MAN IN THE JAR
Damon Knight
THE HOTEL ROOM on the planet Meng was small and crowded. Blue-tinged sunlight from the window fell on a soiled gray carpet, a massive sandbox dotted with cigarette butts, a clutter of bottles. One corner of the room was piled high with baggage and curios. The occupant, a Mr. R. C. Vane of Earth, was sitting near the door: a man about fifty, clean shaven, with bristling iron-gray hair. He was quietly, murderously drunk.
There was a tap on the door and the bellhop slipped in—a native, tall and brown, with greenish black hair cut too long in the back. He looked about nineteen. He had one green eye and one blue.
“Set it there,” said Vane.
The bellhop put his tray down. “Yes, sir.” He took the unopened bottle of Ten Star off the tray, and the ice bucket, and the seltzer bottle, crowding them in carefully among the things already on the table. Then he put the empty bottles and ice bucket back on the tray. His hands were big and knob-jointed; he seemed too long and wide-shouldered for his tight green uniform.
“So this is Meng City,” said Vane, watching the bellhop. Vane was sitting erect and unrumpled in his chair, with his striped moth-wing jacket on and his string tie tied. He might have been sober, except for the deliberate way he spoke, and the redness of his eyes.
“Yes, sir,” said the bellhop, straightening up with the tray in his hands. “This your first time here, sir?”
“I came through two weeks ago,” Vane told him. “I did not like it then, and I do not like it now. Also, I do not like this room.”
“Management is sorry if you don’t like the room, sir. Very good view from this room.”
“It’s dirty and small,” said Vane, “but it doesn’t matter. I’m checking out this afternoon. Leaving on the afternoon rocket. I wasted two weeks upcountry, investigating Marack stories. Nothing to it—just native talk. Miserable little planet.” He sniffed, eyed the bellhop. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Jimmy Rocksha, sir.”
“Well, Jimmy Rocks in the Head, look at that pile of stuff.” Tourist goods, scarves and tapestries, rugs, blankets and other things were mounded over the piled suitcases. It looked like an explosion in a curio shop. “There’s about forty pounds of it I have no room for, not counting that knocked-down jar. Any suggestions?”
The bellhop thought about it slowly. “Sir, if I might suggest, you might put the scarves and things inside the jar.”
Vane said grudgingly, “That might work. You know how to put those things together?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Well, let us see you try. Go on, don’t stand there.”
The bellhop set his tray down again and crossed the room. A big bundle of gray pottery pieces, tied together with twine, had been stowed on top of Vane’s wardrobe trunk, a little above the bellhop’s head. Rocksha carefully removed his shoes and climbed on a chair. His brown feet were bare and clean. He lifted the bundle without effort, got down, set the bundle on the floor, and put his shoes back on.
Vane took a long swallow of his lukewarm highball, finishing it. He closed his eyes while he drank, and nodded over the glass for a moment afterward, as if listening to something inside him. “All right,” he said, getting up, “let us see.”
The bellhop loosened the twine. There were six long, thick, curving pieces, shaped a little like giant shoehorns. Then there were two round ones. One was bigger; that was the bottom. The other had a handle; that was the lid. The bellhop began to separate the pieces carefully, laying them out on the carpet.
“Watch out how you touch those together,” Vane grunted, coming up behind him. “I wouldn’t know how to get them apart again.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s an antique which I got upcountry. They used to be used for storing grain and oil. The natives claim the Maracks had the secret of making them stick the way they do. Ever heard that?”
“Upcountry boys tell a lot of fine stories, sir,” said the bellhop. He had the six long pieces arranged, well separated, in a kind of petal pattern around the big flat piece. They took up most of the free space; the jar would be chest-high when it was assembled.
Standing up, the bellhop took two of the long curved pieces and carefully brought the sides closer together. They seemed to jump the last fraction of an inch, like magnets, and merged into one smooth piece. Peering, Vane could barely make out the join.
In the same way, the bellhop added another piece to the first two. Now he had half the jar assembled. Carefully he lowered this half jar toward the edge of the big flat piece. The pieces clicked together. The bellhop stooped for another side piece.
“Hold on a minute,” said Vane suddenly. “Got an idea. Instead of putting that thing all together, then trying to stuff things into it, use your brain. Put the things in, then put the rest of the side on.”
“Yes, sir,” said the bellhop. He laid the piece of crockery down again and picked up some light blankets, which he dropped on the bottom of the jar.
“Not that way, dummy,” said Vane impatiently. “Get in there—pack them down tight.”
The bellhop hesitated. “Yes, sir.” He stepped delicately over the remaining unassembled pieces and knelt on the bottom of the jar, rolling the blankets and pressing them snugly in.
Behind him, Vane moved on tiptoe like a dancer, putting two long pieces quietly together—tic!—then a third—tic!—and then as he lifted them, tic, clack! the sides merged into the bottom and the top. The jar was complete.
The bellhop was inside.
Vane breathed hard through flared nostrils. He took a cigar out of a green-lizard pocket case, cut it with a lapel knife, and lit it. Breathing smoke, he leaned over and looked down into the jar.
Except for a moan of surprise when the jar closed, the bellhop had not made a sound. Looking down, Vane saw his brown face looking up. “Let me out of this jar, please, sir,” said the bellhop.
“Can’t do that,” said Vane. “They didn’t tell me how, upcountry.”
The bellhop moistened his lips. “Upcountry, they use a kind of tree grease,” he said. “It creeps between the pieces, and they fall apart.”
“They didn’t give me anything like that,” said Vane indifferently.
“Then please, sir, you break this jar and let me come out.”
Vane picked a bit of tobacco off his tongue. He looked at it curiously and then flicked it away. “I spotted you,” he said, “in the lobby the minute I came in this morning. Tall and thin. Too strong for a native. One green eye, one blue. Two weeks I spent, upcountry, looking; and there you were in the lobby.”
“Sir—?”
“You’re a Marack,” said Vane flatly.
The bellhop did not answer for a moment. “But sir,” he said incredulously, “Maracks are legends, sir. Nobody believes that anymore. There are no Maracks.”
“You lifted that jar down like nothing,” said Vane. “Two boys put it up there. You’ve got the hollow temples. You’ve got the long jaw and the hunched shoulders.” Frowning, he took a billfold out of his pocket and took out a yellowed card. He showed it to the bellhop. “Look at that.”
It was a faded photograph of a skeleton in a glass case. There was something disturbing about the skeleton. It was too long and thin; the shoulders seemed hunched, the skull was narrow and hollow-templed. Under it, the printing said, ABORIGINE OF NEW CLEVELAND, MENG (SIGMA LYRAE II) and in smaller letters, Newbold Anthropological Museum, Ten Eyck, Queensland, N. T.
“Found it between the pages of a book two hundred years old,” said Vane, carefully putting it back. “It was mailed as a postcard to an ancestor of mine. A year later, I happened to be on Nova Terra. Now get this. The museum is still there, but that skeleton is not. They deny it ever was there. Curator seemed to think it was a fake. None of the native races on Meng have skeletons like that, he said.”