FEBRUARY • 35 CENTS
by Fritz Leiber THE SECOND o L OF F
ERE ARE nine great novelettes from the first six years of IF Magazine! Like The First World of IF, which received such enthusi astic response from science fiction readers allover America, this is a volume of exceptional interest-distin guished examples of fine science fiction writing by such authors as Charl es Beaumont, James Blish, Phillip K. Dick, Gordon Dickson, Charles L. Fon tenay, James E. Gunn, Ray mond F. Jones, Bryce Wal ton and Robert F. Young in an exciting variety of mood, idea, theme and pace. And if you missed The First World of IF, containing 20 really outstanding short stories from the first five years of IF, there are still a few copies available ... Just send 50¢ a copy for either the "First World" or the "Second World" to IF Magazine, Kingston, New York, and your copy wi II be mailed at once. WORLDS OF - ...=:::;: SCIENCE FICTION
FEBRUARY 1959 == All Stories New and Complete· === ;;;; Publisher: JAMES L. QUINN § - = Editor: DAMON KNIGHT
~1I1I1I"IIIIIIUIIIIUUIIilIUlIIIllIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII1IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIUlUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIliDS § 5 ~ i ; SHORT STORIES I ~ PIPE DREAM by Fritz Leiber 2 ~ 14 _~==_~ THE WIND PEOPLE by Marion Zimmer Bradley 2• ::r::==! THE GOOD WORK by Theodore L. Thomas ;;;: § THE MAN WHO TASTED ASHES by Aigis Budrys 38 § i LOVE AND MOONDOGS by Richard McKenna 50 I I THE LAST DAYS OF L.A. by George H. Smith 60 I ~ VIRGIN GROUND by Rosel George Brown 78 § I DISCIPLINE by Margaret St. Clair 86 I
:=§=- IN THE JAG-WHIFFING SERVICE by David R. Bunch 99a5 ====_, = STAR OF REBIRTH by Bernard Wall - i NO, NO, NOT ROGOVr by Cordwainer Smith 106 i ~ ~ i= FEATURE =~ 5 5 TH;:~~~NB:E :~I:h:r:::~o~lIustrating ~I= I IN Pipe Dream 7S . Illustrations by Ed Emsh and Paul Orban I• 5 ~ i iOIl1l11l1llllllllllDllnlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllUlIlIlIlIIlIlIlIIlIIlIlIlIIlIIlIIlIlIlIlIlIlII1I11111111111111111 IIIII1111111111111111 IIIIIlIlIIUlUnlil1i
IF is published bi-monthly ~ Quinn Publishing Co.k. Inc. Vol. 9, No.2. Copyright 1958 bj' Quinn Publishing Co., Inc. Omce of publication 8 Lord Strt-et, Buffalo, N.Y. Entered as Second Class Matter at Post Office, Buffalo, N.Y. Subscription $3.50 for 12 issues in U.S. and Posses sions; Canada $4 for 12 issues; elsewhere $4.50. AU stories are fiction; any similarity to actual persons is coincidental. Not ~p~msible for unso licIted artwork or manuscripts. 35c a copy. Printed in U.S.A.
EDITORIAL AND BUSINESS OFFICES. KINGSTON. NEW YORK Next (April) issue on sale February 14th PIPE DREAM
By FRITZ LEIBER
T WASN'T until the mermaid I turned up in his bathtub that Simon Grue seriously began to won der what the Russians \vere doing on the roof next door. The old house next door together Simon Grue found a two-inch with its spacious tarpapered roof, which held a sort of pent-shack, a cylindrical old water tank, and sev mermaid zn his bathtub. It eral chicken-\\'ire enclosures, had always been a focus of curiosity in this region of Greenwich Village, especially to whoever happened to had arms, hips, a finny tail, be renting Simon's studio, the north window-cum-skylight of which looked down upon it-if you were and (here the real trouble be- exceptionally tall or if, like Simon, you stood halfway up a stepladder and peered. gan) a face that reminded him During the 1920's, old-timers told Simon, the house had been owned by a bootlegger. \\rho had installed irresistibly of Grushenka Stul- a costly pipe organ and used the water tank to store hooch. Later there had been a colony of shaven nikov-Gurevich ... headed Buddhist monks, who had strolled about the roof in their orange and yellow robes, meditat ing and eating raw vegetables. There had followed a con71nedia dele OTIc theatrical group, a fenc ing salon, a school of the organ 2
(the bottlegger's organ was always brothers-Vasily-at a neighboring one of the prime renting points of art gallery, came to believe that they the house), an Arabian restaurant, were both Red and White and several art schools and silvercraft something more-solid, complete shops of course, and an Existential Slavs in any case, Double Dostoev ist coffee house. sky Russians if one may be per The last occupants had been two mitted the expression. They ordered bony-cheeked Swedish blondes who vodka, caviar, and soda crackers by sunbathed intenninably and had the case. They argued intenninably built the chicken-wire enclosures to (IQudly in Russian, softly in Eng cage a large number of sinister lish) , they \vent on mysterious silent smoke-colored dogs-Simon de errands, they gloomed about on the cided they were breeding were roof, they made melancholy music wolves, and one of his most success with their deep harmonious voices ful abstractions, "Gray Hunger", and several large guitars. Once had been painted to the inspiration Simon thought they even had the of an eldritch howling. The dogs bootlegger's organ going, but there and their owners had departed had been a bad storm at the time abruptly one night in a closed van, and he hadn't been sure. without any of the dogs ever having They were not quite as tight been offered for sale or either of the lipped as the Swedish girls. Gradu girls having responded \vith any ally a curt front-sidewalk acquaint thing more than a raised eyebrow to ance developed and Simon came to Simon's brave greetings of "'Skoal!" know their names. There was The Russians had taken posses Vasily, of course, who wore thick sion about six months ago-four glasses, the most scholarly-looking brothers apparently, and one sister, of the lot and certainly the most who never stirred from the house bibulous-Simon came to think of but could occa~ionally be seen peer Vasily as the Vodka Breather. Oc ing drealllily from a window. A casionally he could be glimpsed white card with a boldly-inked holding Erlenmeyer flasks, trays of "Stulnikov-Gurevich" had been culture dishes, and other pieces of thumbtacked to the peeling green biological equipment, or absent painted front door. Lafcadio Smits, mindedly wiping off a glass slide the interior decorator. told Sinlon with his beard. that the newcomer~ were clearly Then there \vas Ivan, the dourest White Russians; he could tell it by of the four, though none of them their bushy beards. Lester Phlegius save Vasily seemed very amiable. maintained that they were Red Simon's private names for Ivan Russians passing as White, and were the Nihilist and the Bomber, talked alanningly of spying, sabo since he sometimes lugged about tage and suitcase bombs. \vith him a heavy globular leather Simon, who had the advantages case. With it and his beard-a of living on the spot and having square black one-he had more been introduced to one of the than once created a mild sensation 4 FRITZ LEIBER in the narrow streets of the Village. never ventured on the roof but she Next there was Mikhail, who often sat in the pent-shack. As far wore a large crucifix on a s~lver as Simon could make out, she al chain around his neck and looked ways wore some dark Victorian cos.. like a more spiritual Rasputin. tUlne-at least it had a high neck, However, Simon thought of him long sleeves, and puffed shoulders. less as the Religious than as the Pale-faced in the greenish gloom, Whistler-for his inveterate habit she would stare for hours out of the of whistling into his straggly beard pent-shack's single wjndow, though a strange tune that obeyed no com never in Simon's direction. Occa mon harmonic laws. Somehow sionally she would part and close Mikhail seemed to carry a chilly her lips, but not exactly as if she breeze around with him, a per were speaking, at least aloud-he petual cold draught, so that Simon thought of calling her the Bubble had to check himself in order not Blower. The effect was as odd as to clutch together his coat collar Mikhail's whistling but not as un whenever he heard the approach pleasant. In fact, Simon found him of the eerie piping. self studying Grushenka for ridicu Finally there was Lev, beardless, lously long periods of time. His shorter by several inches, and cer mild obsession began to irk him and tainly the most elusive of the one day he decided henceforth to brothers. He always moved at a stay away altogether from his north scurry, frequently dipping his head, window and the stepladder. As a so that it was some time before result he saw little of the alterations Simon assured himself that he had the Russians began to make on the the Stulnikov-Gurevich face. He roof at this point, though he did did, unmistakably. Lev seemed to notice that they lugged up among be away on trips a good deal. On other things a length of large his returns he was frequently ac diameter transparent plastic piping. companied by furtive but impor tant-looking men-a different one on each occasion. There would be O MUCH FOR the Russians, much bustle at such times-among Snow for the mermaid. Late one other things, the shades would be night Simon started to fill his bath drawn. Then in a few hours Lev tub with cold water to soak his would be off again, and his man brushes and rags-he was working about-town companion too. with a kind of calcimine at the. time, And of course there was the in experimenting with portable murals doors-keeping sister. Several times painted on large plaster-faced Simon had heard one of the broth wooden panels. Heavily laden, he ers calling "Grushenka", so he as got back to the bathroom just in sumed that was her name. She had time to shut off the water-and to the Stulnikov-Gurevich face too, see a tiny fish of some sort splashinfT though on her, almost incredibly, around in it. 0 it was strangely attractive. She He was not unduly surprised. PIPE DREAM 5 Fish up to four or five inches in a groveling sort of way. Retrieving length were not unheard-of appari anything from behind Simon's an tions in the cold-water supply of the cient claw-footed bathtub was a area, and this specimen looked as Inost difficult feat. There was bare if it displaced no more than a tea ly space to get an ann under it and spoon of water. at one point the warping of the He made a lucky grab and the floor boards prevented even that. next moment he was holding in his Besides, there was the host of dust firmly clenched right hand the bot shrouded objects it had previously tom half of a slim wriggling crea been too much trouble to tease out ture hardly two inches long-and -an accumulation of decades. At now Simon was surprised indeed. first Simon tried to guide himself by To begin with, it was not greenish the faint flopping noises along the white nor any common fish color, hidden base of the wall, but these but palely-pinkish, flesh-colored in soon ceased. fact. And it didn't seem so much a Being on your knees and your fish as a tadpole-at least its visible chest with an ear against the floor half had a slightly oversize head and an arm strainingly outstretched shaped like a bullet that has mush is probably not the best position to roomed a little, and two tiny writh assume while weird trains of ing arms or appenda.ges of some sort thought go hooting through your --and it felt as if it had rather large head, but sometimes it has to hap hips for a fish or even a tadpole. pen that way. First came a remem Equip a two-months human embryo bered piece of neighborhood lore with a finny tail, give it in addition that supported the possibility of a a precocious feminine sexiness, and connection between the house next you'd get something of the same door and the tiny pink aquatic crea effect. ture now sufferin~ minute agonies But all that was nothing. The behind the bathtub. No one knew trouble was that it had a face-a what ancient and probably larceny tiny face, of course, and rather minded amateur plumber was goggly-ghostly like a planarian's, responsible, but the old.. timers as but a face nevertheless, a human sured Simon there was a link be looking face, and also (here was the tween the water supply of the Rus real trouble) a face that bore a sians' house wi th its aerial cistern grotesque but striking resenlblance and that of the building containing to that of Grushenka Stulnikov Simon's studio and several smaller Gurevich. apartments; at any rate they main Simon's fingers tightened convul tained that there had been a time sively. Simultaneously the slippery during the period when the boot creature gave a desperate wriggle. legger was storing hooch in the I t shot into the air in a high curve water tan~ that several neighbor and fell into the scant inch of space hood cold-water taps were dispens between the bathtub and the wall. ing a weak but nonetheless authori The next half hour was hectic in tative' mixture of bourbon and 6 FRITZ LEIBER branch water. to remember what he knew about So, thought Simon as he groped salamanders-almost nothing, it and strained, if the Russians were turned out. He thought of embryos, somehow responsible for this weird but his mind veered away from the fishlet, there was no insuperable subject. difficulty in understanding how it He wandered back into the studio might have gotten here. carrying the thing in his hand. He But that was the least of Simon's climbed the stepladder by the north preoccupations. He scrabbled wildly window and studied the house next and unsuccessfully for several min door. What windows he could see utes, then realizing he would never were dark. He got a very vague get anywhere in this unsystematic iInpression that the roof had manner, he began to remove the changed. After he had strained his accumulated debris piece by piece: eyes for some time he fancied he dark cracked ends of soap, wash could see a faint path of greenish rags dried out in tortured attitudes, luminescence streaming between the innumerable dark-dyed cigarette pent-shack and the water-tank, but stumps, several pocket magazines it was very faint indeed and might with bleached wrinkled pages, only be his vision swimming. elnpty and near-empty medicine He climbed down the stepladder bottles and pill vials, rusty hairpins, and stood for a moment weighing bobby pins, safety pins, crumpled the tiny dead thing in his hand. It toothpaste tubes (and a couple for occurred to him that one of his oil paint), a gray toothbrush, a friends at the university could dig j{ty-cent piece and several pennies, up a zoologist to pass on his find. the mummy of a mouse, a letter But Simon's curiosity was more from Picasso, and last of all, from artistic than scientific. In the end the dark comer behind the bath he twisted a bit of cellophane tub's inside claw, the limp pitiful around the thing, placed it on the thing he was seeking. ledge of his easel and went off to It was even tinier than he'd bed ... and to a series of disturb thought. He carefully washed the ingly erotic dreams. dust and Bug off it, but it \vas clear ly dead and its resemblance to Grushenka Stulnikov-Gurevich had EXT DAY he got up late and, become problematical-indeed, Si N after breakfasting on black cof mon aecided that someone seeing fcc, gloolned around the studio for it now for the first time would think a while, picking things up and put it a freak minnow or monstrous ting them down. He glanced fre tadpole and nothing more, though quently at the stepladder, but re mutation or disease had obviously sisted the temptation to climb up been at work. The illusion of a and have another look next door. miniature mermaid still existed in Sighing, he thumbtacked a sheet of the tapering tail and armlike ap paper to a drawing board and half pendages, but it was faint. He tried heartedly began blocking in a fe- PIPE DREAM 7 Inale figure. It was insipid and life ment she looked straight at him. less. Stabbing irritably at the heavy She lifted her hands and seemed to curve of the figure's hip, he broke speak imploringly. Then she slo\vly his charcoal. "Damn!" he said, glar sank froln sight as if, it horridly ing around the room. Abandoning occurred to Simon, into quicksand. all pretense, he threw the charcoal Simon sprang from his chair, on the floor and climbed the step heart beating wildly, and ran down ladder. He pressed his nose against the stairs to the street. T\vo or three the glass. passersby paused to study hirn as he In daylight, the adjoining roof alternately pounded the flaking looked bare and grimy. There was a green door of the Russians' house big transparent pipe running be and leaned on the button. Also tween the water tank and the shack, watching was the shirt-sleeved braced in two places by improvised driver of a moving van, emblazoned looking wooden scaffolding. Listen "Stulnikov-Gurevich Enterprises," ing intently, Simon thought he which ahnost filled the street in could hear a motor going in the front of the house. shack. The water looked sallow The door opened narrowly. A green. It reminded Simon of those man with a square black beard futuristic algae farms where the frowned out of it. He topped Simon stuff is supposed to be pumped by almost a head. through transparent pipes to expose "Yes?" Ivan the BOlllber asked, it to sunlight. There seemed to be in a deep., exasperated voice. a trarnparent top on the water tank "I must see the lady of the house too-it was too high for Simon to immediately," Simon cried. "Your see, but there was a gleam around sister, I believe. She's in danger." the edge. Staring at the pipe again, He surged forward. Simon got the impression there were The butt of the Bomber's right little things traveling in the water, palm took him firmly in the chest but he couldn't make them out. and he staggered back. The Bomber Climbing down in some excite said coldly, "My sister is-ha! ment, Simon got the twist of cello taking a bath." phane from the ledge of the easel Simon cried, "In that case she's and stared at its contents. Wild drowning!" and surged forward thoughts were tumbling through his again, but the Bomber's hand head as he got back up on the step stopped hin1 short. "I'll call the ladder. Sunlight flashed on the police!" Simon shouted, flailing his greenish water pipe between the limbs. The hand at his chest sud tank and the shack, but after the denly stopped pushing and began first glance he had no eyes for it. to pull. Gripped by the front of his Grushenka Stulnikov-Gurevich had shirt, Simon felt himself being her face tragically pressed to the drawn rapidly inside. "Let go! window of the shack. She \\'as wear Help~ a kidnapping!" he shouted to ing the black dress \vi th high neck the inquisitive faces outside, before and puffed shoulders. At that mo- the door banged shut. S FRITZ LEIBER "No police!" rumbled the Bomb the apparatus, before the capital er assisting Simon upstairs. istic police arrive. Now: what to do '''Now look here," Simon pro with this one?" He looked at Simon, tested futilely. In the two-story-high and clenched one large and hairy living room to his right, the pipes fist. of an organ gleamed golden from "Nyet-nyet-nyet/' said the Vodka the shadows. At the second landing, Breather, and went to whisper in a disheveled figure met them, Ivan's ear. They both stared at glasses twinkling-Vasily the Vodka Simon, who felt uncomfortable and Breather. He spoke querulously in began to back toward the door; but Russian to Ivan, who replied short Ivan ducked agilely under the pipe ly, then Vasily turned and the three and grasped him by the arm, pull of them crowded up the narrow ing him effortlessly toward the roof third flight to the pent-shack. This exit. "Just come this way if you housed a small noisy machine, per please, Mr. Gru-ay/' said Vasily, haps an aerator of some sort, for hurrying after. As they left the bubbles were streaming into the shack, he picked up a kitchen chair. transparent pipe where it was con Crossing the roof, Simon made nected to the machine; and under a sudden effort and wrenched him the pipe, sitting with an idiot smile self free. They caught him again on a chair of red plush and gilt, was at the edge of the roof, where he a pale black-mustached man. An had run with nothing clearly in empty clear-glass bottle \vith a red mind, but with his mouth open to and gold label lay on the floor at yell. Suspended in the grip of the his feet. The opposite side of the two Russians, with Ivan's meaty room was hidden by a heavy plastic palm over his mouth, Simon had a shower curtain. Grushenka Stul momentary glimpse of the street nikov-Gurevich was not in view. below. A third bearded figure, Ivan said something explosive, Mikhail the Religious, was staring picking up the bottle and staring at up at them from the sunny side it. "Vodka!" he went on. "I have walk. The melancholy face, the told you not to mix the pipe and deep-socketed tonnented eyes, and the vodka! Now see what you have the narrow beard tangled with the done!" dangling crucifix combined to give "To me it seemed hospitable," the effect of a Tolstoy novel's dust said Vasily with an apologetic ges jacket. As they hauled Simon away, ture. "Besides, only one bottle-" he had the impression that a chilly Ducking under the pipe where it breeze had sprung up and the street crossed the pent-shack, Ivan picked had darkened. In his ears was Mik up the pale man and dumped him hail's distant, oddly discordant crosswise in the chair, with his whistling. patent-leather shoes sticking up on Grunting, the two brothers set one side and his plump hands Simon down on the kitchen chair crossed over his chest. "Let him and slid him across the roof until sleep. First we must take down all something hard but resilient P~PE DREAM 9 touched the top ~f his head. It was Nihilist brother Ivan was in cen the plastic pipe, through \vhich, tral Europe, while Iny third brother peering upward, he could see myri Lev, v.rho is of commercial talents. ads of tiny polliwog-shapes flitting had preceded us to the New World, back and forth. \vhere we always felt it would some "'Do us a kindness not to make day be our destiny to join one an noise," said Ivan, rcnloving his other. palm. "My brother Vasily will no\v "With the aid of brother Ivan, I explain." He went away. and my sister Grushenka escaped from Russia. We picked up Mikhail froIlI his monastery and proceeded IJRIOSITY as much as shock here, \vhere Lev had become a C kept Silnon in his chair. Vasily, capitalist business Inagnate. bobbing his head and snliling, sat "'My brothers, Ivan especially, do\vn tailor-fashion on the roof in were interested in nlY research. lie front of him. "First I must tell you, had a theory that we could even Mr. Gru-ay', that I am specialist in tually produce hosts of men in this biologicaI sciences. Here you see re way, whole annies and political sults of nlY roost sllccessful expcri parties, all Nihilist and all of them rncnL" lIe wi thdrc\\r a round clcar Stulnikov-Gurevichcs. 1 assured glass bottlc fron-1 his pocket and him that this was itnpossible, that I unscrewed the top. could not play Cadlnus, for free '''Ah?'' said Simon tentatively. swimming fonns are one thing, we "Indeed yes. In my researches, have the way to feed thenl in the ~vlr. C;ru-ay, I discovered a chemi aqueous medium; but to make cal \\hich \viII inhibit gro\vth at any fully developed Inalnlnals placental level of c1nbryonic development, nourishlnent is necessary---that I producing a viable organism at that cannot provide. Yet to please him point. The basic effect of this I begin with (pardon me!) the egg chenlical is always toward sUlvival of my sister, that was as good a be at whatever level of dcvelopment ginning as any and perhaps it in one cell, a blastula, a \VOrln, a fish, trigued nlY vanity. Ivan dreamed a four-legger. 