chairs and dresser, whipping them into her traveling case.
The whole frantic little dance took her less than ten seconds.
Her hand was on the outside door before she paused.
She looked at Burton, put down her traveling case, and
came over to the bed and sat down beside him.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Poor baby, I'm gonna have to wipe out your memory.
And yet you were so very clever. I really mean that, Burton.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
He wanted to object, but he felt paralyzed. She put
her arms around him and moved her lips towards his forehead. Suddenly,
she said, no.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I can't do that. There's got to be some reward
for you.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
She bent her head and kissed him pertly on the nose.
Then she disengaged herself, hurried to her bag, picked it up,
and opened the door.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Besides, I hate for you to forget.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Any part of me.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Hey, you can't go out like that.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
Why not?
Speaker 1 (20:23):
You don't have any clothes on on.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
My planet, we don't wear them.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
The door slammed behind her. Burton sprang out of bed
and threw it open again. He was just in time
to see the sports car take off straight up. Burton
stood in the open door for half a minute. Stark
naked himself, looking around at the unexploded Earth, and he
started to say a loud gosh. I didn't even get
(20:50):
the name of her planet, but his lips were sealed.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Talk about to talk at tattists.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
You've heard Fritz Lieber's story game for Motel Room. Copyright
nineteen sixty three by The Mercury Press. This is Michael Hanson,
willis Princess from the United Post. Technical production for this
program by Bob cham Mind Webbs has produced at WHA
(22:47):
Radio in Madison, a service of the University of Wisconsin's
Extension
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