Venus on the Half-Shell by Philip José Farmer Page B

until he was an old man that Somers was recognized as a great artist. When he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, he remarked, “This heals no wounds.” He knew that critics never admit they’re wrong. They’d still give him a hard time.
    Simon was worried that he, too, might upset the Shaltoonians. It was true that he never proposed any new ideas to them. All he did was ask questions. But often these can be more dangerous than propaganda. They lead to novel thoughts.
    It seemed, however, that he wasn’t going to spark off any novelty in the Shaltoonians’ minds. The adults were, in effect, never around for more than a day. The young were too busy playing and getting educated for the time when they’d have to give up possession of their bodies.
    Near the end of his visit, on a fine sunny morning, Simon left the spaceship to visit the Temple of Shaltoon. He intended to spend the day studying the rites being performed there. Shaltoon was the chief deity of the planet, a goddess whose closest Earthly equivalent was Venus or Aphrodite. He walked through the streets, which he found strangely empty. He was wondering what was going on when he was startled by a savage scream. He ran to the house from which it came and opened the door. A man and a woman were fighting to the death in the front room. Simon had a rule that he would never interfere in a quarrel between man and wife. It was a good rule but one which no humanitarian could keep. In another minute, one or both of the bleeding and bruised couple would be dead. He jumped in between them and then jumped out again and ran for his life. Both had turned against him, which was only to be expected.
    Since he was followed out on the street, he kept on running. As he sped down the street, he heard cries and shrieks from the houses he passed. Turning a corner, he collided with a swirling shouting mob, everyone of which seemed intent on killing anybody within range of their fists, knives, spears, swords, and axes. Simon fought his way out and staggered back to the ship. When the port was closed behind him, he crawled to the sick bay—Anubis pacing him with whimpers and tongue-licking— where he bandaged his numerous cuts and gashes.
    The next day he cautiously ventured out. The city was a mess. Corpses and wounded were everywhere in the streets, and firemen were still putting out the blazes that had been started the day before. However, no one seemed belligerent, so he stopped a citizen and asked him about yesterday’s debacle.
    “It was Shag Day, dummy,” the citizen said and moved on.
    Simon wasn’t too jarred by the rudeness. Very few of the natives were in a good mood when sober. This was because the carrier’s body was continually abused by the rotating ancestors. Each had to get all the debauchery he could cram into his allotted time between the quitting whistle and the curfew bell. As a result, the first thing the ancestor felt when he took his turn was a terrible hangover. This lasted through the day, making him tired and irritable until he had had a chance to kill the pain with liquor.
    Every once in a while, the body would collapse and be carried off to a hospital by drunken ambulance attendants and turned over to drunken nurses and doctors. The poor devil who had possession that day was too sick to do anything but lie in bed, groaning and cursing. The thought that he was wasting his precious and rare day in convalescence from somebody else’s fun made him even sicker.
    So the Space Wanderer didn’t wonder at the grumpiness of the citizen. He walked on and presently found a heavily bandaged but untypically amiable woman.
    “Everybody, if you go back a few thousand years, has the same ancestors,” she said. “So, every thousand years or so, a day occurs when one particular ancestor happens to come into possession of many carriers. This usually happens to only a few, and we can cope with most of these coincidences. But about five thousand years ago, Shag, a