1"his research, which his dreaU1S of a Nihilist Stulnikov Lysenko scofred at when I told him Gurevich hUlnanity-it was harm of it, I had no trouble in keeping less, as I told nlyself." secret, though at the time I was Simon stared at him glassy-eyed. \vorking as the unhappy collabora • SOlnething rather peculiar was be tor of the godless soviets. But per ginning to happen inside his head haps I am being too technical?" about an inch under the point "Not at all," Simon assured him. where the cool water-filled plastic "'Good/' Vasily said with simple pipe pressed down on his scalp. satisfaction and gulped at his bot Little ghostly images were darting tle. "Meanwhile my brother Mik -delightfully wispy little girl hail was a religious brother at a things, smiling down at him im monastery near Mount Athas, my pudently, then flirting away with a 10 FRITZ LEIBER quick motion of their mermaid notic vibration. So long as you keep tails. them near her, in that tank on the The sky had been growing stead- roof, this will be. 1f they were gone ily darker and now there came the from there, far from there, the sub growl of thunder. Against the pur souls would reunite and Grushen ple-gray clouds Simon could barely ka's soul would be one again.' He make out the semi-transparent begged me to stop my research, to shapes of the golliwogs in the pipe dump it in the sea, to scatter it over his head; but the images in a\vay, but Lev and Ivan demand side his mind were gro\ving clearer I keep' on. Yet Mikhail warned me by the minute. that works of evil end in the whirl "Ah, we have a storm," Vasily wind. I am torn and undecided." observed as the thunder growled He gulped at his vodka. again. ·"That reminds me of Mik Thunder growled louder. Simon hail, who is much influenced by was thinking, dreamily, that if the our Finnish grandmother. 'He had soul of Grushenka Stulnikov-Gu the belief as a child that he could revich were split into thousands of call up the winds by whistling for sub-souls, vibrating hynotically in them-he even learned special the nearby water tank, with at least wind musics from her. Later he be one of them escaping as far as his came a Christian religious-there bathtub, then it was no wonder if are great struggles in him. Mikhail Grushenka had a strange attrac objected to my researches when he tion for him. heard I used the egg of my sister. "But that is not yet the worst," He said we will produce millions Vasily continued. "The hypnotic of souls who are not baptized. I vibrations of the free-swimming asked him how about the water ones in their multitude turn out to they are in, he replied this is not have a stimulating effect on any the same thing, these little swim male who is near. Their sub-minds mers will wriggle in hell eternally. induce dreams of the piquant sort. This worried hiln greatly. We tried Lev says that to make money for to tell him I had not used the egg the work we must sell these dreams of my sister, only the egg of a fish. to rich men. I protest, but to no "But he did not believe this, be avail. cause my sister changed greatly at "Lev is maddened for money. the time. She no longer spoke. She Now besides selling the dreams I put on my mother's bathing cos find he plans to sell the creatures tume (we are a family people) and themselves, sell them one by one, retired to the bathtub all day long. but keep enough to sell the dreams I ac~epted this-at least in the wa too. It is a madness." ter she is not violent. Mikhail said, The darkness had become that of ~See, her soul is now split into many night. The thunder continued to unredeemed sub-souls, one each for growl and now it seemed to Simon the little S\Vilnmers. There is a that it had music in it. Visions sympathy between them-a hyp- swam through his mind to its PIPE ·DREAM 11 rhythm-hordes of swimming pyg a\vare at last of the identity of the my souls, of unborn water babies, other sound, which had been gro'v migrations of miniature mermaids. ing in volume all the time. The pipe hanging between water Simultaneously Vasily struggled tank and pentshack became in his to his feet. ilnagination a giant umbilicus or a "The organ!" he cried. "Mikhail canal for a monstrous multiple is playing the Whirlwind Music! birth. Sitting beneath it, helpless to We must stop him !~' Pausing only move, he focused his attention with for a last pull at the bottle, he increasing pleasure on the active, charged into the pent-shack, follow supple, ever more hUlnan girl ing Ivan. bodies that swam across his mind. Wind was shaking the heavy pipe Now more mermaid than tadpole, over Simon's head, tossing him with bright smiling lips and eyes, back and forth in the chair. Look long Lorelei-hair trailing behind ing with an effort toward the west, them, they darted and hovered Silnon saw the reason: a spinning caressingly. In their wide-checked black pencil of wind that was writ oval faces, he discovered without ing its way toward them in wreck shock, there was a transcendent re age across the intervening roofs. semblance to the features of The chair fell under him. Stum Grushenka Stulnikov-Gurevich-a bling across the roof, he tugged younger, milk-skinned maiden of futilely at the door to the pent the stepp~s, with challenging eyes shack, then threw himself flat, and fingers that brushed against clawing at the tarpaper. him with delightful shocks. .. There was a mounting roar. The "So it is for me the great prob top of the water tank went spin lem," Vasily's distant voice con ning off like a flying saucer. Mo tinued. "I see in my work only the mentarily, as if it \verc a giant pure research, the play of the Blind. syringe, the whirlwind dipped into Lev sees money, Ivan sees dragon the tank. Simon felt himself slid teeth-fodder for his political can ing across the roof, felt his legs lift non-Mikhail sees unshriven souls, ing. He fetched up against the Grushenka sees-who knows? roof's low wall and at that moment madness. It is indeed one great the wind let go of him and his legs problem." touched tarpaper again. Gaining his feet nurnbly, Sinlon staggered into the leaning pent HUNDER CAME again, shack. The pale man was nowhere T crashingly this time. The door to be seen, the plush chair empty. of the pent-shack opened. Framed The curtain at the other side of the in it stood Ivan the Bomber. "Vas raoul had fallen '\Vit11 its rods, re ily!" he roared. '~Do you know vealing a bathtub more antique what that idiot is doing now?" than Sinlon's. In the tub, under As the thunder and his voice the window, sat Grushenka. The trailed off together, Simon became lightning flares showed her with 12 FRITZ LEIBER her chin level with the water, her contain a bowling ball. eyes placidly staring, her mouth The young gentleman listened opening and closi!1g. .. to his story without changing ex Simon found himself puttmg hIs pression, thanked him warmly, and arms around ~he black-clad figure. shooed him out. With a straining effort he lifted her The Stulnikov-Gureviches dis out of the tub, water sloshing all appeared for good, though not over his legs, and half carried, half quite without a trace. Simon found slid with her down the stairs. this item in the n"ext evening's pa He fetched up panting and di per, the first of many he accumu sheveled at the top landing, his at lated yearningly in a scrapbook tention riveted by the lightning during the following months: illuminated scene in the two-story high living room belo\v. At the far MERMAID RAIN A HOAX, end of it a dark-robed figure SCIENTIST DECLARES crouched at the console of the Milford~ Pa.-The "mermaid mighty organ, like a giant bat at rain" reported here has been de the base of the portico of a black clared a fraud by an eminent Euro and gold temple. In the center of pean biologist. Vasily Stulnikov the room Ivan was in the act of Gurevich, formerly Professor of heaving above his head his globu Geneties at Pire University, Latvia, lar leather case. passing through here on a cross Mikhail darted a look over his country trip, declared the minia shoulder and sprang to one side. ture "mern1aids" were "albino tad The projectile crashed against the poles, probably scattered about as organ. Mikhail picked himself up, a hoax by schoolboys." tearing something from his neck. The professor added, "I would Ivan lunged forward with a roar. like to know where they got them, Mikhail crashed a fist against his however. There is clear evidence of jaw. The Bomber went down and lnutation, due perhaps to fallout." didn't come up. Mikhail un Dr. Stulnikov directed his party wrapped his crucifix from his fin in a brief but intensive search for gers and resumed playing. overlooked specimens. His charm With a wild cry Simon heaved ing silent sister, Grushenka Stulni himself to his feet, stumbled over kov, wearing a quaint Latvian Grughenka's sodden garments, and swimming costume, explored the pitched headlong down the stairs. shallo\vs of the Delaware. When he came to, the house was After collecting as many speci empty and the Stulnikov moving mens as possible, the professor and van was gone. At the front door he his assistants continued their trip was met by a poker-faced young in their unusual camping car. Dr. man who identified himself as a Stulnikov intends to found a bio member of the FBI. Simon sho\\red logical research center "in the cahn him the globular case Ivan had and tolerant atmosphere of the thro\vn at the organ. It proved to West Coast," he declared. END PIPE CREAM 13 By MARIO ZIMMER BRADLEY Inhabited only by whispering winds, l?obin's World was a paradise for the wrong two people-Eve and her son •.• •
T HAD been a long layover for "1 know." Helen Murray, too I the Starholm's crew, hunting young and far too lovely for a ship's heavy elements for fuel-eight officer on a ten-year cruise, still months, on an idyllic green para looked weak and white, and her dise of a planet; a· soft, windy, voice was a gentle shadow of its whispering world, inhabited only by crisp self. "I'm afraid four years in trees and winds. But in the end it space made me careless." presented its own unique problem. Merrihew brooded, looking down Specifically, it presented Captain at her. Something about ship-grav Merrihew with the problem of ity conditions, while not affecting Robin, male, father unknown, who potency, made conception impos had been born the day before, and sible; no child had ever been con a month prematurely, to Dr. Helen ceived in space and none ever Murray. would. On planet layovers, the ef Merrihew found her lying abed fect wore off very slowly; only after in the laboratory shelter, pale and three months aground had Dr. calm, with the child beside her. Murray started routine administra The little shelter, constructed tion of anticeptin to the twenty-two roughly of green planks, looked out women of the crew, herself in on the clearing which the Starholm cluded. At that time she had been had used as a base of operations still unaware that she herself was during the layover; a beautiful already carrying a child. place at the bottom of a wide val Outside, the leafy forest whis ley, in the curve of a broad, deep pered and rustled, and Merrihew flowing river. The crew, tired of knew Helen had forgotten his ex being shipbound, had built half a istence again. The day-old child dozen such huts and shacks in these was tucked up in one of her rolled eight months. coveralls at her side. To Merrihew, Men-ihew glared down at Helen. he looked like a skinned monkey, He snorted, '~This is a fine situa but Helen's eyes smoldered as her tion. You, of all the people in the hands moved gently over the tiny whole damned crew-the ship's round head. doctor! It's-it's-" Inarticulate He stood and listened to the with rage, he fell back on a ridicu winds and said at random, "These lously inadequate phrase. "It's shacks will fall to pieces in another criminal carelessness!" month. It doesn't matter, we'll have 15 taken off by then." "Captain-" Helen sounded des Dr. Chao Lin came into the perate. "Even drugged, no child shack, an angular woman of thirty under ten has ever endured the five. She said, "Company, Helen? shift into hyperspace drive. A new Well, it's about time. Here, let me born would die in seconds." She take Robin." clasped Robin to her again, and Helen said in weak protest, said, "It's the only way-you have "You're spoiling me, Lin." Lin for a doctor, Reynolds can "It will do you good," Chao Lin handle my collateral duties. This returned. Merrihew, in a sudden planet is uninhabited, the climate surge of fury and frustration, ex is mild, we couldn't possibly ploded, "Damn it, Lin, you're mak starve." Her face, so gentle, was ing it all worse. He'll die when we suddenly like rock. "Enter my go into overdrive, you know as well death in the log, if you want to." as I do!" Merrihew looked from Helen to Helen sat up, clutching Robin Lin, and said, "Helen, you're in protectively. "Are you proposing to sane!" drown him like a kitten?" She said, "Even if I'm sane now, "Helen, I'm not proposing any I wouldn't be long if I had to aban thing. I'm stating a fact." don Robin." The wild note had "But it's not a fact. He won't die died out of her voice, and she spoke in overdrive because he won't be rationally, but inflexibly. "Captai~ aboard when we go into over Merrihew, to get Ine aboard the drive!" Starholm., you will have to have me Merrihew looked at Lin help drugged or taken by force; I prom lessly, but his face softened. "Shall ise you I won't go any other way. we-put him to sleep and bury him And if you do that-and if Robin here?" is left behind, or dies in overdrive The woman's face turned white. just so you will have my services "No!" she cried in passionate pro as a doctor-then I solemnly swear test, and Lin bent to disengage her that I will kill myself at the first frantic grip. "Helen, you'll hurt opportunity." him. Put him down. There." "My God," said Merrihew, "you Merrihew looked down at her, are insane!" troubled, and said, "We can't just Helen gave a very tiny shrug. abandon him to die slowly, HDo you want a madwoman Helen-" aboard?" "Who says I'm going to abandon Chao Lin said quietly, "Capt:lin, him?" I don't see any other way. We Merrihew asked slowly, "Are would have had to arrange it that you planning to desert?" He added, way if Helen had actually died in after a minute, "There's a chance childbirth. Of two unsatisfactory he'll survive. Mter all, his very solutions, we must choose the least birth was against all medical prece harmful." And Merrihew knew dent. Maybe-" that he had no real choice. 16 MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY "I still think you're both cra:zy," between her eyes bore witnes! to he blustered, but it was surrender, the terror which had closed down and Helen knew it. on her in the first months, when Ten days after the Starholm took every new day had been some new off, young Colin Reynolds, tech struggle-against weakness, against nician, committed suicide by the unfamiliar sounds, against loneli messy procedure of slicing his jugu ness and dread. Nights when she lar artery, which-in zero gravity lay wakeful, sweating with terror distributed several quarts of blood while the winds rose and fell again in big round globules all ,over his and her imagination gave them cabin. He left an incoherent note. voices, bleak days when she wan Merrihew put the note in the dered dazedly around the shack or disposal and Chao Lin put the stared moodily at Robin. There had blood in the ship's blood-bank for been moments--only fleeting, and surgery, and they hushed it up as penanced with hours of shame and an accident; but Merrihew had the regret-when she thought that unpleasant feeling that the layover even the horror of losing Robin in on the green and windy planet was those first days would have been going to become a legend, spread in less than the horror of spending the whispers by the crew. And it did, rest of her life alone here; when but that is another story. she had wondered why Merrihew had not realized that she was un balanced, and forced her to go OBIN WAS two years old with them ... by now, Robin R when he first heard the voices would have been only a moment's in the wind. He 'pulled at his moth painful memory. er's arm and crooned softly, in imi Still not strong, knowing she had tation. to be strong for Robin or he would "What is it, lovey?" die as surely as if she had aban "Pretty." He crooned again to doned him, she had spent the first the distant munnuring sound. months in a somnambulistic dreain. Helen smiled vaguely and patted Sometimes she had walked for days the round cheek. Robin, his infant at a time in that dream; she would imagination suddenly distracted, wake to find food that she could said, "Hungry. Robin hungry. Ber not remember gathering. Some ries." how, pervasive, the dream-voices "Berries after you eat," Helen had taken over; the whispering promised absently, and picked him winds had been full of voices and up. Robin tugged at her ann. even hands. "Mommy pretty, too!" She had fallen ill and lain for She laughed, a rosy and smiling days sick and delirious, and had young Diana. She was happy on the heard a voice which hardly seemed solitary planet; they lived quite to be her own, saying that if she comfortably in one of the larger died the wind voices would care shacks, and only a little frown-line for Robin ... and then the shock THE WINO PEOPLE 17 and irrationality of that had star ... Robin was listening again. tled her out of delirium, agonized Helen bent her ear, sharpened by and trembling, and she pulled her the silence, but heard only the self upright and cried out "No!" rustle of wind and leaves; saw only And the shimmer of eyes and falling brightness along a silvered voices had faded again into vague tree-trunk. echoes, until there was only the Wind? When there were no stir of sunlight on the leaves, and branches stirring? Robin, chubby and naked, kicking "Ridiculous," she said sharply, in the sunlight, cooing with his then snatched up the baby boy and hands outstretched to the rustle of squeezed hinl before hoisting hin'l leaves and shadows. astride her hip. "Molllmy doesn't She had known, then, that she mean ,"OU, Robin. Lees look for had to get well. She had never berries." heard the wind voices again, and But soon she realized that his her crisp, scientific Inind rejected head was tipped back ~nd that he the fanciful theory that if she only was listenillg~ again~ to ~o}ne sound believed in the wind voices she she could not hear. would see their forms and hear their words clearly. And she re jected them so thoroughly that N '·VHAT she said was Robin's when she llcard them speak she O fifth birihday, IIelen had shut them away from her mind, rnade a special bpd for hinl in an and after a time heard tllenl no . other rOOI}) of the building. He longer, except in restless dreams. missed the warlnth of I-Ielcn's body, By now she had accepted the and the comforting sound of her isolation and the beauty of their breathing; for Robin, since birth. world, and begun to make a happy had been a wakeful child. life for Robin. Yet, on the first night alone. For lac.k of other occupation last Robin felt curiou~ly freed. He did summer-though the winter was somcthing he had never dared do mild and there was no lack of before, for fear of waking Helen; fruits and roots even then-Helen he slipped from his bed and stood had patiently snared male and fe in the doorway, looking into the male of small anitnals like rabbits., fore.;;t. and now she had a pen of .thcnl~ rfhc forest \vas closer to the door They provided a change of diet, \vay no\v; Robin could fuzzily rc and after a few smelly unsuccessful lllelnber when the clearing had experiments she had devised a way been wider. Now, slowly, beyond to supple their fur pelts. She madc the garden.patch \vhich Helen kept no effort at gardening, though cleared, the underbrush and sap o' when Robin was older she might linO's;-, \vcre 0To\vin~ ,:-:, back, and even try that. For the 11101nent, it was what }{obin called "the bUl'lCd enough that they were healthy and place" was covered \vith new sparse safe and protected. grass. 18 MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY Robin was accustomed to being The winds were silent. alone, during the day-even in his Perhaps, she thought, a storm first year, Helen had had to leave was coming. Some change in air him alone, securely fastened in the pressure could cause this stillness house, or inside a little tight-fenced but Robin? She tiptoed to the al yard. But he was not used to being cove; as she had suspected, his bed alone at night. was empty. Far off in the forest, he could Where could he be? In the clear hear the whispers of the other peo ing? With a storm coming? She ple. Helen said there were no other slid her feet into hand-made san people, but Robin knew better, be dals and ran outside, her quivering cause he could hear their voices on call ringing out through the silent the wind, like fragments of the forest: songs Helen sang at bedtime. And "Robin-oh, Robin!" sometimes he could almost see them Silen.ce. And far away a little in the shadowy spots. ominous whisper. And for the first Once when Helen had been sick, time, since that first frightening a long time ago, and Robin had run year of loneliness, she felt lost, de helplessly from the fenced yard to serted in an alien world. She ran the inside room and back again, across the clearing, looking around hungry and dirty and furious be wildly, trying to decide which way ca~e Helen only slept on the bed he could have wandered. Into the witH,her eyes closed, rousing up forest? What if he had' strayed to now and then to whimper like he ward the river bank? There was a did when he fell down and skinned place where the bank crumbled his knee, the winds and voices had away, down toward the rapids come into the very house; Robin her throat closed convulsively, and had hazy memories of soothing her call was almost a shriek: voices, of hands that touched him "Dh, Robin! Robin, darling! more softly than Helen's hands. Robin!" But he could not quite remember. She ran through the paths worn Now that he could hear them so by their feet, hearing snatches of clearly, he would go and find the rustle, winds and leaves suddenly other people. And then if Helen vocal in the cold moonlight around was sick again, there would be her. It was the first time since the someone else to play with him and spaceship left them that Helen had look after him. He thought glee ventured out into the night of their fully, won't Helen be surprised~ and world. She called again, her voice darted off across the clearing. cracking in panic. "Ro-bin!" Helen woke, roused not by a A sudden stray gleam revealed a sound but by a silence. She no glint of white, and a child stood longer heard Robin's soft breaths in the middle of the path. Helen from the alcove, and after a mo gasped with relief and ran to snatch ment she realized something else: up her son-then fell back in dis- THE WIND PEOPLE 19 may. It was not Robin who stood out wild beasts or diseases or sav there..The child ,vas naked, about age natives, the crew had requested a head shorter than Robin, and. permission to camp in the valley female. clearing beside the river. Permis There ,vas something curious sion granted, they had gone apart about the bare and gleaming flesh, in couples almost as usual, and as if she could see the child only in even those who had no enduring the full flush of the moonlight. A liaison at the moment had found round, almost expressionless face a partner for the night. was surrounded by a mass of color It must have been that night. •.. less ~trealning hair, the exact color Colin Reynolds was two years of the moonlight. Helen's audible younger than Helen, and their at gasp startled her to a stop: she tachment, enduring over a few shut her eyes convulsively, and nlonths of shiptinlc, ,vas based less when she opened them the path on mutual passion than a sort of was black and empty and Robin boyish need in him, a sort of im was running down the track to personal feminine solicitude in ward her. 11elen. All her affairs had been like Helen caught him up, with a that, companionable, cornfortahle, strangled cry, and ran, clasping but never passionate. Curiously him to her breast, back down the enough, Helen was a woman capa path to their shack. Inside, she ble of passion, of great depths of barred ~ the door and laid Robin devotion; but no man had ever down in her own be
swarmed like termites zn a
hill; but J~remiah Winthrop
still called himself a man. ...
THE ALL AND ra\vboned was GOOD T Jeremiah Winthrop. Narrow of shoulder and shallow of chest he was, but no matter. There was a WORK dignity to the man that showed it self in every moven1cnt. Here was one who still called himself a man, one whose traditions sprang from By the rocky New England soil that had nourished his forebears. The THEODORE L. THOMAS mold that produces such a man is not easily bent or broken, not even in a world of three hundred and fifty billion people, not even in a world where the rocky New Eng land soil lies buried and forgotten beneath the foundations of mon strous buildings. Jerenliah Winthrop rode the spiral escalator up, up to the two part cubicle he called home on the one hundred and forty-eighth floor. He stood s\vaying slightly as the es calator \vound its serpentine way upwards. Others rode with him, tight people, tense people, pushed 28 together, staring straight as they the back of a hand against her fore rode the spiral escalator up. And head. "I don't know. They have now and then at a turn or a bend a had to re-schedule everybody. An man would elbow his way out. He'd other eighteen hundred babies born leave the upflowing river of people in the building this week. They all and step onto a landing as his floor have to get a little sun. 1 don't came by. But the escalator was still know." crowded as it passed the one hun Winthrop pushed Davy gently to dred and forty-eighth floor and one side and held the boy to him as \,yinthrop stepped ofT. He was not he \valked over to Ann. He put a one of the lucky ones \vho lived high hand in the small of her back and near the roof where it was at least held her against his chest. She possible to think about the air and rested her head against the upper the light and the sun. part of his arm and leaned against ·Winthrop boarded a moving belt him. that carried hirr! over to his own Ann lifted her head, stood on her corridor. He walked down the cor toes and kissed Winthrop. She ridor for ten minutes. It was easy pulled away and led him over to a \valking, for there were far fewer chair, Davy still hanging on to his people nO\\7. Finally he came to his leg. "You must be tired," she said. own door. lIe inserted his thumb in "Ten hours you've been out. Were the thwnbhole, slid the door open you able to ... Did you-" and walked in. A tousle-headed "No," said Winthrop. "Nothing. youngster sat on the floor playing Not so much as a soybean." He \vith a plastic box. The boy looked looked at his wife and smiled. "I up as Winthrop entered. guess the time has come for us to "Daddy!" he shouted. He flung eat that potato. We've been saving himself to his feet, dashed across the it for a month." rOOIO and grabbed his father around Ann's eyes wrinkled as she looked the legs. down at him. "Oh. I-I gave it to HHello, Davy," said Winthrop, the Brookses. They haven't had ruffling the curly brown hair. anything in weeks." The words be "How's the little man?" gan to pour out. "We have done "Fine, Daddy. And Mommy says so well, really, in the last few weeks we can go up on the roof in another that I felt sorry for them. We had nlonth. Will you come \·vith us? This those cabbage leaves and three po tilnc? You never go with us, Daddy. tatoes and even that piece of fish Will you come up with us in a four months ago. I couldn't help month from now?" myself. I gave-I gave our potato Winthrop looked over the boy's to them. They were so sick of head at his wife, Ann. The smile Standard Fare they were beginning faded from his face. He said, "A to get depressed, really depressed. month? I thought it was our turn 1-" again in a week. What happened?" Winthrop reached up and put an Ann shook her head and pressed ann around her hips and said, 29 "Don't think about it, darling." He row side alley where some of the was silent for a moment, and then shops were. Immediately the crowds he continued, "I think I'll go down fell off. A little way down the alley and see if John Barlow has some Winthrop turned into the door of a work for me. Let's have a quick tiny store. It was empty except for dinner of Standard Fare and then John Barlow, the owner. I'll go." He got up and walked oyer "Nice to see you," said Barlow, to the sink and began washIng springing up and taking Winthrop's Davy's hands, talking, joshing, teas hand. "I was just thinking about ing a Iittle as he did so. you. In fact, I was going to come Ann took three glasses from the up and see you in the next day or tiny cabinet. She went to the syn two. Come in and sit down." thetic milk faucet and filled the Barlow sat in the chair, Winthrop glasses and then put them on the on the small counter. The two men table. She went to the bread slot filled the store completely. "That and removed six slices of bread. sounds good, John. Do you have One after. the other she dropped the some work for me?" six slices of brown bread through Barlow looked long at Winthrop, the toaster. She picked up a knife and slowly shook his head. "No, and scooped big gobs of rich yellow Jeremiah. No. I don't even have synthetic butter out of the butter work for myself any more." He hesi slot and spread it on the toast. She tated a moment and went on quiet made a pile of the toast on a plate ly, "I'm going out of business, and then cut the pile in half. "All Jeremiah. I can't make it work. I right," she called. And she put the don't take in enough money to keep toast on the table and sat down. my stock up. People don't need Winthrop helped Davy into a money, what with free movies and chair and then sat down himself. clothes and food and everything He bent his head and spoke a brief else. No one buys food. They all live blessing. And they all ate. They ate on Standard Fare and they don't Standard Fare, as countless billions seem to care any more. So now I'll of other people did that night, and have to join them, unless I can find every night, from birth to death, other work." Standard Fare. "I'm very sorry, John. I feel I When the meal was done Win helped drive you out of business. I throp got up and kissed Ann and never gave you money for what I Davy goodbye. He rode down the took." spiral escalator, down to the ground Barlow shook his head. "No, Jere floor, and below. Great throngs of miah. You always worked for every people rode with him, crowded in thing. Other people are not as will on each other. He rode down to the ing to work as you are; they all want fifteenth sub-level and changed to a something for nothing. Who else belt. He rode past the crowded TV would be vaccinated and take the theaters, the amusement halls. He immunization shots so he could go stepped off and went down a nar- all the way across the city for me the 30 THEODORE L..THOJV,AS way you do?" structions. Then he handed the box They sat quietly. Winthrop said, to Winthrop. "Take it home, Jere "Where is it all going to end, John? miah. I'll be up to see you sometime \Vhat's going to happen to every soon. Go on now." And he urged body?" Winthrop off the counter and out "I don't know. Some people the door. \vork; there luust be jobs some Winthrop went, holding the box \vhere. I suppose they get them in both hands. As he worked his through the Ministry of Govern way through the crowds, he held ment Employment, and you know the box to his stomach, turning his what people say about that. Gov shoulders to meet the press of peo ernment workers won't even talk ple. He was still holding it with about it; everybody says they're both hands half an hour later \\'hen ashalned of it. I don't know what's he entered his home. going to happen. Except-I'm through. I'm going to take my stock home with me tonight, and that NN LOOKED up, surprised. ends it." A "Jeremiah, I didn't expect you "Vinthrop looked at the box that home so soon." Her eyes fixed on conta.ined all of Barlow's stock. The the package. "What is it? ''''hat box measured about one foot on a have you got?" side. Winthrop walked to the table, "Jeremiah, I want you to have put the package on it, and carefully something." Barlow reached down began to open it without saying a to the bottom of the box and word. Ann and Davy stood close to broug-h t out an object that he held him; Davy clilnbcd on a chair to toward VVinthrop. see better. When Winthrop lifted Winthrop looked at it and off the top layer of cotton, Ann's gasped. "An egg. A real hen's egg. eyes widened and she clasped her I recognize it from the pictures." hands together and stared, silently. Winthrop looked up. "But I can't "What is it, Daddy?" take it, John. I can't." "It's an egg, son. A hen's egg." "I want you to have it, Jeremiah. "Is it something to eat?" I want you and Ann and Davy to "Yes, son. It is." Winthrop looked have it. Now don't argue. I'll wrap at his wife and said, "Shall we eat it up and you take it right home." it now?" Barlow turned and lifted a small Ann nodded, quickly read the box down from a niche. He lined cooking instructions, and set about the box with synthetic cotton and preparing scrambled egg. Winthrop gently nestled the egg in the center. got out the cooking pan,. wiped ofT After covering the egg with another the dust, and set it down near her. layer of cotton, he closed the box She smiled at him and put a large and wrapped it and tied it with a chunk of butter in it and placed the broad white ribbon under which he pan,on the heater. When the butter slipped a litde card of cooking in- bubbled, she poured the beaten egg THE GOOD WORK 31 into the pan; it hissed as it struck He was still staring at the plates the hot butter. She began to stir the when Ann came out and sat down egg as it cooked. Winthrop picked beside him. She too looked at her Davy up so he could see into the husband, looked, and looked again, pan as the egg thickened. In a mo closer. There were tears in his eyes. ment it ,vas done. She leaned toward him and put Ann lifted three small dishes from a hand on his shoulder. "What is it, a cupboard, placed them on the Jeremiah?" she asked quietly. table, and carefully scraped the egg He twned full to\\'ard her, onto the plates. Buttered toast and started to speak, but could not. He milk came next, then they sat down pointed to the dirty ·plates and then to eat. Winthrop said a grace. cleared his throat. "Ann, that's the They ate in silence. last of it. It's getting '\forse all the Davy looked up after his egg was time. There's no work for a man. gone and said, "I don't like it very 'Vhat are we going to do? Is Davy much. I like it some, but not very going to live the rest of his life much." satisfied with Standard Fare? Can "VVinthrop reached over and ruf we watch him grow up not knowlng fled his hair, saying to Ann, "It what it feels like to work? Ann .. ." \vould have been better if we'd had He stopped and sat quietly for a some salt, I guess. But it was good moment. "I've got to go to the anyway. I've often wondered what Ministry of Government Employ an egg tasted like." ment." He looked down at the empty She said, "Jeremiah, are you plates and stared at them. Then he sure? We've always been able to said quickly, "Davy, it's your bed manage on our own. We've never time. You hop on in now." needed help from the government." Davy's face grew long, but then "Ann-" He stood up and began Winthrop looked at him, and he pacing across the room. "How can climbed off his chair and went over we sit and watch this happen to our and pulled his father down and boy? We can~t take him out in all kissed him on the cheek. '"Good those people very often. We can't night, Daddy." take him to the roof. Ann, he's a "Good night, son." good boy. We can't let him live like Ann took Davy by the hand and this." led him into the bedroom. Win "But how will you feel? You have throp listened to the chatter and to make your own \vay. You've al then to the prayers. He sat and ways believed that." listened as he stared at the three Winthrop's stooped figure bent egg-stained plates on the table. The even more. He stopped pacing and plates pushed into his Inind, occu stood with his hands hanging at his pied it, filled it, until there was sides, his chin on his chest. "'I nothing else. And at that moment know," he said quietly. "I know. the integrity of Jeremiah Winthrop Help me, Ann. \Vhat should we broke. do?" 32 THEODORE L. THOMAS She flew across the rooIII to him greater. Ann and Winthrop used and they clung together. After a their legs to make room for Davy moment she said, "All right, Jere to stand on the moving belt. The miah. I knew this would come some upper portions of their bodies day. We will go down tomorrow to pushed out against the packed mass the Ministry of Government Em of humanity. They held their arms ployment and see if they have any bent at the elbows to. fonn a bridge work ,for you. Maybe they have, around Davy's head, stooping a lit and maybe it \\'on't be so bad. May tle to do so. Silently they pushed be it's good \vork after all. \Ve;ll back against the surge of people. see." They changed belts by walking in a kind of lockstep and again formed a trenlbling bridge with their anns HE FAMILY was up early the around Davy on the next belt. T next morning, up and pating 'I\vice !TiOre they changed belts and Standard Fare. After breakfast thev in two hours they arrived at the began to get ready to go oul. An~ building next to their own. It was went over all the clothes, sponging easier, going up the spiral escalator. spots off the slick fabric. Jeremiah They came out into a huge room Winthrop paced back and forth filled with people. Holding tight with slow measured steps, his hands to Davy's leash, they worked their clasped behind hiITI, his head bent. \vay through the crowds, seeking a Ann took a Iittle cord harness rcgisLration desk. In half an hour from the cabinet and slipped it over they found one. Davy's head. She pulled the cords The line of people was only a few taut and tied them around him. She hundred yards long in front of that passed a light piece of cord around particular desk. Jeremiah and Ann her \vaist and tied the other end of joined the line at the end, smiling it to Davy's harness. She tied a at each other. In four short hours second piece of cord to the other they found themselves at the desk. side of the harness. Then she said Winthrop gave his name and to Winthrop, "Jeremiah, we're number to the man and explained ready." why he wanted an interview with Winthrop stepped over to Davy's one of the ministers. The man side. He passed the second piece of swiftly filled out a set of papers, as cord around his waist and tied it signed Winthrop a line number and fast. "I'm ready," he said. a chair number, and pointed the di They went out the door and it rection to take. was not bad at first. Riding down Jeremiah, Ann, and Davy slowly the spiral escalator it began to get passed through the crowds in the crowded;. people preg.sed shoulder room, this time seeking their line. to shoulder. Davy clutched a They finally found it and Winthrop parent's hand in each of his own. gave his papers to the man in When they arrived at the bel ts be charge. Again they were fortunate. low ground-level, the press grew The line to which Winthrop was as- THE GOOD WORK 33 signed did not even reach out into laughlng, shouting, or playing. Win.. the room; the end of it had pro throp turned each one off as he gressed into the long corridor that came abreast of it, if his neighbors led to the minister's office. did not object. None of the people Winthrop settled into his moving in the line were talkative, and that chair while Ann and Davy bustled suited Winthrop. Mostly he sat around him and made him com thinking over his forthcoming inter fortable. Then they said goodbye. view. Two minutes to explain why "Ann, be careful going home. Go he should be given work was not very slowly. Don't be afraid to very long. But the Ministers of scream out if Davy begins to get Government Employment were crushed." busy men. "Don't worry, dear. We'll be all Toward the end of the second right." Ann smiled at him, but her week Winthrop had a surprise visit eyes were too bright. from Ann. She threw her arms Winthrop saw it and stood up around him and explained that from his chair. "I'll take you home Helen Barlow had come to see her and then come back." and had sent Ann off to visit. And '~No." She gently pushed him it was while Ann was there that back into the chair. "We'll lose an Winthrop moved up to a position other day, and Davy and I will be from which he could see the door all right. Now you just stay here. of the minister's office. When Ann Goodbye, dear."· She leaned over left, she went with the comforting and kissed him. knowledge that it would be only a Winthrop said, "All right, but few days more. don't visit me, Ann. I'll be home as The time came when Winthrop soon as this is over, and it's too hard was at the door. Then, suddenly, he on you to make the trip alone." was in the anteroom, and before She smiled and nodded. Win he could fully realize it he was throp kissed Davy and ruffled his standing in a very small room be hair. Then Ann tied both ends of fore the minister. Davy's leash around her waist, and Winthrop identified himself and she and Davy walked off. Both of said, "I have a boy of four, a fine them turned to wave frequently boy, and a fine wife too. I want to until the crowd swallowed them up. work the way a man should to give them something besides Standard The days passed slowly for Win Fare. Here is what I have worked at throp. The corridor seemed to in the last five years." And Win stretch on interminably as he slowly throp listed the things he had done. moved down it in his chair. Every The minister listened. He had few hundred yards there was the white hair and a lined face whose inevitable milk faucet and the bread skin seemed to be pulled too: tight. and butter slots, and every few feet When Winthrop had finished, the there was the inevitable TV screen minister looked steadily into his face alive with people talking, singing, for a moment; Winthrop could al- 34 THEODORE L. T.HOMAS roost feel the probing of the level "The reason is that we do not blue eyes. Then the minister turned want people fighting over jobs. Not to a device that loomed over him to many who come in here really want one side and punched a complex to work, but there are a few. We series of buttons. There was a whir have to pick good men for this ring noise behind the wall of the work; those buildings must be kept tiny room, and then a small packet in good condition. Others less for- of cards appeared at the slot in the . tunate than you might not under bottom of the device. The minister stand that you are just the man we picked them out and glanced at need. So no talking about your them, and an odd expression of sad \vork-no talk of'any kind--on pain ness swept across his face. It was of dismissal." The minister sat back. gone in an instant, and then he "\.yell, I guess that is about all. Re looked up and said, "Yes, Mr. Win port for work in the morning. Good throp. We have a job for you, and luck." "And he held out his hand. the full six hours a day, too. You Winthrop shook it and said, \vill be on the maintenance crew "l'hank you, sir. I'll \vork hard for of your building. Your job is ex you. 1 didn't know you needed men plained here-" he passed over a for this work or I would have been card-"and it consists of tightening here sooner. I had always heard the nuts <;>0 the expansion joints in that ... Well, thank you." And the fralnework of the building. It Winthrop turned to go. Out of the is very important to do it right, so comer of his eye as he turned, he read the card carefully." Winthrop thought he saw again that ephemer nodded eagerly. al expression of sadness, but when The minister handed over an he looked the minister full in the other card and said, "Here is a face it was gone. Winthrop went out description of the daily reports you th~ side door. The entire interview must turn in." Another card. "Here had taken one and three quarter is how you and your chief decide nlinutes. your working schedule, and you must adhere to it; it is very impor tant. The chief of your tightening INTHROP left early the next crew will go over it with you. Here Wmorning so as not to be late is your requisition for the special for work. As it turned out, he was \vrench you will need. Here is your unable to get off a belt at the pay schedule; you can decide if proper landing-too many people you want to be paid in money or in the way-and it took him fifteen produce. And one very important minutes to retrace his steps. He ar thing." The minister leaned for rived exactly' 9n time. ward to emphasize his remarks. The chief of the tightening crew "You are not allowed to talk about was a big, bluff man with a red your job with anyonc~ not even with face. He took Winthrop in tow and your best fl;ends. Is that clear?" showed him how they worked. The \Vinthrop nodded. '''Yes, sir." crew chief had a vast knowledge of THE GOOD WORK 35 the crawl spaces in the interior of in the Winthrop household, much the building. He showed 'Vinthrop reading and playing games and tell the blueprints from which the tight ing stories. They even watched the ening crew worked, and explained TV screen now and then; somehow that by coordinating their work it no longer seemed so fruitless. The with all the other tightening crc\vs monotony of Standard Fare was they made one cOlTIplete round of broken; the head of the house was the building every eight years. By working steadily. It was now possi then it was time to do it agai~; the ble to plan ahead for a variety of nuts worked loose from the constant meals, and that made it easier to expansion and contraction. It was wait when there was nothing to eat quite a job keeping track of the but Standard Fare. area that the tightening crew cov Winthrop developed skill and ered; it was a large crew. But each speed at locating and tightening ~e member turned in daily reports, nuts. He soon covered in a day a and there was a large clerical staff larger area than any other man, to keep the records straight. In fact, and the chief told him that he was there were more men keeping his best man. Winthrop came to records than there were doing the share the pride and sense of respon actual tightening work. The chief sibility that all the other tighteners pointed out that Winthrop was to felt. They were a select group, and be one of the elite, one of those they knew it; all the others looked whose work justified the existence up to them. of the huge staff. The tone of the It was after dinner one night that chief's voice made it clear that there Winthrop sat back, hooked his \vas a kind of quiet pride among thumbs in the armholes of his shirt, the men who did the actual work. and watched Ann and Davy finish The chief issued Winthrop his the half-dozen peas. They looked wrench and showed him where to at him and smiled, and his heart start. warmed. "You know," he said, "I The day passed swiftly. The tight think I'll visit John Barlow for a ening of the nuts was not so bad, few minutes. I haven't seen him although Winthrop's arm grew sore since he gave up his store. Do you after a while. The difficult part was mind, dear?" gaining access to the nuts in the Ann shook her head. "No, you first place. Winthrop had to use all run along. I'll play with Davy for his agility to wriggle through con a while and then put him to bed. fined places. Yet it was good to be Don't stay too long." working again, good to feel the Barlow answered Winthrop's sweat start from his brow from hard knock. "Well, Jeremiah. Come in, work instead of from the press of man, come in." people. Winthrop walked in and the two In a week Winthrop was no men stood looking at each other. longer dog-tired when he got home Winthrop was surprised at how well at night. There was much laughter Barlow looked, and he said so. 36 THEODORE L. THOMAS Barlo laughed. h la t h, 'm so happy for 0 Jer tim e m t I was pretty far down miah. Congratulations. And that re in the dumps I QUe . But I'm mind m John. h turned to her working, Jeremiah. I m actuall hu band. ou ha e 0 get ready to orking. Important work, too! go to ork. ou know how long it His enthusiasm as infectious takes to get ther even though it' and inthrop found himself laugh in the building. ing. "I'm glad for you, John. nd "Right. I 11 g tread . Jeremiah, I know how you feel becau m 1m orry that I hav to go but orking too. why don't you tay? Barlow stepped forward and o John. I ju t stopped in to wrung his hand. "That s fin , man ay hello. You come up and ee u fine! Government, I guess just lik eal soon. ' mine. It isn t so bad, i it? ot I certainly will." nearly as bad as e thought. Good There was an e change of ood teady important ork mak a man by s and inthrop left. fe I like it's worth living. Barlo wen into the 0 her room Helen Barlow came out of th and arne out immediatel with hi other room. "Why, Jeremiah. rench. He waved it playfully at didn t know you w re h reo Ho his if. Got to 0,' he said. "The nice to see you. 100 ning crew won't wait." And he e and he workin ' aid hIe a ki at his wife and went off Barlo . to wor . E
TH GOOD WORK 7 H
HE CAR he'd stolen was a the generator would not charge at beautifully groomed thing: all. all. He would have stolen another polished lacquer and chrome, with one if he could, but he had got onto almost brand-new dual tread white the turnpike before he realized just wall tires on the nickeled wire how unreliable this one was. If he heels. But the transmission was changed cars at a restaurant, it bad, the brake drums scraped, and would be reported and the police there was a short cir uit in the wir would s op him wh n he tried to ing somewhere, 0 that he, had 0 leave the tunlpike. keep over sixty miles per hour or o he was trapped with what he 38 BY ALGIS BUDRYS
He had been waitin,~ all his lite tor the aliens to turn up-and noW that the)' were here, he knew exactly what to do.
had. Hunched over the wheel of his minutes before the ship was due to roaring cage, the yellowish head take off, with or without him, lights reflecting white from the lane average speed required: 46.62, ap markers, Redfern swept his eyes prox.; round off to allow for stop systematically over the instruments: ping the car at the exit toll booth, ammeter, fuel gauge, oil pressure, for covering two miles of back water temperature, speedometer, roads, for leaving the car and run odometer. He thought of himself ning an unknown distance across as doing it systematically, every a weed-grown field to the ship's air ten minutes, like a professionally lock-they would take off on sched trained driver. Actually, he was ule with him six inches from the dividing his attention almost equal slamming airlock door; they would ly between the road and the not stay themselves a microsecond odometer. A hundred and ten miles to accommodate him-say fifty covered, seventy miles to go, ninety miles per hour, average. Then allow continually around immense trailer trucks in the slow lane. His mind raced to keep up with the changing figures on the odometer. He wished TASTED ASHES he weren't feeling a slight miss in the engine whenever he eased up on the accelerator. He cursed the for speedometer error. Say fifty-five car's owner for his false-front miles per hour, indicated, average. prodigality with wax and white Allow for odometer error. Say sixty walls. miles per hour, indicated, average. He looked at his watch again. Allow for unforeseen delays. Sixty Four in the morning. He turned five miles per hour. the radio on, ignoring his fear that Redfern's foot trembled on the something else might happen to the accelerator pedal. His thigh ached car's wiring. from hours of unremitting pressure. "-·And that's the news," the an His car flashed by signboards, wove nouncer's professionally relaxed 39 voice said. "Mter a word about of gin. The bottle his VISitor had United Airlines, we'll hear, first, brought up was standing on the bu Carl Orff's Carmina BUTana~ fol reau. His visitor, who had given the lowed by-" name of Charlie Spence, was not His watch was slow. drinking. Five minutes? Fifteen minutes? "You don't look like a Charlie," How long did the news take? Redfern said abruptly over the tum He held the watch to his ear. It bler's rim. "You look as cold as ice." was an expensive one, wafer thin, Spence laughed, his small mouth beautifully crafted, left over from stretching as far as it could. "May his younger days-he could barely be I'm made of it," he said. "But hear it running. Was it running at then, you're nothing but a lump of all? coal. Carbon." He brushed his fin gertips together. Redfern was a leathery man, his "But then," Redfern mocked yello\\ish-white hair brushed back sharply, "1 don't pretend to be gre from angular temples, a scruffy garious." Guards moustache over his nearly "Oh, I don't pretend--don't pre invisible lips. His suits were made tend at all. I am gregarious. I love for him by a London tailor, from the company of people. I've been measurements taken in 1925; they moving about among them for sev were gored and belted in the backs eral years, now." of the jackets. Outdoors, he wore a "All right," Redfern said sharply, Burberry and carried a briefcase. "we've already settled that. Let's let People who saw him on the street in it be. I don't care where you come Washington always took him for from-I don't really care what someone with diplomatic connec you're made of. It may surprise you, tions. But since Redfern was always but I've thought for some time that seen afoot, these connections per if people were coming to this world force had to be minor. Was he an from other places, they'd be bound ~ssistant attache of sorts, perhaps? to get in touch with me sooner or At his age? Looking at Redfern, later." people would wonder about it. "Why on Earth should we try to People. But the man who'd sat get in touch with you?" Spence easily on the edge of Redfern's asked, nonplus~d. lumpy bed in the wallpapered hotel "Because if you people have been room-that man, now ... coming here for years, then you're That man had coal-black hair, not here openly. You've got pur broad, flat cheekbones above a poses of your own. People with pur sharply narrowing chin, oval, ma poses of their own generally come to roon-pupiled eyes and cyanotic lips. me." He smiled easily and agreeably Charlie Spence began to chuckle. across the room. "I like you," he laughed. "I really Redfern sat in the one chair, sip do. You're a rare type." ping at the water tumbler half-full "Yes," said Redfern, "and now 40 ALGIS BUDRYS let's get down to business." He ges "I heard you the first time. tured toward the bureau top. "Pour What's all this to do with me?" me some more of that." Alcohol af "Well, now," Charlie Spence ex fected him swiftly but not deeply. plained, "the ambassador's not from Once it had stripped him of the a particularly large nation in their ordinary inhibitions, he could go on bloc. It seems doubtful they'd drinking for some time before his bother to send along any of their intellect lost its edge. Since he al own security police. The only ways took two aspirins and went guards present will likely be Ameri straight to bed at that point, it was can Secret Service personnel, ex not a serious sort of weakness. But tending courtesy protection." without his inhibitions he was a very "Yes." unpleasant man. "So. In the first place, the am bassador is really a small fish. In the second place, no American, even a "IT'S A SIMPLE business," trained professional sworn to his .I Charlie Spence was saying a duty" is apt to be quite as devoted little later. "The ambassador will to the ambassador's life as he would land at National Airport and be be to; that of, say, any American met by the usual sort of reception congressman. Those two factors committee. Red carpet, band, dig represent a potential assassin's mar nitaries, and so forth. But the red gin of safety." carpet will be a little shabby, the "And what're you meddling in band won't be first-rate, and the our politics for?" Redfern growled. reception committee will not be "Your politics? Redfern, my dear quite as high-ranking as it might be. fellow, it mayor may not be your Mter all, the ambassador's country planet, but it's most assuredly our is definitely on the other side of the solar system." fence." The neck of the bottle tinked "Yes," Redfern drawled. "The against the lip of Redfern's glass. protocol of prejudice." "And I'm your assassin?" "Dh, no, no, nothing deliberate," "You are." Spence said, with a hand raised. "What makes you think I'll do "Diplomats pride themselves on it?" Redfern cocked his head and equal courtesy to all. But the em looked narrowly at Spence. ployee in charge of caring for the "A compulsive need to meddle in carpets simply won't do his best. human history." The band won't play with any great "Dh?" enthusiasm. And any of your offi Cha;lie Spence laughed. "You cials who happen to be ill, with were cashiered from your country's colds or similar afllictions, will hon foreign service in nineteen hundred estly decide their health precludes and thirty-two. But you've never the effort of attending. This is sim stopped mixing into international ply human nature, and any snub situations. Gun running, courier will be completely unintended." work, a little export-import, a little THE MAN WHO TASTED ASHES 41 field work for foreign development The ernbassy \"ill close its doors, is corporations ... and, now and then, sue a misleading statement., and a few more serious escapades. Don't call its doctor." tell me you don't enjoy it, Redfern. "Yes.'~ It's a very hard life, all told. No one "Very well. The embassy staff would stay in it as long as you have has taken routine steps, and waits if it didn't satisfy his need for for the ambassador to recover. But, power." just to allow for all eventualities: Redfern. pinched his lips together the unofficial courier service is al even more tightly, in the fleeting re ready transmitting a notification to flex with which he always acknowl the government at home. The doc edged the truth. "I wasn't cash tor examines the patient and dis iered," he said. "I resigned without covers an inflamed punciure on his prejudice." right hand. Another message goes "Oh, yes; yes, you did. Being un home. The ambassador dies, and pleasant to one's superiors doesn't tests indicate poison. Obviously, it disgrace a man-it merely makes was hoped the puncture would go him unemployable. Except for 'spe unnoticed and the cause of death, cial purposes that don't require a which resembles cerebral occlusion. pukka sahib. And here I am, as would be mistaken. But the tiny you said, with a special purpose. needle must not have been quite Ten thousand dollars, on comple sterilized, by accident, and the tion, Redfern, and the satisfaction clever doctor has penetrated the of having started World War III." scheme-and another message goes Redfern's eyes glittered. "All over home, before the Am~rican State one little ambassador?" he asked Department even suspects anything carefully. serious." "Over one little ambassador. In "Hmm. I'll simply shake his life, he's not considered worth the hand?" trouble of protecting him. And no Charlie Spence reached into his one but a rather stout and liverish pocket. "Wearing this." He held woman in the Balkans will mourn out a crumpled sOlnething, the size him in death. But when he dies, his of a handkerchief. Redfern took it side will suddenly discover a great and unfolded it. "A mask/' Spence and genuine moral indignation. ~aid. "Drawn over your head, it Why? Because they will be truly will mold new features for you. shocked at such a thing happening It'll be devilish uncomfortable, but in AUlerica." you won't have to wear it long~" "World War III," Redfern said ~'It'll make me look like someone ruminatively. entitled to be on the field?" "'Exactly. You'll shake the am Spence grinned the grin of a bassador's hand. An hour later, Renaissance Florentine. "Better when he's already safe inside his than that. It will give you the com embassy refreshing himself after his posite features of six people entitled trip, he'11 fall into a sudden coma. to be on the field. You will look like 42 ALGIS BUDRYS none of them, but you will look Redfern snorted. "If I acted only superficially familiar to anyone who on what I was sure of, I'd still be an knows any of them. The subsequent embassy clerk." questioning of witnesses will yield "And you \\'ouldn't like that, I amusing results, I think." suppose?" Charlie Spence, recov "Very clever. Good technique. ered, was looking around the room. Confuse and obscure. But then, "Sometimes? i\t night, when you you've practiced it a long time." can't sleep?" Redfern pushed himself abruptly "I want an out," Redfern said out of the chair and went into the brusquely. "I won't do it without adjoining bathroom, keeping the accident insurance." door open. "Excuse me," he said "Oh?" Charlie Spence's eyebro\\'s perfunctorily. quivered. "Lord, you're a type!" Charlie "If I'm caught at the field, I'm Spence said. ':Will you do it?" . caught and that's it. I'll protect "What?" Redfern said from the you." bathroom. "Professionalism. I like that. Go "Will you do it?" Spence re on-what if you get away from the peated, raising his voice. field?" Redfern came out, picking up "If I get away, but there's trou the gin bottle, and sat back down in ble, I want a rendezvous with one the chair. He tipped the bottle over of your ships." the glass. "Maybe." · "Oh, ho!" Charlie Spence said. "I've told you too much for you "You do, -do you?" to back out now," Spence said with "I'll cover my tracks, if you think a frown. it's important, but I want a rendez "Rubbish!" Redfern spat. "Don't vous. I want to be off this planet try to bully me. You don't care if there's trouble. Change that-I what any of the natives tell each want to be off it in any case, and if other about you. There are dozens there's no trouble, I can always be of people living off their tales about brought back." you. It's to your advantage to "Oh, hoI" Charlie Spence re hire native helpers wherever you peated with a grin. "Yes, I'd think can-if they're caught, who cares you would want to watch the next what wild tales they tell? You'd be war from some safe place." It was insane to risk losing one of your own easy to see he'd been expecting Red people." He looked sharply into fern to lead up to this all along. Charlie Spence's eyes. "I don't sup "Have it your way," Redfern said pose you fancy the thought of a dis ungraciously. secting table." Charlie Spence was laughing si Charlie Spence licked his lips lently, his eyes a-slit. "All right, with a flicker of his tongue. "Don't Redfern," he said indulgently. He be too sure of yourself," he said reached into his card case, took out after a moment, in a more careful a photograph of a dumpy blonde tone of voice. woman and a string-haired man THE MAN WHO TASTED ASHES 43 on the porch of a middle western He tried another station on the farmhouse, and carefully split it radio, but that was playing popular with his thumbnails. Out of the cen music. A third was conducting some ter, he took a bit of tissue paper, sort of discussion program ahout and stuck the front and back of the water fluoridation. And that \rvas photograph together again. Replac all. The rest of the dial yielded ing the card case in his pocket, he only hisses or garbled snatches from handed the slip of paper to Redfern. Minneapolis or Cincinnati. His am "Dip it in your drink," he said. meter showed a steady discharge as He watched while Redfern com long as the radio was on, no matter plied, but kept his eyes away from how fast he drove. He turned it off the short handwritten directions the and steered the car, his face like a alcohol brought up. "Don't repeat graven image. He was seething \vith the location aloud. I don't know it, anger, but none of it showed. As an and don't want to. Memorize it and adolescent, he had made the mis destroy it. And I tell you now, Red take of equating self-possession with fern, if the ambassador doesn't die, maturity, and had studiously prac there'll be no ship." He smiled. ticed the mannerism, with the in "For that matter, you have no guar evitable result that he had "-only antee there'll be any ship at all." learned to hide his feelings from Redfern growled. "I know." himself. He was the prisoner of his "Lord, what meager hopes you practice now, to the extent that he live on, Redfern!" often had to search deep to find "You're through here now, aren't what emotion might be driving him you?" Redfern said. at any particular time. Often he "Yes ..." Charlie Spence said found it only in retrospect, when it with pursed lips. was too late. "T:hen get out." He took the That lunch with Dick Farleagh palm hypodermic Charlie Spence this afternoon ... handed him in its green pasteboard box, and closed the hotel room door It had been difficult even to reach behind his visitor. him' a call to the embassy-"Who shalt I tell Mr. Farleagh is calling? Mr. Redfern?" and then the barely HIRTY-FIVE miles to go. His muffled aside, a whispered "Oh, T watch now read 4:30. It hadn't dear." Then the pause, and finally, stopped, but was merely slow. If with a sigh: "Mr. Farleagh will he'd thought to have it cleaned by speak to you now, Mr. Redfern_" as a jeweler, last year or even the year though the secretary thought a bad before that, it would be accurate' mistake was being made. now. As it was, he had less than an "Dickie," Redfern said heavily. hour, and he would be off the turn "What is it, Ralph?" Farlcagh's pike fairly soon~ onto roads that voice was too neutral. Obviously, \vere paved but had been laid out he had taken the call only Ollt of in the days of horse-drawn wagons. curiosity, because he had not heard
~ ALGIS BUDRYS directly from Redfern in nearly There was a long pause, during fifteen years. But he must already which there was a sudden buzz in be regretting it-probably he didn't the phone, and the sound of Red like being called Dickie, now that fern's coin being collected. In a mo his junior clerk days were well be ment, the operator would be asking hind him. Redfern ought to have for another dime. thought of that, but he was in a "Are you there?" Farleagh asked hurry, a~d hurry, like liquor, always with maddening detachment. "See took away his social graces. here, Redfern-" now the tenor of "I have to speak to you." his thinking was unmistakeable in "Yes?" his voice, even before he continued Redfern waited. Only after a mo -"if it's a matter of a few dollars ment did he understand that Far or so, I can manage it, I suppose. leagh had no intention of meeting I'll mail you a check. You needn't him in person. bother to return it." "I can't do it over the telephone." "Deposit ten cents for the next '"I see." Now the voice was crisp, three minutes, please," the operator as Farleagh decided he could meet said at that moment. the situation with routine proce "I don't want your blasted dure. "I'll ask my secretary to make money!" Redfern cried. "I have to an appointment. She'll call you. see you. ''''ill you be there?" Can you leave a number?" "1-" Farleagh had begun when "No, no, no!" Redfern was shout the operator cut them off. ing into the telephone~· "I won't be Redfern stared in bafflement at ~bed off like that!" His words and the telephone. Then he thrust it actions' \\'ere registering on his con back on its cradle and walked sciousness in only the haziest way. briskly out of the booth. He had no idea he was shouting. "'This is too important for your He waited in the Grosvenor bar blasted conventionalities! I won't for an hour and a half, rationing his put up \vith it! 1 have to see you." drinks out of a sense that he ought His voice was wheedling, now, to keep ·his head. He was not a though he did not realize that, stupid man. He knew that he al either. "Today. No later than ways got into quarrels whenever lunch." he'd been drinking. F~rleagh said with quiet shock, He rationed his drinks, but after "There's no need to rave at me. the first one he did so out of a spite Now, take hold of yourself, Ralph, ful feeling that he ought to, to and perhaps we can talk this out please that stuffed shirt Farleagh. sensibly." He already knew that if Farleagh "Will you come or won't you?" appeared at all, their meeting Redfern demanded. "I'll be at the would not do the slightest good. Grosvenor bar in an hour. I'm Hunched over his drink, glowering warning you you'll regret it if you at the door, he now only wanted to don't come." be able to say, afterwards, that he THE /tI\AN WHO TASTED ASHES 45 had made the utmost effort to do he was merely providing for an ex the right thing. tremely remote possibility. "Red Farleagh came, at last, looking a fern," he said, "if you're attempting great deal beefier than he had when to involve my government in some he and Redfern were in public scheme of yours, that will be the school together. His handshake was end. You'll have gone too far." perfunctory-his maddeningly level "OUT government, Dickie," Red gray eyes catalogued the changes in fern almost snarled. "I still carry Redfern's face with obvious disap my passport." proval-and he practically shep "Precisely," Farleagh said. "I'm herded Redfern to the farthest and sure the American authorities darkest table. Obviously, he did not would deport you, at our request. If relish being seen in a public place you stand trial at home, you'll not with a man of Redfern's character. get off easily." Redfern drawled: "You've gone to "There's nothing in my past fat." record that breaks the law at Farleagh's eyes remained steady. home." "And you to lean. What is it you "There's a great deal about you want, Redfern?" that breaks laws more popular than "If it isn't money?" Redfern's those in books." mouth curled. He turned and sig "Damn you, Farleagh," Redfern naled to a waiter. "What will you said in a voice he did not know was have, Dickie?" high and almost tearful, "you'd bet "None for me, thank you," Far ter be there tonight." leagh said in an impassive drone. "Why?" "I'm pressed for time." "Because if you aren't; and I do "Are you? You've no idea, do get involved in something, it'll be you, that I might be on a close found out soon enough that you schedule myself." Redfern glanced could have been there. I warn you at his watch. The ambassador's now, Farleagh, if I go down, it plane was due at National Airport won't be easily. Perhaps it won't in two hours, and there was a great matter to you if your career's deal still to be done. "You've kept smashed. I tell you now, there's a me waiting." He waved the waiter great deal more involved in this away in sudden irritation, without than your career." ordering. "Now, you listen to mc," Farleagh was still not taking -his he told Farleagh. "I'm going to be eyes away from Redfern's face, nor at a definite place and titne tonight. moderating the set of his 111outh. He Here." He flicked the balled bit of gave the appearance, sitting there tissue paper across the table into in his expensive suit, with his gray Farlcagh's lap. ing black hair combed down sleekly, Farleagh picked it out and trans of enormous patience nearly at an ferred it to a side pocket. He would end. have been a very bad diplomat if "Very well thenl" Redfern ex he had ignored it. But it \vas plain claimed. "I don't care if you believe 46 ALGIS BUDRYS me or not." He thrust his chair to look toward the man. He had back. "But if someone gets ill who seen no sign of drawn-up police shouldn't, today, you'd better be cars anywhere around the toll lieve me!" He stalked away, his plaza. That was the important Burberry flapping from his ann, his thing, the only important thing at briefcase banging into the backs the moment. of chairs, his face an unhealthy Now that he was off the turn red. pike, he forgot he had been so afraid of being stopped for automo bile theft. It had been another in E DROVE vengefully; in a rage a succession of thin-edged risks H that included the car and the which could be shown to extend radio, his watch, Farleagh, Charlie back to the beginning of his inde Spence and the world. pendent life. He forgot it as he had Five o'clock, by his watch. He forgotten his fears concerning all turned into the exit ramp with a the others--as he had forgotten squealing from the tires, and one that he had been afraid something part of his mind was hoping there would go wrong at the airport this would be a blowout, just to prove afternoon, or that he would be something to the car's owner. He caught as he hung about in Wash touched the brakes almost reluc ington for hours afterward, until tantly, and at the same time cursed he was sure the embassy was act their criminal softness. He fumbled ing as if something were wrong on the seat beside him for the toll behind its doors. ticket, and searched in' his nearly As he drove now, forcing his car empty wallet. He had had to spend around the twisting mountain cor a good deal of money today-more ners, he had other things to be than he'd expected, for the drug afraid of. and the explosive. It had never Farleagh might not be there- been his intention to steal a car, but might have been stubborn, or un rental had been out of the question. accountably stupid, or simply too He knew, and damned the fact, slow, in spite of the margin Red that another man might have got fern had allowed him. He looked at ten better prices with his suppliers. his watch again as he turned off But what sort of logic was there in onto a dirt track leading almoSt making up to criminals; slapping straight up the hill. Five-twenty by their backs and buying them drinks, his watch. He had perhaps five min talking to them on an equal basis, utes. when he could not even see the He took one deep breath-one, need to do that sort of thing in his and no more, just as he had done dealings with respectable people? at the airport gate this afternoon, He slapped the ticket and his and as he had done on other occa two remaining dollar bills into the sions in his life-and drove the car toll attendant's palm, and acceler into a tangle of shrubbery just past ated again without bothering even a mortared-stone culvert that was THE MAN WHO TASTED ASHES 47 his position marker. He shut off the self awkwardly ,vith his one free ignition and sat as if stupefied by hand, the ladder began to retract the engine's silence. Almost in with the sound of metal sliding into stantly, the headlights were no metal, and other mechanical more than a sickly orange glow sounds resonated out of the hull, upon the leaves pressed against the like generators cOining up to speed, car's grille. He shut them off, and relays in a sequence of s\vitch picked up his briefcase, and aban ing operations. He looked up and doned the car. Burberry flapping saw the airlock door quiver and around his thighs, he trotted across begin to turn on its malO.isive hinges. the road and plunged down a slight With a strained motion of his decline into a stand of tamaracks. aml, he threw the charge overarin I t was dark except for the remain into the airlock, and let go the lad.. ing light of a low half-moon seep der. He heard the briefcase thump ing through the overcast. to the deck in the lock chamber, He moved with practiced effi while he himself was falling ten or ciency through the trees, keeping twelve feet back to the ground. his direction by paralleling the When the explosion carne, he was brook that had trickled through the sprawled on the ground, rearing culvert, until he emerged without up on his out-thrust anns, and he warning into an open and long stared in fascination at the flame neglected field, choked with pro shot billow of orange sinoke gout liferating brush, entirely surround ing through the still half-open lock. ed by evergreens, with the space He rolled, off to one side, as the ship, tall as an oil refinery1s crack outer door rebounded [roln the ing tower, standing in its center. hull. He was afraid it might fall on The airlock door in the side of it him, but then he saw it was still was open. Redfern began t~ force hanging, like a broken gate. his way through the brush, toward The starting-noises inside the the extended ladder which con ship caIne to a cOlllplctc stop. He nected the airlock with the ground. had done what he had hoped to do There was a single light in the lock -breached the hull, and activated chamber. No other lights were vis the safety cut-offs in the controls. ible-the ship was a complex sil The ship was caught, earthbound, houette of struts and vanes, given possibly not for very long, but per the reality of depth only by that haps for long enough. open door, and what that door l'he brush· crackled and plucked might lead to, Redfern could not' at his passage. He (:ould not bring really guess. himself to look away from the ship, As he struggled up to the ladder, and he blundered through the un he was anning the satchel charge dergrowth with his arms behind in his briefcase. him, feeling his ''lay_ The light in There was still no sign of life the airlock chamber was off now, from inside the ship. But as he but sOlnething was still burning in climbed the ladder, hoisting him- there, with a dull smoldering red 48 ALGIS BUDRYS flicker. "Oh, no, you don't!" Redfern A hand placed itself flat between shouted, mortally afraid things his shoulderblades. "All right, easy could still go wrong. "It won't wash now, sir," a voice said. -not with me to testify against He turned convulsively, his face you." contorted as if by pain, and made ,The Secret Service man at the out a tall, huskily built young man base of the ship turned his head in a narrow-brimmed hat, who was in Redfern's direction long enough holding a short-barreled revolver to show his exasperation. Then he in his other hand. The brush was pointed his pistol up at the man parting all around him-there were in the lock. ~'Jump down, you." many men here-and suddenly a There was the sound of someone portable floodlight shot up a beam heavy coming toward them through to strike the airlock. the brush. After a moment, Far "We were just about ready to leagh said: "There you are." send a man aboard when you crip "Hullo, Dickie." Redfern grinned pled them, sir," the young man at Farleagh in the spottily reflected said ~ith his trained politeness. light. "Now you know." "Is Farleagh here?" Redfern de "Know what?" Farleagh asked manded. heavily. "Yes, sir, Mr. Farleagh's back Redfern shifted his feet nelVOUS among the trees, with the chief." lYe "Why I got myself cashiered A man had stepped up to the years ago. You see I knew they base of the ship, where the ladder were coming here-at least, I be had rested. Like Redfern's young lieved they were-and I decided man, he wore a civilian suit as if it what sort of human being they had been made by a uniform manu would be most likely to contact." facturer. "Aboard the ship!" he Rage crossed Farleagh's face at shouted up through cupped hands. last, and shocked Redfern. "Stop
"Can you hear me? Do you speak it, r Redfern," he said savagely. "For English? This is t~e Secret Serv once in your life, admit you're the ice." sort of man you are." There was a grating sound up in After that, no one seemed to look the lock chamber, as someone at him. An improvised ladder was forced open the balky inner door. brought up, and Secret Service men Then a man stumbled up to the went into the ship and came down edge and looked down, his white again escorting sullen, blue-lipped coveralls smudged and a strained men. The clearing became full of look on his face. He squinted at the activity as the prisoners were hand Secret Service man. cuffed together, machines and rec "Jesus Christ, yes, I speak Eng ords brought down out of the ship; lish," he said in outrage. "Who and Redfern watched it all, just as threw that bomb? This is a god he had been watching all his life, damn Air Force project, and there's from the outside. END gonna be all kinds of hell." THE MAN WHO TASTED ASHES 49 BY ICHARD McKE aThe true dog, madame, was HE HEADLI E on the new T papers stacked in front of the drugstote read "RUSS DOG REACHES MOO ALIVE." A (r 4 linally the olden jackal, man in a leather jacket stopped to can it. . Across the street, fro t lay crisp Canis aure s ... H,e must love on th courthouse lawn, and he wm e and tan spott d hound put up hi for paws on the kitchen stool as if to warm them.. The fo r and be loved, or he dies." women were to~ busy hauling down a the flag to notice. dog on the moon to starve and Martha Stonery in the persian freeze and smother and die of lone lamb coat paid out the halyard. liness! This dog above our heads Monica Flint in the reddish musk cries out to the world against the rat and Paula Hart in the brown Russian breach of faith between fox caught the flag and folded it, dog and man. He will stay there careful not to let it touch the wet until the Russians bring their dog cement. A postman and the man home safely or make amends for in the leather jacket stopped on the their crime!" sidewalk to watch: "Like hell!" said the man in the Martha, plump face grim under leather jacket, moving in. pinchnose spectacles, fastened one "Martha!" Abigail shrieked. halyard snap to a metal ring taped ~'Hc's taking it down!" and wired to the dog's right hind Monica pulled at his wrists. leg. Paula slapped and scratched at "Hoist away, girls." his face. "You brute! You coward!" Monica, Paula and Abigail Silax they shrilled. in nutria hauled in unison while Martha jumped off the stool and Martha held the flag. The hound kicked hinl. He backed a~ay, bent scrabbled with his forepaws and and holding himself. barked frantically. As he went ~'Look, ladies," he gasped, "for struggle-twisting upward he began God's sake-', to howl in a bell-like voice. The "Here now, here now, this is women grunted with effort. People county property," said a fat man in were coming across the lawn and shirtsleeves with pink sleeve garters, pale faces moved behind the conrt pushing through the crowd. house windows. "What's all this? Take that dog "Two block," Martha said. down, somebody!" "Vast hauling and belay." "Never!" Martha snapped. She She pulled the kitchen stool put her back against the halyard nearer the flagpole and climbed on cleat, unfolded the flag and draped it to face the small crowd across it around herself. A loose strand of the shelf of her bosom. Cars were gray hair fell across her face. stopping, people streaming in from "If you're so big and brave, go all sides. Martha patted her piled bring dpwn the Russian dog," she gray hair and made her thin lips told the fat man coldly. into a parrot beak. "Now listen, lady," the f3:t man "Fellow Americans!" she cried said. The Clarion press photog above the howling. "Our leaders rapher was sprinting across the are cowards and it is time for the lawn. people to act before the Russians come and murder us all in our beds! We, the United Dames of GEORGE STONERY was tall, the Dog, hereby protest the Russian thin, stooped and anxious in a crime of putting a trusting, loving gray business suit. .51 "I came as soon as I could," he dames lives out in the county," the told Sheriff Breen across the sheriff said, rising. "You fix up bail, scarred, paper-littered wooden Mr. Stonery. I got to send out a desk. "I was away checking one of deputy." our warehouses." \Valking past the flagpole \vith "You can make bail for her in her husband, Martha Stonery wore two minutes, right across the hall," an exalted look. the sheriff said, scratching his jowl. "All over America dogs will cry "She wouldn't make it for herself, out in protest against the Russian said we had to lock her in our crinle," she said. '"I have kindled a sputnik." £lanIe, Ge~rge, that will s\veep away "Where is she now?" the Kremlin. I, a weak wom- "In the sputnik." an...." The desk phone rang and the She insisted on driving herself sheriff growled into it, "Hell you home in her new station wagon. say. State forty-three just past Roy Farm? Right. 1 s'pose you already Sirening police cars passed 8ton heard what we had on the lawn ery three times as he drove home here this morning?" in the evening. Outside the tan The phone gave forth an excited stucco ranch-style house on Euclid gobbling. The sheriff's red eye Avenue, cars blocked tpe drive brows rose in disbelief and his way and a crowd milled on the heavy jaw dropped in dismay. He lawn. Stonery parked under the oak put down the phone. tree at the curb and got out. "That was city," he told Stonery. Martha stood in the living room "Complaint about'a dog hanging by the picture window and ha by one leg from a tree just outside rangued the crowd through a city limits. But it's going on all over screened side panel. Centered in town too--dogs hanging on trees, the window her spaniel Fiffalo out of windows, off clotheslines writhed, hanging by a hind leg every squad car is out. Your old from the massive gilt ft.oor lamp lady sure started something!" and yipping piteously. Martha had "What did she do?" Stonery on her suit of gray Harris tweed asked in anguish. and her diamond brooch. . The sheriff told him. "Kicked a ". .. moral pressure the Russians big fat deputy where it hurts, too. simply cannot resist/' Stonery Maybe we ought to hold her after heard her shouting as he joined the all. She says she's president of the crowd. "The men talk, but the United Dogs of something." United Dames of the Dog are not "United Dames of the Dog," the afraid to act. Putting a dear little thin man corrected. "They hold dog on the moon to die of heart meetings and things. She started it hreak!" when the Russians put up their Several young men near the win second sputnik." dow scribbled on white pads. "Well, I hope none of them "How many members do you 52 RICHARD McKENNA have, Mrs. Stonery?" one asked. The reporters swept Stonery into "The V.D.D. is bigger than you the house with them. One police think, young man. Bigger than the man untied Fiffalo and held him in Russians think, for all their spies his anns. He strained his head back and traitors!" and away from the spaniel's whim Stonery sidled in and tried the pering kisses. Martha glared self front door. 1essly while flash bulbs popped. "She locked it," one of the re Stonery pulled gently at the porters told him. "The cops went other policeman's sleeve. back for a warrant. Say! You're "May I come along, officer?" he Stonery!" asked. "I'm her husband. I'll have "Yes," the thin man said, flush to arrange bail." ing. A press camera flashed and he "Not taking her," the policeman put up his hands too late to shield said. "No room left in the pokey. his face. Since two 0'clock we been arrest "Give us a statement, Mr. Ston ing the dogs." ery, before the cops come back," the reporters clamored. Stonery backed off, waving his HE BELLBOY put down the hands. "Please, please," he said. Tsilver bucket of ice cubes, "She cracked?" a reporter asked. pocketed the quarter and went out. "When did you first notice?" The skinny secretary put a bottle "Please," Stonery said. "Yes, of whisky beside it and turned. to she's upset. Her' old,est son went that fat adjutant sprawled shoeless into the state penitentiary in Cali on the bed. fornia last week. She's very upset "Looks like. Governor Bob'll be about it." a while yet, Sam," the secretary "He' kill somebody?" the same said. "Shall we drink without reporter, asked. him?" "No, oh no .•. just armed rob "Hell yes, I need one, Dave," bery ... please don't print that, the adjutant said in his frog voice, boys." wiggling his toes. "Bob must be "Here come the cops back!" having himself a time with that someone shouted. Stonery dame." He chuckled and Two policemen crossed the lawn, slapped his belly. one waving a paper. "Here is our The secretary tore wrappers off warrant of forcible entry, Mrs. two tumblers and clinked ice into Stonery," he called out. He began them. His rabbit face with its ipec reading it aloud. tacles framed in clear plastic ex "The V.D.D. will not shrink pressed a rabbity concern. from any extremes of police bru "It ain't for laughs, Sam," he tality," Martha cried sharply. Fif said. "It's like the dancing mania fala struggled and yelped louder. of the Middle Ages, ever hear of The second policeman smashed it?" the lock with a ten-pound sledge. hNo. D'they string up dogs by a LOVE AND MOONDOGS 53 hind leg too?" wrapper off another gla~ and "No, only danced. But it was splashed it full of ice and bourbon. catching, like this is. My God, Sam, The adjutant padded to the door it's allover the state no\\·, D.D.D. and opened it. The governor, a \vomen running in packs at night, stout, florid luan in a gray sports singing, hanging up every dog they coat, canle in and sat stiffly on the can catch. Sam, it scares me." edge of the bed. The secretary He splashed whisky into the two handed him the drink and he glasses. The adjutant belched, sat gulped half of it before speaking. up in a creaking of bed springs, "No smoke, boys," he said final and scratched his heavy ja.w. ly. "She give it to file just like she "You're thinking they Illight does to the papers. '''Ie got to go start hanging up us poor sons of to the moon, or make the Russians bitches, ain't you?" he asked. "Hell, do it, and bring that poor, dear, call out the Guard. Clamp on a sweet, trusting, cuddly little dog curfew." He reached fOf a glass. back to Earth again." \'Yes, and the Russians'll fake '·Ho\v about her kid out on the pictures of your boys sticking old coast?" the adjutant asked. women with bayonets," the secre "She spit in my eye, Sam. Said tary said. "Governor Bob couldn~t she was just as brave to be a martyr get reelected as dogcatcher, even." as the dogs they string up. Why, she The adjutant drained his glass, even told me about another boy of lipping back· the· ice, and whistled hers, living in sin with a black his breath out through pouting lips. wornan down in Cuba, and dared ~~Good! Needed that," he me to give that to the papers too." gTunted. "Dave, Bob's got that "She sounds tough as she looks.·~ Stonery dame by the short hairs, "She's tougher," the governor he'll swing her into line. Just that groaned. '·Like blue granite. I felt about her boy in the state pen out like I was back in the third grade." in California is enough. Brown He handed his empty glass to the would do Bob a favor and spring secretary. him. Or the papers here would "What did you finally do?" the splash it. Either way." secretary asked. " I know, I know," the secretary "What the hell could I do? I said, sippin~ at his drink. "We'll want that D.D.D. vote, it must be see, when Bob gets here. Mean a whopper. I wagged my tail and while, as of yesterday we had barked for her and said I had thirty-three thousand seven hun an idea." dred twenty-six dogs in protec "And now I got to think up the tive custody and God knows how idea," the secretary said, still hold many more under house arrest. ing the empty glass. Sixteen thousand bucks a day it's "No, I thought it up on my way costing us--" back," the governor said. "I'm go He broke off as a knock sounded ing to fly to Washington this after on the door. He hastily tore the noon." 54 RICHARD McKENNA "Not the anny, for God's sake," All the reports were favorable. pleaded die adjutant. The V.D.D. was getting four times "No, I'm going to dump it on the as many column-inches in the state Russian embassy. Damn their black press as the Russian moonship. It hearts, they started this. Hurry up was on TV and radio. A Life team \vith that drink!" was coming. "Watch out you don't lose your Changes were recommended. donkey for sure and all," the ad Vigilante packs were not to carry jutant said. "Them Russians are hat pins any more. Two policemen smart cookies." had lost eyes and the police were "They'll have to be," the gover being ugly about it. A bar of soap in nor said, reaching for the fresh a man's sock was to be substituted. drink. "They sure ... as ... hell More practice on the clove hitch ... will have to bel" was needed. Too often, in their ex citement, the pack ladies were only putting two half hitches around the ALL THE folding chairs were leg and the dog could struggle out ft taken. Extra women stood in of it. the' aisles and along the side of Martha came back to the rostrum the hall. Martha Stonery bulged to read the honor roll of those over the rostrum in blue knitted. whom dogs had bitten or policemen wool and a pearl necklace. Seated had insulted. Each heroine came around a half-circle of chairs be forward amid cheers and clapping hind her, pack leaders and com to receive a certificate exchange mittee chairwomen smoothed at able for the Bleeding Heart medal their skirts. Monica Flint in dove as soon as the honors committee gray sat at the organ. could agree on a design and have a Martha pounded with her gavel supply made up. Martha shook the so hard that her pearls rattled. hands, some of them bandaged, and "Everyone will please stand wept a few tears. while we sing our hymn," she said "And now, fellow U .D.D. mem into the resultant hush. She nodded bers," she said, "I will tell you my to Monica, who began to play. surprise. Tomorrow morning I have a I did not raise my dog to ride a an appointment with someone com sputnikJ I will not let him wander ing from Washington!" to the moon. .. ." The song was a A sighing murmur swept through shrill thundering. the hall. Martha beanled across her bosom "No, not Eisenhower," Martha as the crowd settled itself again. said scornfully. "A man from the "I have a most thrilling an Russian embassy, a Mr. Cher nouncement to make before we ad kassov." journ, girls," she said, "but first we Applause crashed shrilly. Women will have committee reports. Paula wept and hugged each other. Hart, will you begin?" She yielded "They want to make peace," the rostrum. Martha shouted ringingly into tile LOVE AND MOONDOGS S5 tumult. "We've won, girls! Sally pearls with Monica Flint, who wore out tonight and don't come in until white jade and green jersey. Martha the last dog is hung! We'll show and Mr. Cherkassov made intro them what it means to challenge ductions back and forth and the the massed U .D.D.-ers of Amer men bowed stiffly. Then Martha sat ica!" down flanked by her aides on the gray sofa facing the picture window. The state police cordon kept the The men sat in single chairs and 2200 block of Euclid Avenue free of rubbed their polished black ~hoes reporters and idle gapers. The state uneasily against the deep-pile gray car drove up at 10:00 A.M. and rug. parked under the oak tree. Mr. "Madame Stonery, I have come Cherkassov and the two TASS men to justify moondog,'~ Mr. Cherkas got out. SOy said. His voice was deep and Mr. Cherkassov was stocky and controlled. crop-haired in a blue suit. His "Two wrongs don't make a right, broad, high-cheekboned face, with Mr.Cherkassov," Martha said, rais snub nose and an inward tilt about ing her head. "You needn't bring the eyes, managed to seem both up Hiroshima. We already know alert and impassive. Carrying a pig about those thousands of little black skin briefcase, he led the way to the ~nd white spaniels. Besides, I saw a Stonery front door. Life picture where you sewed a little He stepped on the doormat and dog's head to the side of a big dog's pressed the bell. The doormat neck." whirred and writhed under his feet Mr. Cherkassov looked at his and he stepped back hastily. Martha stubby fingers and hid them under Stonery, regal in maroon silk, four his briefcase. Paula and Monica inch. cameo and piled gray hair, nodded accusingly and one TASS opened the door. man made a note. "Don't be afraid of the doormat, "We do not beiieve it is a wrong Mr. Cherkassov-you are Mr. when a greater value prevails over Che~kassov, aren't you?" she asked a lesser," Mr. Cherkassov said. sweetly. "Moondog sends us information He nodded, looking from her to that will hasten the time of safe the doormat. space-travel for humans." "Your weight presses something "And who might you be, to say and the little brushes spin around which value is greatest? Space and clean your shoes," she ex travel is moonshine, just moon plained. "I expect you don't have shine!" things like that in Russia. But do~ "I do not understand your word, please, come in and sit down." madame. If you mean impossible, The three men stepped carefully I must point out that moondog has across the mat on entering. In the already crossed space." oak-paneled living rOOln, Paula Martha clasped her hands in her Hart waited in black wool and lap. "That's \vhat I luean, grown 56 RICHARD McKENNA men and such silliness) and the poor dog saved her mistress' life. Is not little dog has to pay." that a value to you?" Mr. Cherkassov spoke earnestly. Martha stared. "Did you dare "Forgive me if my ignorance of think of sending a poor weak wom your language causes me to misun an to the ... to the moon?" derstand, madame. We believe be "Russian women are coarse and cause man now has the ability to strong," Mr. Cherkassov said sooth cross' space he therefore has a duty ingly. "A large number of them, to all life on Earth to help it reach among the scientists, did volunteer." other planets. Earth is overcrowded with men, not to speak of the wild life that soon nlust all die. We be ARTHA SAT bolt upright and lieve that around other suns we will M made her parrot beak again. find Earth-like planets where we Her fat cheeks flushed under the can plough and harvest and build powder. homes. I cannot agree that it is "No!" she snapped. "I see where silly." you're trying to lead me and I won't Martha flung her head back. go! You should have sentthe hussy! "Well, it is silly. Who'll go? All It is immoral to sacrifice a loving the men who do things will run little dog just for a careless whim." away to them and then where will Her two aides gazed admiringly we be? Oh no, Mr. Cherkassov, at their chieftainess. "Tlunk of it, that gets you nowhere!" just for a whim!" Paula echoed. "Your pardon, madame," a Mr. Cherkassov's fingers traced TASS man interrupted. "What an ainlless, intricate pattern on the kind of men will run away?" briefcase and he crossed his ankles. "The sour-faced men who fix "All dogs are not loving in the pipes and TV and make A-bombs same way, madame. Tell me, how and electricity and things." do you know when a dog loves "Oh," said Mr. Chcrkassov. He you?" drumlned on his briefcase. Then, "You just know," Martha said. "Perhaps only Russians will go, "Take my little Fiffalo-and I just madalne. You could pass a law. I know he's so miserable now away must confess to you, we might have from me in that dreadful concentra sent a man to the moon, but we tion camp and it's all your fault, feared the propaganda use your really, Mr. Cherkassov-when I pet country might make of it." Fiffalo he jumps in my lap and Martha made her parrot mouth. kisses me and just wiggles all over. "You should have sent a man!J~ That's real love!" She chomped the last \vord off "Ah ...I perhaps understand. short. Paula and Monica nodded What does he do when you speak vigorously. sharply to him?" Mr. Cherka,ssov stroked his brief "He lies on his back with his paws case. "Moondog's mistress wished waving and looks so sad and pitiful greatly to go. One might say moon- and defenseless that my heart melts LOVE AND MOONDOGS 57 and 1 feel good all over. You just but even to hinl he ,yill display little know that's love, ,vhen it happens outward affection. Perhaps a wag of to you." the tailor a head laid on the knee, Monica dabbed at a tear. Both not too often. No others except TASS men scribbled. quite young children lllay pet him "I think I may see a way to re at all. "fa all but his Jnaster he dis solve our clifferences," Mr. Cher plays a kind of tolerant indifference kassov said. He put his feet side unless he is nl0lested, and then he by side and leaned slightly forward, defends himself." gripping the briefcase on his knees. HWhat a horrihlc creature, not a "What do you know of the history dog at all!" ~1artha exclaimed. of the dog?" he asked. "Not culturally, you ~lrc quite "Well, he's always been man's correct, madame," :Nlr. Cherkassov best friend and the savage Indians agreed, shifting his hold on the used to eat him and ... and. .. ." briefcase and leaning further for "The true dog, madame, was ward, "but unfortunately he is a dog domesticated about twenty thou biologically. SOlne wolf blood has sand years ago. He was originally crept into most of the jackal-derived the golden jackal, Canis aureus, breeds, you know. It betrays itself which still exists in a wild state. in high cheekbones and slanting Selective breeding for submissive eyes and in the personality of the ness and obedience over that long breed. The chow, for instance, has tinle has resulted in the retention considerable wolf blood." through maturity of many trails "Chows!" !vlartha beaked her nonnal only to puppyhood. l-'hc lips again. "I despise thcln! No bet modern pureline golden jackal dog ter than cats!" Paula nodded em no longer develops a secret life of phatic agreement. his own, with emotional self-suffi "But your little Fiffalo, as you ciency. He must love and be loved, describe him, is probably of pure or he dies." Canis aureus descent and very high Monica sniffed. "What a beauti ly bred." ful name," Paula munnured. Mar "I'm sure he is. Blood will tell. tha nodded warily. Monica, haven't I always said blood "But, madame, there is also a will tell?" kind of false dog. Certain Siberian· Monica nodded, her eyes shining. tribes slow to reach civilized status Mr. Cherkassov shifted his position also domesticated the northern wolf. sli~htly, nearer to the chair edge. Canis lupus. This was many thou "Now moondog, Madame Ston sands of years later, of course, and ery, is of the lajka breed and has in the false dog the effect of long even more wolf blood than the breeding is not so evident. He is cho'v. If you brought her back 'to loving as a puppy, but when he ma Earth she vvould just walk ~way tures he is aloof and reserves his from you \vith cold indifl'erence." loyalty to one master. He is intense "Not rrall,,?" ly loyal and will die for his master, ~'Madame, you know the wolf 58 RICHARD McKENNA traits only as you find them tem Mr. Cherkassov raised his sandy pered with the loving jackal traits eyebrows, and a frosty twinkle shone in such dogs as the chow. But a in his tilted eyes. Russian dog! If you were to hand "You must realize that I could moondog a piece of meat, do you hardly admit to such a thing, even know what she would do?" if it were true, Madame Stonery," "No. Tell me." he said judiciously. Mr. Cherkassov leaned forward, "It is true! Go back to your his slanting gray eyes opening wide, Kremlin, Mr. Cherkassov, and and dropped his voice almost to a shoot every wolf in Russia to the whisper. "Madame, she would bite moon. I'm sure the U.D.D. won't your hand!" mind!" "Then she doesn't deserve to be Mr. Cherkassov and the TASS rescued!" Martha said sharply. men stood up and bowed. Martha Mr. Cherkassov straightened up rose and sailed ahead of them to and began stroking his briefcase. the door. Hand on knob, she turned "In one sense she is not even a dog," .to face them. . he suggested. "Our meeting will be historic, "No, she's an old wolf-thing. Like Mr. Cherkassov," she said. "I have a cat. Dogs are loving!" forced you to betray your country's "Perhaps not morally worthy of plot to undennine our loving dogs. your campaign?" You may expect from the D.D.D. "No, of course not. Mr. Cherkas instant and massive retaliation! An sov, you have given me a new aroused America will move at once, thought ... I hadn't realized...." to set up miscegenation and segre Mr. Cherkassov waited attentive gation barriers against your despic ly, his fingers tracing another pat able wolf blood!" tern. Paula and Monica looked- at Paula and Monica stood up, each Martha and held their breaths. with her hands clasped under her "... hadn't realized how that flushed and excited face. Mr. Cher subversive wolf blood has been kassov bowed again. Martha opened creeping into our loving dogs all the door. this long time. Why ... why it's "Goodbye, Mr. Cherkassov," she miscegenation! It's bestiality! Con said. "You will, no doubt, be liqui fess it, Mr. Cherkassov-that's one dated in a few days." way you Russians have been in Mr. Cherkassov stepped carefully filtrating us, now isn't it?" across the doonnat. END -.- All that philosophers have sought, Science discovered, genius wrought. -James Montgomery
LOVE AND MOONDOGS 59 The Last Days of L.A.
Murder on a small scale may be illegal
and unpleasant, but mass murder can be
the most exhilarating thing in the world!
BY GEORGE H. SM I TH
OU ARE HAVING the same do scream and wake yourself up. Y recurring dream, the dream Once more, this one more tilDe, it that has haunted the whole world is only a dream. You lie there pant since that day in 1945. The dream ing, too weak from terror to move of the sudden flash in the night, the out of the puddle of your own rising mushroom cloud and then sweat. You lie there and think and annihilation. You are living the your thoughts aren't very pretty. It's nightmare again but this time it's a week day and you ought to be true, you know it's true. You can't down at the office turning out ad be dreaming. The bombs are ac vertising copy by the ton but instead tually falling and huge fireballs are you lie there. and think even though sweeping upward while seas of you don't like what you're thinking. flame spread at supersonic speeds It's got to be SooD. It can't be much to engulf the city. You feel the blast, longer now, not the way things arc the scaring heat, you feel your flesh going. IncIting away. You try to scream You finally crawl out of bed but the sound dies in your throat as around noon and ease your way into your lungs shrivel. Horror makes the kitchen. You realize that you you try again and somehow you have a hangover and since you can't 60 remember what you did the night Bar. A wino edges up to you and before yo uppo e 0 m s 1 e asks for money to buy a sandwich been drunk. y he tim you finish and a cup of coffee. one of the two quarts of beer you You give him a dollar but make find in the refrigerator you know him promise not to spend it on any that isn't what you need, so you put thing so foolish as food. 'Liquor on some clothes and wander out to brother, is the salvation of the a bar. race," you tell him. "Believe and After a ew quick drinks you wal be saved!" somewhat ns adily out into the "Amen!" he says and hurries off. street again and head toward the You make the mistake of stop- place you always think of as The ping to read the headlines on the 61 comer so you know you're not kind of elegant pornography. She drunk enough yet. U. S. REJECTS'~ is the only one in the group who NEW RUSS NOTE. MOON makes any money and that is be GUNS CAN DESTROY CITIES: cause her book FLAME ROSE has KAGANO·VITCH. BURMA been banned all across the country. LEADER KILLED IN FRESH 'You like her very much, probably UPRISING. because she is the most irritatingly Just before you get to The Bar ugly woman you have ever met. you pass an alleyway and as you A howling bank of jets hurls glance into the darkness, you see a across the sky screaming for human huge rat standing there staring at l?lood and you shiver as you squeeze you with arrogant red eyes. After a in at the table. You are convinced moment he walks away, unhurried that the elementals of.hell are loose and cocky. An icy chill runs down above and the world is in its. last your spine. The rats will swvive. stages. All the children born this The rats always survive. Maybe year will probably have twenty-one they are the Master Race. Some teeth and Anti-Christ will walk the thing else tugs at your memory, land. something you read somewhere. Oh "Why worry about the next yes, it was a statement by an ocea war?" Dale Bushman asks. "It nographer. He said that even if the won't last forever." H-bomb should annihilate every liv "No," John says. "No war ever ing thing on the surface of the has ... yet." earth, the sea creatures would be "Do you think it's coming?" you 'able to carry on. The rats and the ask. fish will carry on and build a better "If you read the papers, you'd world. take to the hills right now," Pat Your friends are sitting in their O'Malley says, finishing his bowl of usual places when you get to The chili and reaching for his drink. Bar. John Jones-Very who has the "Ah, the hills," Ian says. "But reddest, bushiest and longest beard what good? The H-bomb is bad and also the record for staying enough but they'll use the C-bomb, drunk the longest, is doing the talk the cobalt bomb, and this is the ing. Listening are Dale Bushman final weapon." who paints huge canvases which he "Just the same," you say. "I think never finishes, Ian, an out-of-work we ought to take to the hills." Why musician whose last name you don't not hide yourself way back of rio know, Pat O'Malley the actor and, where? Hide so deep in the woods of course, Anna. and mountains that you won't even Anna is small and thin with deep know when it happens. You could ly tanned skin drawn tightly over wrap the silence around you and high cheekbones. She wears a plain pull the earth over you. You could dress and no makeup and her hair bury yourself so deep that ... but is. done up in a bun on the nape of of course you won't. You have a job !;nr neck. The poetry she writes is a and, like everyone else, at least a GEORGE H. SMITH thousand other reasons for staying gence, and the women with the on until the end. pearly teeth and perfect permanent ~'But really/' you say, "a man \vaves, without body odor or souls." should be able to survive a time of "I have body odor," Anna says. terror by disengaging himself as "But no soul," Ian says. "No soul conlplclcly as possible from the rest at all." of the human race. If he were to "You're just mad because I reduce his needs to a minimum ... \vouldn't sleep with you last night." a little bread, a few vegetables, a "No soul," Ian says. blanket or t\VO, a \varm cave Thc jukebox offers Tin Pan and ...)' Alley's solution to the \vhole thing: '~A blonde or t\VO," Pat says. Bushlnan adds, "A cellar of good OH BABY, OR MY BABY 0 Scotch." MY BABY IS MY BABY 0 "And books, lots of books," Jones MY BABY IS MY BABY 0 Very puts in. l\1Y BABY LOVES ME 0 '~No blondes, no Scotch, no SHE DOES, SHE DOES, SHE books," you tcll them, banging your DOES 0 mug on the table so hard their glasses jump. "Minimum needs ... "Our trouble is too much his minimum needs!" tory," John says. "A period without "How about plumbing?" Anna history is a happy one and we've demands. "I \von't go without had too much historv." plumbing." '"No soul-too l;luch history," "\Ve're facing the end of the Ian hiccups. ~'Not enough s('x-_· world," says John, "and you worry everybody dies." about plumbing!" "Everybody is going to die damr "I'm sorry, but if plumbing isn't fast, unless something happens/' going to survive, I'd just as soon you say. not either," Anna says. "I just can't "No soul-so sad," Ian mumbles. see Inysclf squatting in the bushes." No soul and no sex ... everybody "What difference does it make?" dies, nothing happens." Ian asks. "Everybody dies anyway. "So what?" Anna demands. From the moment you're born, you "What is life anyway? Why try to start d'ying." - be like everyone else in this beauti "Ycs, but-" ful but messy Brave New World of "So why bother? Everybody dies. 1970? Why run searching for a Why prolong it more than you have messiah when all the messiahs died to? Everybody dies." a thousand years ago?" "Worlds mayor may not blow This starts you thinking about up," O'Malley says, "but it seems to religion. You've never thought me it's the little indignities of much about it before but a man modern life that hurt the most. The can change, maybe even accept the constant repetition of th~ advertis old lnyths as real until they actually ing slogans that insult your intelli- begin to seem real. Instead of d\vel- THE -LAST DAYS OF L.A. 63 ling on your body being burned to a "Hey, bud," the poljceman calls cinder in an atomic holocaust you to you, "what's the matter with could think of your slightly singed you?" . soul being wafted to paradise on a "Nothing-nothing at all, offi mushroom cloud while U-235 atoms cer," you tell him, and dive into the sing a heavenly chorus to speed yo~ next church you pass. on your way. This one is called the Church of The others don't even notice the New Cosmology. Inside, a \vhen you get up and walk out to round-faced little man is talking to look for a church. a few listless people. "A geologist will never kno\v the rocks until he has seen the Rock of HURCHES AREN'T hard to Ages. The botanist will never know C find in Los Angeles on any day plants until he has beheld the Lily of the week or at any hour of the of the Valley, the cosmologist will day. They're behind the blank never know the universe until he fronts of painted-over store win has listened to the· Word of God! do\vs. They're locatcd in big old "Let us consider for a moment nineteenth-century houses along the sun. What do \ve know about Adams; they spring up under tents the sun, my friends? What do the in vacant lots and in large cxpen so-called scientists know about it? sive temples and bank-like buildings What do they tell us about our in the downtown area. heavenly light? They say it's a giant You pass by several likely-looking ball of fire millions of miles across churches because they are in neigh and ninety-one million miles away. borhoods that have alleyways, and Now why, I ask you, would that be you still remember that rat, that so? The Bible says that God made red-eyed rat. the sun to light the world. Now Then as you walk through down-' have you ever known the Lord to town crowds, you remember some do anything silly or foolish? Of thing else. Some dentist once said course you haven't! Then why do that the teeth of the people in the they ask us to believe that He would A-bombed Japanese cities hadn't put the sun, which is supposed to been affected by radiation. This is light the world, ninety-one million very funny, it makes you laugh. You miles away from it? An engineer picture a world of blistered corpses, who did something like that none of whose teeth have been \vouldn't be much of a God. The affected. You laugh out loud and true answer, my friends, is that people turn to look at you. Jehovah God did nothing so im A woman points you out to a practical and no rnattcr who tells policeman and he looks your way. you different, don't believe it!" You want to keep on laughing but The little man's voi~e dropped to now you don't dare to. So you just a husky whisper. "I have studied keep on walking, trying to keep the my Bible and I've listened to the laughter from bubbling out of you. scientists and I've talked to God 64 GEORGE H. SMITH Himself about it and I tell you this This is thirsty work. You have a is the truth. The sun is our heavenly couple more drinks an.d then you light, the sure sign of God's love, look for another church. You find and right this minute it is just two one called the Church of Christian thousand three hundred miles from Capitalism. Los Angeles! It is not a wasteful The thin old man with the dusty million nliles across, it is just forty fringe of gray hair has his audience five and five-tenths miles across ... well in hand as you walk in and just the right size to give us our take a seat. He makes the sign of beautiful California sunshine. the cross and the sign of the dollar "How do I know?" The whisper over their heads as he harangues had gTO\Vn to a hoarse shout. "How them. do I kno\v? I know because it's the ~'Blessed are the wealthy for they "Vord of God, Iny friends! The per shall please God," he says. "Christ sonal word of God given to me by was the first capitalist, dear friends. God Himself. He took a loaf and seven fishes and "What else do I know? What else blessed them and made them into has God told Inc, to confound the enough food to feed a multitude. Godless scientists? Why, my friends, He walked in poverty but he came the Bible says that this earth upon to own the world! which we live is flat-as flat as this "God is the Good Capitalist, the book!" He brings his hand down Owner and Proprietor of all things \vith a sharp slap on the Bible. "You on this earth. This country \vas ask then how is it possible to cir created by those saints of Capital cumnavigate the world when it is a ism-Morgan, Rockefeller and flat plane. The answer is that it Gould." isn't possible. A ship that seems to Christian Capitalism sends you go around the world really makes a home to bed by way of another bar. circle on the flat surface like this." With a stubby forefinger he draws a circle on the book. "Now I know OU'RE SITTING in a room that those scientists up on the moon Ywith people all around you. At say that the world is round, but first you don't know why you're whoever saw or heard of a scientist there and then you remember it's that wasn't a liar? Can any of you a party. Everyone except you is really bring yourselves to believe laughing and drinking and having that this flat earth of ours is travel a good time. You have a strange ing t~OUgh space at the tremen sense of foreboding, of something dous seed that they say it is? Tell about to happen that you can't me, d you feel any \vind from this avoid. You see a girl you know great speed? Do you feel anything across the room and get up and at all?" start to cross the room to her. No, you have to admit, you don't. There's a sudden blinding flash You don't feel a thing. Even his of light outside the house and the own congregation doesn't seem to. windows come crashing in. You see THE LAST DAYS OF L.A. 65 .murderous slivers of glass piercing intensely quiet people as you enter. the flesh of those about you and you "Is there a ,vall in front of you?" hurry over to the girl you know only he asks. to find her face and neck slashed "Yes, there is a wall in front of by the flying glass and blood stream us," the people answer. ing down over her bare breasts. You "Can you see the \vall in front of try to stop the flow of blood with a you?" handkerchief but it's coming in such "Yes, we can see the walL" strong spurts that you can't. "Is there a wall behind you?" A second shock wave follows the "Yes, there is a wall behind us." first with an even brighter flash. "Can you see the wall behind You're knocked to the floor and the you?" building comes crashing down. You They all turn around and look. struggle against the falling masonry "Yes, we can -see the wall behind but it does no good. You feel the us." crushing weight and scream ... and "Is there a floor beneath your your screams wake you up. feet?" You feel almost as bad awake as "Yes, there is a floor beneath our you did asleep, only now the crush feet." ing weight is on your head instead '"Are you sure? Feel the floor of your chest and your mouth is with your feet." filled with the taste of death and There is a loud shuffling as they decay. You figure you must have do as they are told. been drinking last night but you "Are you sure the floor is there?" can't quite remember. "Yes, we're sure the floor is You reach out your hand and it there." locates a bottle that still guggles a "Now feel your feet with the little. \Vithout opening your eyes floor." you lift it hurriedly to your mouth There is more shuffling and dur and then almost choke trying to spit ing this you steal quietly out. This it out. Mouthwash! one reminds you of the D.T.'s and You manage to get your eyes you want nothing at all to do with open, and remember with thankful that. heart that today is Sunday and you You get tossed out of the next don't have to go to work. It's been place you try because the preacher five days since the last dream and says you're drunk. You're not, but that's not so bad, but just the same you wish you were, so you head to you'd better get up and get a drink ward The Bar. You stop when you because this one really shook you see the sign, '"FLYING SAUCER up. Or maybe you ought to go to CONVENTION." It's over the church. Perhaps you'd better do door of a large building and under both. neath in smaller letters it says, "Lis A tall blond man in a black suit ten to the words of the Space Peo is standing on a platform in the ple. Hear the advice they bring us center of a group of forty or fifty in these troubled times." 66 GEORGE H. SMITH Surely, you tell yourself, the but you can help avoid this if you Space People will have a solution, are alert. Look around you for per surely they can bring peace. You sons who seem strange. It is the enter and see a young, ordinary Zenonians who have made you looking- fpllow addressing a crowd of \vhat you arc. It is the Zenonians about three hundred. You take a \vho cause your \oval'S and your seat next to a bald man who is crime with their evil rays. We will \vriting down what the young man use our good Nobil rays to combat is saying even though it doesn't their evil Z rays. When we have seem to make much sense. driven them out, the \vorld will be a ". .. rnernbcr of a slTlall group better place in \vhich to live. But that has been in touch with the be\varc! "'fhey are all about you. Space People and feel that this Exan1ine the Inan next to you. Be world can be saved only through the ware! They are all about you. You aid of superior beings. I will now shall hear from us again." play this tape which I obtained You turn and look at the man {roln the captain of a Flying next to you; he's looking at you. Saucer.)' He is a rather strange-looking guy He places the tape OIY the spindle and you edge away from him just and it begins to vvhirl. A/voice be as he edges away from you. You gins to speak in slightly stilted turn to look at the man on the other English. "I am Lelan. I am what side of you. He is moving away you people of Earth think of as the from you also. head of the govcrnlnent of the '1~hcn you hear the stories of the planet Nobila. 1 speak to you across people in the audience. Every one the parsecs in order to bring you of them who stands up to speak has good and bad news. The good is had a mysterious visitor in the night that a new age is about to begin for or had a flying saucer land in his the people of Earth through the aid backyard. Most of them have had of we Nobilians. V\'e have already trips to the Oloon and elsewhere in contacted the President of the flying saucers. Space you think must United States, the Pope of the be as crowded as the Hollywood Catholic Church and all other Freeway at rush hour. Almost all world leaders. A new age is about of them have been contacted by to begin for you as soon as we have superior beings from space because saved you fronl the evil influence they are the only people in the of the vicious Zenonians from the world who are wise enough to in planet ~eno. All Earth kno\vledge terpret the Space People to the will bec me obsolete as we supply Earth people. you wit new information and all You feel pretty good from the good things will be free in the days drinks you've had, so you stand up after we drive the Zenonians from and tell them what you think. among you. "The first flying saucers were "But first we must warn you that sighted after the atomic bombs were the Zenonians will try to stop us, first exploded," you begin. "And THE LAST DAYS OF L.A. 67 they became very prevalent after "That isn't so," you blurt out. the first Earth satellites were put "There's purpose--there's got to be into space and again after the first purpose. You can't look around you moon rockets. I therefore think that and say there isn't purpose in the the Earth is a cosmic madhouse in universe; that there isn't a reason which the human race has been in for our being here." carcerated for its own good and This time they all turn and look that every time we start rattling the at you strang~ly. Then they look at bars, the keepers hurry down to take each other. a look." "I wonder," Jones-Very says, "if No one seems to care much for I wasn't closer to the truth than I your theory, and you are escorted thought when I talked about con to the door none too politely. tagion." No, the Space People don't seem "What the hell do you mean by to have the answer. With the head that?" you demand, half rising from lines you see at every corner chasing your seat. you, you head for The Bar and "Nothing ... nothing at all," dive gratefully through the door. Jones-Very says, looking at the "So everybody dies," Ian is say others. ing. "We're all dying, just sitting "What this world needs is a moral here." renovation-a new birth of the "'Vill you stop that? God damn spirit," you go on. it, will you stop that?" you yell at "Oh, my God," Jones-Very him. moans, his head in his hands. Ian looks at you owlishly for a "Would you listen to that, in this few seconds and then back at his age of space stations and moon drink. Jones-Very and the others go guns," Anna says. right on with the conversation. "John, you're right-you're "It's merely what I was saying right! It's got him!" Bushman says. the other night," Jones-Very says. You won't listen to any more of "It's the contagious spread of the this. You get to your feet and stag madness that is epidemic in our ger with great dignity to the door. time. No one wants war. But still we are goirig to have a war. After all, the very zeitgeist of our times is OU'RE DRESSED in high one of complete callousness toward Y altitude equipment and you're human life. You have only to think sitting in the nose of a jet bomber of the Russian slave camps, the listening to the vicious growling of German gas chambers and our own the motors. You have a tremendous highway slaughter." feeling of power and you think "Maybe life itself is just some sort about how many you'll kill this trip. of stupid mistake," Anna says. You think about the big black "Maybe we're a cosmic blunder, a bombs nestled in the bomb bay and few pimples on the tail of the uni remember there is one for each of verse." the three cities on your list. 68 GEORGE H. SMITH God, it will be beautiful! You can "Why not?" he says. '~WC have almost see the glorious colors of the only our souls to lose." rising mushroom cloud and hear the The two of you enter the first screaming of the shattered atoms. one you come to and the woman You can't hear the screaIning of the on the platform is an amazing sight. people up here, that's one of the She's big and full-bodied and has nicest parts of this kind of murder. all the grace and arrogance of a You can't hear them. This makes lioness. She's got the Word and you as happy a! it must have made she's passing it out in large doses. f\ttila and Hitler \vhen they killed "That's Dr. Elinda A. Egers, their Illillions. Murder on a small D.C.F.," O'Malley whispers. '~Doc scale may be illegal and unpleasant, tor of Complete Faith." but mass murder can be the most You watch fascinated as that lush exhilarating thing in the world. body of hers moves restlessly around Then your bombs are gone and the platfonn. you're passing through the most "In these troubled times the tor beautiful clouds you've ever seen tured mind of man is hanging in but someho\v they srnell of charred the balance, because he has forgot flesh and even up here you hear the ten his great enemy," Elinda shouts. screams of the people. The sound There's a wildness in her eyes and a rips and tears at your brain, destroy sensuousness in the way she moves ing what little sanity you have left. her body that makes you move for You've got to stop thenl! You've ward until you'r~ sitting on the edge got to, before they drive you com of your seat. Any stripper, you muse, pletely mad. You tilt the nose of \vould give her G-string to be able the bomber and dive toward the to imitate this woman's uninhibited screams. You've got to stop them! way with her hips. You scream back at them as you "Why are our asylums filled with dive and again your own screams millions of the mentally sick? And wake you up. why are there tens of millions of the 1"'his is the ·worst one you've ever physically sick among us? WHY?" had and your hangover is almost as she demands at the top of her lungs. bad. You dress and hurry out of "Because the doctors and the psy your a~rtment to get away from chologists absolutely fail to recog the terror and the guilt but sudden nize or blindly refuse to recognize ly you remember that you aren't the demoniac origin of these ill really the guilty one. Or are you? nesses. They have failed, my dear You look for a bar or a place to friends, because they are bound to buy a bottle and then remember the unreality of conventional that you haven't any money. You science. They have failed because see Pat O'Malley up ahead of you they did not look into their souls to in the crowd and hurry to catch up see what God has written there for with hiJn. He hasn't any money all to read. either, so you suggest that both of ~'If we face the truth, we \vill you go to church. learn to recognize the presence of THE LAST C>AYS OF L.A. 69 demons and only then can we cure The man jerks even Inore vio the inflicted!" lently. "Heal him, Lord, heal him! Demons, you think. What a lovely They're coming out ... the demons idea. Perhaps you have fallen are coming out. Can't you feel through a rift in time and come out them leaving you, brother?" in the Middle Ages with only won The fellow jerks once more and derful things like witches and almost falls as an attendant leads demons to worry about. You turn to him away. "He's cured," Elinda O'Malley to tell him this, only to shouts. "Praise God! He'll never find him sound asleep. You've often have another convulsion." \vondered \vhere he did his sleeping, "Praise God! Praise God!" the and now you know. congregation shouts. Only the sti11 "The battle in the world today is jerking man seems to have any not between nations but between doubts as to his cure. Jesus Christ and the Devil!" She "The Power of God will save has gone into a kind of bump and you," she says to the little boy now grind routine now with her hands kneeling before her. "From the top on those glorious hips and her body of his head to the bottom of his feet, moving back and forth while her I charge you, Satan, come out!" legs relnain absolutely still. It looks She hugs the child against those as real good from where you sit but tonishing breasts of hers. "TIllS can you think it might look even better be your cure if you believe, Jimmy. up closer so you leave Pat snoring All things are possible if you only gently and take a seat further to believe. Little Jimmy, do you have ward the front. faith?" "Come to me and the Lord will The boy nods his head e~gerly put out his hand and save you. He and his face is so full of faith and has said unto me: 'You shall have belief that you find yourself nodding the power to cast out demons,' and with him. I have replied that I will do so. If "Restore him tonight in the name you feel it, say Amen!" of Jesus Christ!" she shouts, placing There is a lusty chorus of amen's her hands on his thin little legs. from the winos and bums who fill "This little leg, Lord ... send the the auditorium. You have an idea Power to restore this little leg. Drive they were attracted here by the the demon of evil from it!" Her same thing that keeps you on the voice grows even louder. "The edge of your seat. Power is coming! The Power is A Inan with the jerks of some coming! The Power is within me sort comes down the aisle and the now and it will flow from me to healing starts. Dr. Egers lays one you. Do you feel it, Jimmy? Do you hand on his head and the other at feel it? Do you feel it flowing in the back of his neck. your legs?" "Get out of him, you demons! She has lifted him from the floor Out! Out! In the name of the and is cradling him in her anns. Lord, I charge thee--get out!" "Do you feel it, jinuny?" 70 GEORGE H. SMITH Christ, you can almost feel it OU'RE RUNNING ... run yourself. Y ning, terror riding you like a "Don't your legs feel different, jockey using the whip. You're run Jimmy?" ning while a boiling sea of flame "I think they're tingling a little," rolls over the city. Behind you and he says. close on your heels come breakers. "Do you hear that?" she shouts of radioactive hell, smashing build again. "His legs are tingling! The ings and lifting cars and people into God Power is making them tingle!" the air. People are running on all She lowers the child to the floor. sides of you. A girl in a spangled "'You can do it, Lord! Send the evening dress, a puffing little man in Power in the name of Jesus! Send it Bermuda shorts, a woman carrying into this little foot, into this little two children, a man with a golf bag leg. Try, Jimmy, try it for me, try over his shoulder and two men in it now!" gray flannel suits followed by a Jimmy tries to stand up but woman ina sack dress that keeps wavers and falls. With renewed blowing up over her face as she effort he manages to pull himself runs. erect and stand swaying. The harder you run, the closer "YOU'VE SEEN IT! YOU'VE the fire seems to get. You can feel SEEN IT WITH YOUR OWN it singeing your back and the fat EYES!" Elinda screams at them little man screams as a lashing joyously. tongue catches up with him and Sure they've seen it but they don't turns him into a cinder. The wom seem much impressed. In fact, most an in the sack dress tramples across of them get up and leave after this the bodies of the two men in gray round. You ease yourself out of your flannel but the man with the golf seat and head toward the door, be club fights her off with his mashie. cause you need a drink, but you Then the four of them are eaten up turn before goiI1g, out to look back by the hungry flames. You rnoan at .~. She looks tired and disap and your legs pump harder. Therc\ pointment shows in her full sensu an underground shelter ahead and ousface. you run toward it only to find the You know that she's the most entrance jammed with people. \"ou wonderful thing you have ever seen. try to fight your way in. You grab You've found your religion. You've hold of a man but his boiled flesh found something to worship comes away in your hands. Then Elinda Egers, the only real goddess you see they are all dead, packed in the world. You'll come here every together so tightly they can't fall. night and the bomb won't worry You're running again and you see you because you have a religion the woman with the two children now. Elinda Egers will save you. only there~s nothing left of then] You head for the nearest bar, sing but a charred ann and a hand ing "Rock of Ages" at the top of which she still clutches. The girl in your lungs. the evening dress falls in front of THE LAST DAYS OF L.A. 71 you and you stwnble over her. You coming faster and faster. see her dress and then her hair Someone.else is breathing heavily burst into flames. She throws her and you're not surprised to find it's arms around you and you feel the you. suffocating flames. "If this is what you want, say "Oh Lord-Lord," you moan, Amen!" and \\'ake up. The bottle of wine "Amen!" you shout before you on the nightstand is only half empty realize you're not supposed to this and you drink from it gratefully time. No one seems to notice. Beads and think of going out for more. of perspiration are forming on the But you remember your goddess back of your neck and trickling and you know that you have to go down your spine. The tabernacle is to see her. jammed and there" isn't much ven She's in good form tonight as tilation. You're dizzy with the wine, she talks about the Kinsey Report. lack of food and desire. "If you're listening, say Amen!" "Go ahead! Let your kids go to She raises both anns as she yells Hell! Let them read comic books this and you're amazed at the way and smoke and drink and fornicate her big breasts rise with them. in the back seats of jalopies! Let "In the Old Testament, God de them go to filthy movies, let them manded death for the adulteress listen to dirty jokes on television, let but Dr. Kinsey in his day tried to them look at the brazen women make her sins sound nonna!. But I with their breasts hanging half out tell you that this gin is the road to of their dresses." Hell, for the person and for the "Oooooh .. ." a woman in front nation. God has destroyed other of you moans, and you feel like cities for this sin and His wrath moaning with her. will fall upon yours as well. "But if you don't want these "If you're listening, say Amen!" things," Elinda shouts, her voice "AMEN!" on the verge of breaking, "sing "Are you really listening? Do you sing, sing with me! honestly want to hear? Or do you prefer the way Los Angeles and the "Come home~ come home, rest of the nation is going? Do you Ye who are weary, prefer the way of sex, the way of Come home." fornication and adultery? Do you prefer to read about sixteen-year You are sitting in a metal room old girls found in love nests with with telescreens on the wall and a older men? Do you prefer to think big red button in front of you. of boys and girls in the back seats Sweat is standing out on your fore of cars? Do you prefer to think of head and trickling down the back some man's hand running over your of your neck because you know the daughter's body, touching her...." time is coming, the time when you Elinda Egers is swaying back and have to decide whether to push forth, her body rigid, her breath that button and send a dozen 72 GEORGE H. SMITH ICBM's \vith hydrogen warheads And just as you feel it go down, arcing over the Pole. In the tele the walls of the roonl burst in\vard screens you see cities ... peaceful in a volcano of noise and terror and scene~ of people going about their the gray dust comes swirling in over business. "fhcn the people are run you, blotting out your screams.... ning, leaping out of their cars and You wake up and hurry through leaving them on the street, vanish the streets with this last dreanl ing into buildings and underground hanging over you more heavily shelters. Your hand is poised over than any'of the others. You've got the big red button and your muscles to run-you've got to get out. But are tightened as if your whole hand look at all the other people. None and ~nn \verc turned to \vood, and of thcln ~re running. They"re go you know that even if you have to, ing home frolll work-going into you can't push that button and de cafes, walking the dog ... oh God, stroy half the world. walking the dog at a time like Then in one of the telescreens this.... there is a sudden \\·hite glare, and You're scared. The bloody world the screen goe~ blank-··burncd out ig coming to a bloody end. You -and then in another telescrcen know it just as sure as you're sit you see destruction fountaining like ting here in the warm sun in Mac dirty white dust boiling out of the Arthur park with the fifth you've streets ... and you see the build bought and are drinking from in ings breaking and falling in rubble, a paper bag. and no\\' you hear the people's It's close now. You're not sure screams, a sound that tears through how close but it's close. The world your guts and drives you crazy, and is coming to an end and you knov/ the rubble is falling and sending up you can't convince anyone that it more fountains of gray dust-and is. You feel the way Henny Penny you kno\v that this is happening to -or was it Chicken Little?-must your O\A'n country, your o\vn peo have felt. The sky is falling! The ple, ~d you have to strike hack, sky is falling! Hell-you're just one you have to push the button and more caterwauling messiah in a city avenge them, stop the slaughter by of messiahs. Los Angeles, where killing the enemy's people and de every man is his own messiah. stroying their cities too. but you Then you know what the trouble can't make yourself push the but is. You've been looking for someone ton, your 'UlTIl won't Hlove and your to help you, \\·hen what you should fingers are paralyzed, and then all have been doing was helping them. the telescreens are glaring white or Now you realize that you are the blowing up in clouds of destruc one, you are the messiah YO'u've tion, and you scream, scream in the been seeking. It's up to you to lead metal room until yOll can't hear them out of the city into the wilder anything but your own screalning, ness. You drink luore and you drink and then somehow you force your it fast and the more you drink the hand down and push the button. more a feeling of ~finite compas- THE LAST DAYS OF L.A. 73 sion comes over you for your fellow the can and with the bottle tucked men. safely in your pocket you begin to You can save them. You can do pound on the can with both hands. it. You drain about two-thirds of "Hey, listen, everybody! I've got the bottle and then get up and walk to tell you about the Last Days of toward a man in that uniform of Los Angeles. Listen to me! I can success, a gray flannel suit. save you if you'll just listen! You're "Wait a minute, friend," you say, doomed. The city is doomed!" shifting the bottle to your left hand You pound like mad on the can, so you can take his arm with your but this being L.A. where such right. things happen every day, only a "What is it? What do you very few passersby stop. "Come want?" he says, looking at you as over here and let me tell you about though you're drunk. it!" you yell. "Do you know what "Have you seen the papers to the power of the H-Bomb can do? day, friend?" you ask. Have you heard of the C-Bomb? "Let go of me," he says, pulling Do you know what nerve gas is? away. Have you seen the Sputniks over "If you have seen them, what are head? Do you know how far an you going to do about it?" ICBM will travel and how fast? Do "I'm going home and eat my you know that there is no de dinner." He hurries off. fense?" You approach a plump, pretty You grab a man by the ann, but little blonde pushing a baby car he shakes you off, so you reach for riage. "Miss, can I have a few a gray-haired old lady and get an minutes of your time in which to umbrella in your middle from the save your life?" dear little thing. She looks frightened and tries to "Boy, is he ever soused." Two wheel the buggy around you. teen-aged girls are standing in front "Have you thought about the of you, giggling. "Did you ever see future of this dear little child of a guy so drunk?" yours?" You want to save them and you She breaks into a half trot and start toward them with outstretched soon disappears with the baby car arms, but they move back into the riage bouncing along· ahead of her. crowd. This ma~es you furious and You sit down for a few minutes you start to yell again. and have a few more swallows of You grab the nearest person. It's the bourbon. When you get up a woman but you shake her any you're surprised to find that you way. Someone has got to listen. stagger a little. But you've got to "Let go of me, you masher," the tell the people, you've got to make woman screams. "Help, somebody, them listen. Your eye lights on a help!" garbage can a short way off and The crowd closes in on you. A you know you've' found the way sailor grabs you from behind and to do it. You take a stand beside (Continued on page 97) 74 IN THE BALANCE Book Reviews by the Editor
oR.. by James Blish (Avon, Wh~ther there ever was enou~h V ~r)¢ ), is a novel which began meat in this story to be worth de its interlnittcnt life some 17 years veloping into a novel, I don't kno\,v ; ago, as a story of mine called I'm inclined to think not. At any "Mercy Death.~' I had what I rate, what Blish has done is to keep thought was a hell of a problem, the original story more or less in but I couldn't think of any \vay out tact, and pad it by introducing a of it, so the story remained about new set of characters and a nc\v half written until c. 1948, when story line. The original characters Jim Blish completed it as a novel were VOR (to give him his latest ette. It was published in Thrilling name), two scientists and a couple Wonder as "The Weakness of of'supernumeraries. The new ones RVOG." (All these initials refer to are a gaggle of CAP pilots, notably colors~~he alien creature in the one narned Marty Petrucelli who story has a color organ in place of has a war-caused phobia against a Inouth, and his narnc was origi flying, and is losin~ his ,vifc to a nally "Red-green-orange-violet," or brash pilot named Al Strickland on "RGOV." Sam Merwin, then edi account of it. tor of Thrilling Wonder, switched The CAP background is authen the initials around for reasons best tic and impressively technical kno\vn to hilTIsplf. and no\v Blish (Blish was for several years a lllenl has sirnplificd thelll to VOlt.) bel' of a CAP squadron); so is The essential part of the story Blish's lnarshalling of details about consists of my problem and Blish's the AEC, radiation problems, solution-the problem being, atomic physics; and so on. "What do you do when an appar The introduction of the CAP ently indestructible being tells you characters has some color of reason to kill him, or he'll kill you?" For in the ope!ling chapters: they're Blish's solution, see the book. the nearest squadron to the site of 75 the alien's landing. After that, in however, in the 22nd century A.D., spite of heroic efforts on Blish's part is a flannelly compound of old to shoehorn them into the plot, ideas, tastelessly muddled. As in they simply get in the way. Jack Williamson's The Humanoids, As early as p. 50, for example, men have fallen under the rule of AEC Commissioner Holm con benevolent but overcautious r0 fronts the alien, risking his life to bots. Cooper adds the twist that the try to open communication. If the robots are close counterfeits of hu story had been written from man beings, male and felnale; his Holm's viewpoint, this could have hero, in a bathetic sequence, tries been a scene of hair-raising drama. to make a woman out of one of As it is, it takes place almost in them, a girl robot named Marion visibly off-stage, \vhile we get a A. In the process, it seems to me, \vonn's-eye view of Marty and his everything that makes a robot inter stone-cold love life. esting is smoothed out; Cooper In padding- a novel, the problem might as well have made his robot is not to advance the story but to characters human, and been done slow it down. This one is slowed with it. to a crawl-one-sixth story, five The novel is not by any means sixths the endless, repetitive emo all bad; there a re nice touches here tional Laocoons that identify Blish's and there, and even some markedly hack-work. The writing itself, ex good thinking. But it has the same cept for one or two notably good exasperatingly bl~nted and dimmed passages (particularly Marty's flight quality as Bright Phoenix by Har \vith the scared Russian scientist in old Mead, A Sign of the Times by chapter 9) , is as tortuous and knob Robert Kee, and other recent Brit jointed as Blish's \vorst. 'Nearly ish work: and the same well-bred every sentence has too much in reluctance to travel any but fa formation packed into it; and since miliar paths. nlost of it is unnecessary informa tion, the result is the same as jf it Signet has issued an amiable but \vere noise. fatheaded satire called 43,000 Years Later, by Horace Coon (35¢), Deadly Image, by Edmund Coo \vhich you had probably better per (Ballantine, 35¢ ) is another avoid. The burden of the book is a of those curiously mufHed science long series of homilies on man and fiction novels that keep coming out his history-most of them Qnex of England. This one tackles the ceptionable but awfully trite. And if old suspended-animation plot with you are extraordinarily sensitive to more than usual plausibility-the scientific ignorance, you may not hero, John Markham, is acciden even get through the first ten pages, tally deep-frozen in an under in which Coon's alien space ground food storage chamber, be travelers arrive on Earth from their ing prepared against World War home "on the Great Galaxy" (Coon III. The world he wakes up to, seems to think this is a good name 76 for a planet), to find such relics of of which I'd never heard, seems to mankind's 43,000-years-dead civili have been an 1890 forerunner of zation as rusted auto frames and Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equa concrete dinosaurs. tions." Other obscure works that sound very lively in Green's de scriptions are Legends of the Lakes, OGER Lancelyn Green's Into bv Thomas Croften Croker (1829), R Other Worlds (Abelard~ $3.75 ) Across the Zodiac, by Percy Greg is a scholarly survey of space-flight (1880), Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: fiction in hard-bound books, from His Vacation, by Edwin Lester Lucian to "the latest scientifiction." Arnold (1905 ). and T7 0 yage to Lewis does not attempt to dcal with Arcturus, • hv David I~indsay the TllaSS of material published in (1920). . magazines, which is probably wise, We also get the usual lengthy and he stops with C. S. Lewis's Out (and by now wearisome) discourses of the Silent Planet (1938) and on Lucian of Samosata, Ariosto, Perelandra ( 1943) , which he Kepler, Godwin, Cyrano de Ber names "the highest peak" of space gerac and the like, all of whom travel fiction. Although startled~ I sound as dull as they ever did. In think he's right. cidentally, Green traces the history Green's religious and moral views of that idiotic noisy meteorite that color his judgments noticeably roars through all the bad s-f films, (e.g.., "the ghastly matel;alistic to its first appearance in Poe's HanJ tenacity" of Olaf Stapledon~s Last Pfaal, and its second in Verne's and First Men in overcoming a Autour de La Lune. ho~ environment on Venus, in ''''hat is surprising to me about stead of sitting on their noble fan the whole survey is that there nies and admiring the work of should turn out to be so little in God). He also drops SOInc \vords print on the subject, and so few about H. G. Wells that Inake me ideas about other worlds and their bristle; but it's hard to hate a man inhabitants. The 17th and 18th cen \vho loves the Burroughs Mars tury works are all pretty nluch of a books so unashamedly. stripe-satirical or moralistic fan He makes the usual confident tasies with the moon or other scholarly blunders about space planets as background. The Vic flight: "A schoolboy ... could tell torian novels have a monotonous you that a hlunan bcing cannot family resemblance, too, and in fact stand an increasing velocity of mo only three or four writers in the tion greater than thirty-two feet per whole lot seem to have produced second per second....~' Neverthe anything really vivid and plausible. less, a great deal of the ground he Probably adding the magazine covers is new to me, and I found stories would not lengthen the list the book a provocative introduction much. (0 science fiction before 1920. Rob Something will have to be. done ert Cromie's A Plunge Into Space, about this. 77 BY
ROSEL GEORGE
BROW
73 GROUND
44nnie signed on a bride ship for Mars. There
were forty brides. And when she got there,
thirty-nine men were waiting.
HE PILOT shoved open the denly. She could feel it, like some T airlock and kicked the stairs thing being peeled off her skin. Arid dO\\Tn. climate. ';Okay, girls. Carry your suit It was cold. But she had the cases and I'll give each of you an warmth to meet it. oxygen mask as you go out. The There they were! Forty men. air's been breathable for fifteen There were supposed to be forty. years, but it's still thin to newcom What if one of them had died! ers. If you feel dizzy, take a whiff Who would go back? . of oxygen." "Not me," Annie prayed to her Thelorty women just stood there self. "Dear God, not 'me." She tried and looked at each other. Nobody to count them. But they moved wanted to be first. around so! Annie moved forward, her bulky They were looking at something. suitcase practically floating in her Not Annie. The girl coming down hand. She was a big woman with the ramp behind Annie. that wholesome expression which It was Sally, with the blonde hair ~ome women have to substitute for on her shoulders. That's all they'd sex appeal. She'd made a great be able to see from there. The senior leader at summer camps. blonde hair. "I'll go first," she said, grinning But a nlan was coming forward. confidence into the others. "I'm not He had a tam-like hat pulled low likely to bring out the beast in to good-humored eyes, and an easy them." She waved herself out, let stride. ting the grin set and jell. "Wait, Ben," one of the other I t was odd to feel light. She'd felt men said. "See the others." too heavy as far back as she could "I pulled first, didn't I?" remember. Not fat heavy. Bone "Yeah. But you ain't seen but two heavy. yet." The sweat on her face dried sud- "I want that blonde one. Let 79 Gary see the others." "You're both probably too good for And he led Sally away. somebody like me. I don't know. He didn't feel her muscles or Both fine women." look at her teeth or measure her The two women stood in silence. pelvic span. "What's your name?" After Sally came Nora. Nora gig "Annie." gled and waved, making a shape "Mary." under the shapeless clothes. Wasn't "Mary? My sister's named Mary. that just like Nora? Okay. So she Fine woman." He took Mary's was cute. hand. "No disrespect to you, Second man took Nora. He didn't Annie." ,vait for the others. They were all gone. Third man took Regina. Regina "I could take you on my Venus looked scared, but you co.uld see run," the pilot said. He, too, was those big cow eyes a mile off. embarrassed. "But I'm afraid I'll Regina obviously needed somebody have a full ship after that. Unless to protect her. you can buy the weight and space. The other girls came out. Annie I'd be glad to take you free. But counted and her heart hit bottom. the company ..." Someone was going to be left over. Annie's eyes were full but she Four women, three men. They all wasn't going to let them spill. felt embarrassed. It was the kind of Sally brought Ben by, already thing the colonists would talk about looking self-consciously married. for years. Who was last. Who was "I'm sorry, honey," she said. second to last. Spiteful people "Look, Annie, if you want to come would remember, and in a tight stay with us until another shipment little community, spite took root of pioneers come to break ground, and throve on the least misinter you're welcome. Maybe you'd-er preted expression or- But then, -find one of them you liked." this wouldn't be a tight little com It was a gesture of kindness, of munity, Annie remembered. The course, but it made Annie's eyes lichen fanns were spread out over spill. She turned her head away, the whole temperate belt of the toward the red hills. Red and the world. Because the lichens were cultivated ones green. Christmas grown only on hills, where the sand colors. would not cover them. And because "Sure," Ben said. "Swell. Any they did a more efficient job of friend of Sally's is a friend of mine." oxygenating the atmosphere when And the way they looked at each they were spread over a wide area. other made Annie's heart lurch. One man, hat in hand, even in "Thanks, kids," she said. "But I the cold. A little shriveled man with don't believe I'll try it. And don't a spike of dust-colored hair, but worry. This isn't the first time I've kind-looking. been stood up." "Aw ..." he drawled in embar "Are you coming?" the pilot rassment. He clicked his tongue. shouted across the field. "Hate to 80 ROSEL GEORGE BROWN rush you, but I've got a schedule "1 think you look fine, Annie. It's to meet." -it's any woman. He told them not Was she coming? What else could to send a wife for him. Any wom she do? an." "What happened to him, Ben?" "But that's ridiculous. He knows Annie asked. "My-the other man the laws. Five years and then a wife. that should have been here." Why did he stake out in the first Ben worried a hole in the sand place?" with one foot and cleared his throat. "That was before," Ben an "He stayed home." swered. "You mean he's alive! Here?" "Before what?" "Well ... yes. But he didn't-" "Aw, it's not for me to say. Why "Never mind. I don't need any- don't you just forget Bradman. body to strum a guitar under my He's a good enough guy. But not for window. H he couldn't get away you. You com~" from the fann today I can certainly "Which way and how far?" go to him. I've got a pair of legs Ben looked at her hard. "Okay. that'll walk around the ",orld." On Mars your life is your own." He "You coming?" the pilot shouted. pointed. "Second fannbubble you "No!" Annie cried. "I live here." come to. And you'd better hurry. It The spaceship took off, a phoenix ought to take eight hours and night rising from the flames. falls like a ton of bricks here." Ben was shuffiing his feet, hands Annie made it in seven. Easy. in his pockets. "We'd be proud to have you stay with us, Annie." "Oli;Cut it out, Ben. I'm no hot HE WENT up to the trans house rose. Just tell me which way Sparent hemisphere. He was in and I'll find my own fann." She side working. She shouted, but if paused, trying to guess his thoughts. he heard her he didn't look up. "You think he might be disap She went to the flap that must be pointed when he sees me? Is that it, the door. There wasn't anything to Ben? I know I'm no pinup girl. knock on, so she opened the flap But I'm a worker and a breeder. and walked in. He'll see it. In the end, that's what's There was nothing in the room going to count." but a cot, kitchen equipment and Ben was still making holes in the lichen, growing on a number of sand with his feet, trying to say tables. The air was richer than out something. side and Annie breathed it thirstily. "Please don't worry," Annie went "I'm Annie Strug," she said, smil on, "your friend won't be sorry. If ing and wishing it wasn't such an he doesn't want to marry me right ugly name. away~kay. I can understand it. He glanced up, angry blue eyes But I can give him a chance to under a growth of black hair. He watch me work." didn't say a word. "That isn't it," Ben said finally. Annie set her suitcase down and VIRGIN GROUND 81 looked out at the green growth on "I'm not leaving," she said, still the hills. holding tight the doors of her anger. "Look, Mr. Bradman/' she cried "] am." He paced heavily over suddenly, pointing a spatulate fin the sand floor and pulled back'the ger to the western horizon. "·What flap of the door. in the name of heaven is that ?'~ "Where are you going?" Annie There was a catch of fright in her glanced back at the towering gianL voice. now glo\ving red in the sunlight. "We don't say "mister' on Mars," like some huge, grotesque devil. he said reluctantly. "Brady. But you "Into the storm cellar. Nobody don't have to call me anything be lives through a Martian sand cause you're leaving soon." He ,vas storm." a big, arid man with a sandy voice. Annie ran after him. "For God's But his hands, as he stripped the sake take me with vou! You can't lumpy brown fruits from a giant leave me ..." , lichen, were surprisingly delicate. "Mine's built for one," he said~ "What is it?" Annie asked again, and pulled the top in over him ac; turning instinctively to the big man he disappeared into the hole. for a reassurance and protection she Annie broke her fingernails pull had no reason to expect. ing at the cover. The \-vind ,vas Bradman straightened and blowing sand in her eyes. She saw moved away from her, looking at blood staining the rim of her index the black giant growing up from the finger. She pounded with her fists. earth in the distance and moving "Let me in!" she screamed. "In straight toward them. the name of God!" But all she "It's a sandstorm," he said. "It'll heard was the keening sand in the be here in ten minutes." wind. Annie let out the breath she had She looked around. The devil was been holding. "Oh. That doesn't closer, malignant and hungry. It sound so bad. I don't know what I wanted to eat her alive. thought it was. I was just fright It made her angry. ened." She smiled shyly and apolo "I'll fight it," she screamed. "By getically at Bradman. God, I'll fight!" Bradman grimaced at her, his Five minutes, she guessed. Maybe agate eyes frozen in a pallid face five minutes left. She ran into the that should have gone with red hair. house, ripped open her suitcase. The sand-blown lines in his face Bundles of nylon marriage clot4es. were cruel. "Sister, you've got a She began to soh. Somp were with smile like a slab of concrete. Don't lace. try it again." "Fight!" she shouted to herself. "You didn't have to say that," There was her oxygen mask. How Annie said quietly, closing her eyes much oxygen? Anybody's guess. It against the winds of her anger. was made for maybe a few whiffs a "You didn't have to come here," day over a period of several months. he replied. "Goodbye." Swell. But it wouldn't keep the 12 ROSEL GEORGE BROW,N sand from tearing through her eye bag over her head inside out, so the balls and flaying her alive. zipper would close completely. Wrap in nylon nightgowns? Then she folded the zipper part Ridiculous. under once and wedged herself as Spacesuit? far as she could go into the space Annie went through the one between shrub and hemisphere, room house as fast as she could. No holding the oxygen mask in her spacesuit. Why should he have one? teeth. Three minutes left. \-Vith infinite care, though she Sand was blowing under the was not likely to split the heavy bag, hemisphere, piling up at one end she pulled off her shoes and her and oozing out beneath. heavy, woollen \valking socks. She I t was possible she would simply put the shoes back on. Her slacks be buried. covered her legs. Only her ankles The refrigerator! were bare. That wasn't a refrigerator. Only She unraveled one sock and a cabinet, loosely joined. stuffed the yarn in her ears. There Annie went outside, on the side was a sudden, remarkable quiet. where the field of lichens gre\v up Then, even through the yarn came a smooth, stone hill. The red devil the roar of the stonn. For it was was whistling at her no\v; a low, 'upon her. insinuating whistle. She looked through the milky Something rattled faintly against plastic into a wild, red inferno, spit one steel rib of the hemisphere. It ting at her in furious frustration. was a shrub, about five feet tall. Then she bound the other sock over Annie began to laugh hysterical her eyes. ly. Brady h(td protected the shrub She was in a blind, muffled world with loving care. It \vas tied to the now, buffeted against the shrub and steel rib through grommetted holes the wires and the steel rib, but not in the hemisphere, and covered painfully, because of her heavy with its own plastic bag to shield clothing. It was as though suddenly off the wind. all her senses had been switched to One minute. the last pitch before silence. The red devil was shouting now, "I might live," Annie thought. "1 laughing with triumph. He ran his might." sandy fingers through her hair and blew his gritty breath in her eyes. She pulled the zipper at the bot HERE WAS sand in the bag tom of the polyethylene bag that T now. Annie could feel it sifting covered the shrub and yanked the under her collar and blowing up her bag off. It was heavy, ahnost oily ankles. Not much. It was coming plastic, slippery and pliant. from the bottom of the bag. Prob There was no time to decide ably the end of the zipper had whether it would be better inside worked open just a little. or outside the house. She pulled the Was that the dull roar of the ·VIRGIN GROUND 83 storm through her stoppered ears She opened her eyes briefly and or the rushing of her own blood? closed them. The grit stayed in. If sand \vere seeping in, the storm She didn't dare open them again. must still be on. But the storm looked weaker. How did Bradman breathe in his Or was it her imagination? stOffil cellar? \'"ould the stonn last She groped for the zipper. Foul long enough for the air to go bad? air would kill her quicker than It would go bad fast, in an en sand. She couldn't find it. closed place on Mars. Hell with the zipper! She pulled Bradman. What sort of monster her little mending kit out of her would walk off and let another hu pocket and slashed the bag with man being die? \Vithout a glance the scissors. backwards? Did the cold desert The storm sounded louder now.. wear the humanity out of a man? with the bag gone. The sand ble~ How did a human being get like under her eyelids. Ripped her face. that? Tore a burning circle around each " 'You've got a smile like a con ankle. crete slab.' " Is that what you say to Annie put her face in her hands, a person when you know you're breathing through her nose and the about to leave them to die? sock. She held herself stimy. She didn't UNMARRIED WOMEN BE want to cough. TWEEN THE AGES OF 21 The whole world was a blind, AND 30. GOOD HEALTH. gritty pain. There was no end to WELL ADJUSTED. MAR think of. Only pain. RIAGE ON ARRIVAL. A grayness. MARS TRANSPOR T A blackness. LEAVES~OCT. 1. Finally, a voice. Bradman. "You ruined my shrub. Did you Good health ... well adjusted ... have to slash the bag, too?" she could see the printed words, Annie opened her eyes. They felt red stereo words reaching out from red and ruined. They were water the page. Unmarried women be ing so much her cheeks were wet. tween ... they came and went in She could hardly see. her mind and there was a roar in She was having a coughing fit. her ears. The words were gone now. She dragged herself upright. All Only a redness that came and went. she could see was sand. The plastic No. A~lackness. bubble had blown off the girders AnDIe snatched the exhausted and if the furnishings and her suit oxygen mask off her face and case were there, her eyes were still gulped a pallid, sandy breath of too dim to see them. air. It wouldn't do. She took the "Do you know what that shrub's sock off her eyes and bound it worth on Mars?" around her nose and mouth. It Annie found the yarn had fallen would filter some of the aand out. out of ODe ear and she pulled it out 8~ ROSEL ~EORGE IROWN of the other. man. Better. She worked. How she "Do you know what that bag's worked! She kept herself numb with worth?" labor, her mind drunk with the Gall ran in her veins. She spat it liquors of fatigue. out of her mouth. She backed up to the steel beam After five years, he came. He just and braced her feet against it, light appeared inside the door flap, look in the Martian gravity. ing a little nervous but grinning. "I told them not to send a wom "I'm Jack Hamstrong," he said, an out here." his voice full and wholesome, like She pushed off and sank her fist Iowa corn. "I-you weren't at the into his teeth. He went down. spaceport so I figured, what the She was too light. But he was too heck. I just walked." light, too. It evened out. "This is my farm," Annie said. She turned his face and held it in "My hands are on every inch of it." the sand. Her strength \vas insane. Hamstrong's ruddy face turned "Do you know \\That a human in on itself a little. "1 know. I know life is worth?" she screamed. the story. I didn't come to take any He struggled, but she fought his thing away. 1 came to-good Lord, bucking body, kept his face buried didn't you know you'd be sent a in the sand until he was dead and husband?" a long time after. Annie's eyes went queer, like a An age passed. Annie was frozen eat's. "A husband?" If they'd told in a world rimed over \vith \vhite her, she hadn't heard. "Go away," starlight, sequinned \\7ith frost. she said. She looked around at her
o Then-the crosseyed moons came fann, the fruits of her travail up. alone. The virgin birth. -She found an edge of the plastic "No," he said firlnly. "It's yours bubble, rwnpled and limp and half and mine. Legally. I'm not a mean buried in the sand. She pushed off man, Annie. You'll find me patient. the heaviest hills of sand with her But stubborn. \1 can wait." hands and pulled it out. She Annie sighed. Or \vas it a shud climbed up the anchored girders der? She looked up again at the with it, and then slept the rest of the puckering edges of the evening sky. night in her o\vn home. She put down the knife she had The next day she dug out her been peeling a giant lichen with. household supplies from the sand. She wiped her hands on her apron The day after she cleared the and lifted the door flap. sand from the lichens on her farm. "All right, then," she said. On the fourth day she called a "Wait." few neighbors in and late in the "For \vhat?" evening she buried Bradman. . "The sandstorm," she said. No one questioned her. It had And she got into the storm cellar been, after all, self-defense. and pulled down the weighty lid, She kept the farm as \vell as any locking it behind her. END VI~G1N GROUND 85
By MARGARET ST. CLAIR
'WE XCUSE ME, sir," Denton pronounced their language, and so said deferentially, "but isn't what was the point of calling them the gender of (shar-su~ feminine?" Bi-Yan instead of Te-Hok? Or say "No," Walsh replied brusquely. ing shar-su instead of mosh-tal He turned a\vay, to end the discus He must have muttered the old sion, but Denton had already got word under his breath, because A Lexicon of the Bi-Yan Language Denton said in that irritating way from its place on the cabin shelf, of his, "I beg your pardon, sir?" and was ruffiing its pages. "Nothing. Never mind. Well, ccShen-sheg-shar-" he read. you've proved your point. But don't "Here it is. 'Shar-su. Adverbial you think we ought to be getting noun of two terminations. Femi back to the dig? It isn't wise to let nine. Warningly, in a warning man robot shovels work too long un ner. (To take) warning.' Yes, ... attended, you know. I imagine it does seem to be feminine." you'll agree with me about that, Walsh felt his face growing hot. at any rate." How could he have forgotten that There was an instant's silence. the damned word was feminine Denton too had turned red. He now, in the revised Gerson-Mc stood holding the lexicon between Mahon grammar? In his student his hands, his head lowered Then days there hadn't been any gender he followed the older man through at all-in-Bi-Yan, or Te-Hok as they the airlock into the ship's changing called it then. It seemed to him room. that things had been going to pot Their suits were hanging under ever since that upstart, Gerson, had sterilamps. Walsh climbed into his put over his revised system of pro gear stiffly; his arthritic knee was nouncing Bi-Yan, ten years ago. It bothering him again. Denton was meant that older scholars had prac ready before he was, and stood tically had to learn the language waiting while Walsh opened the all over again. It was most unfair. outer lock. Suppose there had been a fc\v in Walsh jumped to the ground. If consistencies in the old phonetic he didn't hurry, Denton would try system? Nobody could ever know to help him. Why had the Founda how the Bi-Yan themselves had tion saddled him with a "trainee-
No one had labored harder in alien archaeology than Walsh.
He w~ not going to let them destroy his life's work now. 87 assistant," anyhow? Did they think was the best-preserved Bi-Van he \vas too old to excavate a Bi tomb-shrine that anybody had ever Yan shrine without a younger man found. All the others had been in to help him? Hell, he was only various stages of wreckage. This sixty-four. An archaeologist wasn't one was almost miraculously per old until he was eighty. Or did the fect. Except for an enormous gap Foundation think that he, the dean ing hole in the left \vall, caused by of Bi-Yan archaeologists, the top a meteor impact cons ago, it \\Ias authority in the field, needed a almost as it had CaDle from the younger brain to check up on his hands of its builders. work? Lovely ... \Valsh's ill-tclnper The way to the dig was over \vas lcaving him. It \vas impossible rough ground. Like all the Proxima to feel anger while looking at the planets except one, Marianna had shrine. a thin, cold atmosphere, unbreath Denton was as affected as he. able by human standards, but the "Beautiful," Walsh heard him say surface was covered with primitive softly. "Millennia have gone by. algae, lichens, molds and a few And yet it's like the first days of mosses. The puzzle was why the spring." Bi-Yan had erected most of their There were things to be said for tomb-shrines on these inhospitable Denton after all. "Let's go inside," planets, and almost none on the Walsh said. mother world. That was one of the The plan of the shrine was like questions he was attempting to an that of all the other Bi-Yan tomb swer in the book he had in progress shrines. A smallish oval building, -The Bi-Yan Tomb-Shrine: An perfectly proportioned, with a Archaeological Estimate. deeply recessed door. Absorbed in these thoughts, Inside, in the shrine proper, were Walsh stumbled over a loose stone. the double storeroonls, one on He would have taken a sharp fall either side of the door, \\'here the if Denton hadn't caught him by offerings to nourish the dead were the elbow and steadied him. kept. And then the inner shrine, "Thanks," Walsh said harshly, and with the checkered twenty-foot el jerked away. lipse on the floor that marked the They reached the dig in silence. "holy of holies," and the statues The robot shovels were working of the dead whom the tomb--ac away carefully at the excavation of tually a cenotaph-was designed to the back wall of the shrine, the commemorate. only part yet unexcavated. The "Stay clear of the ellipse," Walsh shovels stopped every six inches for cautioned automatically as they an automatic camera to take pic stepped into the inner shrine. tures of the sides of the trench. Denton grinned. "Still think It probably wasn't necessary to there's a density field generator un have so many pictures. It was a der it, sir?" he asked. simple site. On the other hand, it "Yes. That, or something very 88 MARGARET ST. CLAIR similar." Walsh raised an ann to "To immolate victims?" Denton indicate the calligraphic ~nscr~p repeated. tions that ran .around the lntenor "Animal victims, in honor of the wall of the cella. "The warnings dead man whose cenotaph the tomb about touching the 'holy of holies' ,vas." are certainly explicit. The curse ... "In honor of the dead man," Sooner or later we'll try some ex Denton repeated in an unsatisfied periments to find out just what is voice. He began to w~ up and under the floor." down even more rapidly. "Ye-es," Denton replied. "There's no doubt there's something under there. Fragments of machinery ~ BRUPTLY he stopped in front have been found under the ellipses ftof Walsh. "Look here, sir," he in other digs. But-" He began to said, "have you considered-" walk up and down restlessly, be "Considered what?" tween Walsh and the ~llipse. "Considered-" Denton paused "But!" Walsh said, trying to to swallow- "considered, sir, that laugh. He didn't like the way Den this may not be a shrine?" ton kept arguing with him. "Do "May not be a shrine!" Walsh you think it was merely a coinci felt a touch of pure amazement. dence that the dirt in the cella had His eyebrows went up. He began to stayed completely clear of the ellip laugh. "Oh, my dear boy!" tical area? You remember, Den Denton flung out one hand in an ton-the cella was half full of dirt. impatient gesture. "Please, sir! I thad been-titifting in through the What I mean is, why does everyone hole in the wall for centuries. It was take for granted that the Bi-Yan packed up to the ceiling in spots. constructions on the outer planets But there wasn't a grain of dust on aTe shrines?" the ellipsoid." After a moment, Walsh decided "Oh, I remember," Denton said, to treat the absurd question as if it laughing. "I'll never forget those were serious. "For a number of rea two weeks with hand tools. But-" sons," he replied. "The tomb 'curse' "But what?" Walsh said \vith a -you can read it on the walls here touch of irritability. yourself-that is one of them. "Well, sir-" He hesitated. "Sir, Then, there is the offering of food what was the holy of holies for?" to the dead, and the holy of holies "For?" Walsh repeated rather in the center. And, finally, the very blankly. existence of the shrines, so beauti "Yes, sir. What did they use it fully wrought, so filled with art for?" treasures. There is nothing other "It was the center of the shrine, than shrines that they could be." the focal point. If they 'used' it for "Isn't there?" Denton asked anything-if there's actually a keenly. "Isn't any other explanation density field generator under it-I possible?" think it ,vas to immolate victims." His voice had taken on that DISCIPLINE 89 needling edge that Walsh so dis moment there had been the argu.. liked. He felt himself growing an ment, and his sudden anger. The gry, and it exasperated him. "No," next, Denton had been gone. Walsh he aIisWered. "No, it isn't." He felt an irrational impulse to go turned away. about the shrine looking- for him. ''But, sir-" What had happened? Walsh had "I don't want to discuss it fur ahvays felt the "holy of holies" was ther. You're not here to argue with dangerous, but no\\r that its potency me, Denton, but to be trained in had been actually shown, 'Valsh archaeology." was stunned. The density field gen Denton stepped in front of him, erator Inust still have been active, between Walsh and the elliptical after all these ages; poor Denton area. "Don't be such a fool," he had been immolated in Inuch the said in a low, choked voice. SaIlJe ,vay the old Bi-Yan priests' '" ... Sorry. 1- Sorry. You get un sacrificial victims had been. An en der my skin. But if you'd only gineer could examine the generator listen-" later and find out ho\v it \vorked. "you couldn't tell me any \Valsh wouldn't poke about \vith it thing," said Walsh, losing control -he didn't want to share Denton's of hirnself. "You're a young ass fate. \vho brays instead of thinking. Keep Had it been his fault? He gave a your hee-haws to yourself." I-lis deep sigh. No, he didn't think so. hands had clenched. True, he had struck the blo\v that "You old fool!" Denton cried had driven Denton into the danger wildly. "It's not a shrine, it's a area. But on the other hand, he had ma-" warned him against the spot again He was not allowed to finish the and again, and Denton hadn't lis sentence. At the repetition of the tened. There was a certain poetic unbearable word "fool," Walsh, justice-Walsh managed a shaky blind \vith fury, struck out. laugh-in Denton's having fallen It was an old man's blow, weak victim to the very "curse" whose and badly aimed. But Denton in existence he had denied. voluntarily stepped backward to Walsh felt an overpowering fa avoid it. He stepped across the tigue. He hadn't liked Denton. In dark-checkered rim, fairly into the deed, he had hated him. But it had elliptical area. been dreadful to see the young 11is mouth came open. Walsh man disappear like that. Wslsh heard him give a faint cry. His wanted to go back to the ship and body grew diaphanous. In less than rest-and, now that there was no two seconds after he had taken the longer a need to keep up appear backward step, he \vas gone. He ances, there was no reason why he had disappeared. shouldn't. He would feel better Gone ... 'tValsh looked around after a rest. dazedly. It had happened so quick lIe went outside the shrine, still ly that he couldn't take it in. One haunted by tl:ie illogical feeli~g 90 MARGARET ST. CLA1R that Denton must be hiding in it. a week or ten days. Denton's writ He shut down the robot shovels. ing was clear and easy to read. He switched off the lights. He'd Almost at once Walsh found come back later.... What was it traces of what he was looking for. Denton had been trying to say "More than ever I doubt the reality when he disappeared? of the Bi-Yan 'curse,' " ran an entry "This isn't a shrine, it's a ma-" dated a week ago. "The 'curse' A what? What would the word inscribed on the cella of the shrine, have been if Denton had lived to about whose direfulncss Walsh is finish it? Walsh didn't even have so insistent, seems to me, properly an idea what the first syllable would read, much less of a curse than a have been. Man? Mar? Mat? Mat caution. Or-an idea I am just be ter ... well, it probably didn't ginning to form-a series of in matter. Denton was gone. structions. Instructions for what? I don't know. I can't but feel, though, that Walsh is basing his ALSH entered the ship's main interpretation on a misconception. W cabin, switched on the phos I don't suppose it will do much phors, and lay down in his bunk. good to tackle him about this." After he'd rested, he'd get himself Walsh raised his eyebrows. He something to eat. And, before he gave a short laugh. But the curse ~ent to bed, he'd tape an account had got Denton-poor young fel of Denton's mishap for the ship's low-in the end. log. He read on. Two days on unim 'Desperately tired as he was, he portant things. Then, "I cannot ac couldn't 'relax. ,He kept shifting cept the reality of the 'neolithic about on his mattress and sighing. psychology' Walsh talks so much No matter how he had felt about about. No cOlnparisons with the Denton, it had been appalling to tomb~ and shrines of ancient Egypt see the younger man's body thin out will convince me. It is, to me, in and disappear. Denton- credible that people as technically What had Denton been trying advanced as the Bi-Van could be to say? lieve that by putting food in the Walsh swung his feet around tomb-shrines of their dead they and sat up on the edge of his bunk. were providing for them in the After a moment he rose and went after-world. over to Denton's bunk. He opened "Bi-Yan art is unsurpassed. We the foot-locker. have a considerable body of evi Denton's diary was on top of the dence that their spaceflight had folded shirts and underwear, just carried them to the ends of our where Walsh had often seen him galaxy. And these people thought put it. Walsh \vent back to his own they could feed their dead-or, bunk with it. rather, the images of their dead; no He opened the book. He wouldn't one has ever found any bodily re go too far back in the entries-say mains in a Bi-Yan tomb-shrine- '"C>ISCIPLINE 91 with canned protein? Faugh! tions on how to handle awesome "Nor does Walsh's lugging in the potencies. 'transubstantiation' of the old Yes, Denton was undoubtedly Catholic mass-ritual make his idea right. And Walsh's work-his about the Bi-Yan any the more whole work, the work of his whole convincing. Again, faugh!" life-had been wrong. He had built Denton seemed, Walsh thought on sand. sourly, to have used most of the Everything he had written had space in his diary in trying to re been wrong. His ne,'\' book, the fute whatever Walsh had told him. book he had been preparing for He went on with his reading. thirty years to write, could ne}'er be The day before yesterday's entry written. It would be nothing but was only one line: "I have a hy lies. And he would be a laughing pothesis.,, stock. The dean of Bi-Van archae And then the last entry of all, ologists. Talking about neolithic yesterday: "Yes, 1 have a hypothe psychology as if he knew some sis. And, unlike Huygens and his thing. It had taken a smart young idea about the existence of the rings man to show him up. of Saturn, 1 am not going to en Walsh had to bite his lips to keep code it elaborately. from groaning. Archaeology had "The Bi-Yan shrines are not been the only thing he had ever shrines at all. They are relay sta had, the only thing he had ever tions in a space-spanning system. cared for. And now it had been "'Why hasn't anyone else sus taken away from him,' forever, pected this? There are, I think, two ruined by a few pages in a diary. reasons. One, the surpassing beauty Pages written by a smart young of the Bi-Van installations. And, man. two, the fact that no Bi-Yan No. No, it hadn't. No, it hadn't. 'shrine,' except the one Walsh and Walsh didn't even hesitate. He I are currently engaged in exca didn't even give an order to his vating, has ever been found reason fingers. Of their own accord they ably intact. Meteor falls, mechani reached for the diary and ripped cal failure in the course of ages, the bad pages out. and wars have gutted them. Only He drew a terrible, shuddering in the present 'shrine' has the 'holy breath. On wobbling legs he walked of holies,' which I suspect of being over to the waste-reducer and a matter-transmitter, survived." threw the pages in. They flared up ... which I suspect of being a and were gone. matter-transmitter. Walsh's whole It was going to be all right. He body was trembling. Oh, yes, Den could forget all about the nonsense ton's idea--damn him, damn him Denton had written. Now he could -had a horrible cogency. The cans go ahead and write his own book. of food: not offerings, but provi His wonderful, exhaustive, monu sions for travelers. The curses, not mental book. curses but warnings and instruc- For a moment Walsh covered 92 MARGARET ST. CLAIR his face with his hands. God, if infection from one of the local only he hadn't been curious! Now, fungi or bacteria-it had been before he could think about his known to happen-and in his de book, he'd have to fix things. He'd lirium had wandered off into the destroyed the diary, yes. But he wasteland while Walsh was asleep. hadn't put things back to where Then ... oh, yes. Then 'tValsh they'd been before. He'd have to had gone after him in the ship's do a lot of lying to accomplish launch, .and hadn't been able to that. find him. He simply hadn't been He'd have to make up some able to find him, that was all. plausible account of what had hap It was such a simple story that pened to Denton, something that Walsh was sure people would be didn't involve the material \\'ork lieve it. It wasn't complicated ing of the Bi-Yan curse. And then enough to sound like a lie. ..• he'd have to destroy the shrine. When he read it into the log, he'd It was so beautiful! But as long put in some sad reflections about as it was intact; it was a danger to how Denton must even now be him. The first engineer, if not the dying of asphyxiation. first archaeologist, to investigate it And that \vas probably the would sunnise what the "holy of truth,. Walsh thought. Wherever holies" was for. There must be a the matter-translnitter had sent lot of machinery under the ellipsoid Denton, even if there had been a area where Denton had disap still-functioning receptor at the peared. Walsh would have to de other end, it wasn't likely he'd be stroy it. There was some blasting able to get av.ay from there. Assum powder among the ship's stores. ing he'd survived the journey, Den Perhaps he could fake damage ton .must even now be sitting on from a meteor fall. the bleak surface of some wretched He was so tired. He'd try to planet, watching the gauge on his concoct some reasonable-sounding air tank slip around to zero, and story about Denton's disappear wondering how much longer he ance, and get it into the log to could last. night. He didn't think he'd be able A wretched way to die. But at to sleep at all unless he got at least least tWs was something Walsh part of his difficulties settled. And didn't have to blame himself for. tomorrow, when he was a little He wasn't even morally responsible. fresher, he'd try to destroy the tell He hadn't sent him there. tale machinery. He switched on the recorder. Better get hls account of the rnat ter down now, while it \vas still HAT COULD have hap clear in his mind. Tomorrow he'd W pened to Denton, reasonably? destroy the site. A young man, strong, impetuous He switched the recorder off ••. Oh, now he had it. again. It wasn't so much that he Denton had contracted a general minded telling lies about what had DISCIPLINE 93 happened to Denton. And certain what being 'transmitted' will be ly no reasonable person could ex like. But I am willing to try· to pect him to go after Denton, to risk rescue him. End of entry." his own life trying to save a man he hated. He could excuse himself He opened the ship's belly, got these things. out the launch, and climbed into But he couldn't excuse himself the tiny cabin. On low manual if he destroyed the site. power he worked the craft over the He had put Denton's diary in the rough terrain, through the hole in \vaste-reducer; that was disgraceful, the wall, and onto the rim of the but a personal matter. He was will elliptical "holy of holies". He made ing to connive at Denton's death; sure that the nose of the launch was he wasn't under any obligation to centered on the 'same dark try to save him. But he couldn't checkered area that Denton had destroy an archaeological site. A stepped over. If there \vas any con science, in the old and honorable trol system built into the trans tenn, was a discipline. mitter-anything that determined Walsh's head had gone up a little. where you landed-that might be He might be old, and a fool. He it. One more little push, and the might be willing to tell lies. But he craft would be over in the trans was a scientist. And he couldn't mitting area. destroy an archaeological si teo He paused. Did he still hate Den Once more he switched on the ton? Yes, as much as ever. The tape recorder. He gave a full and smart young bastard. The smart complete account of what had hap righryoung son of a bitch. pened, including his destruction of He was risking his life to save a the diary. He hesitated. Then he man he still hated. He couldn~t ex... said, "I am going to try to rescue plain his action, even to hinlself. He him. I do not think my chances arc grinned sourly. Still faintly grin very good. Earth technology has ning, he touched the manual con not yet been able to build a matter trol and gave the craft the last little transmitter, and I have no idea push. END
SPACE ACE ~rI-IE fact reporter for the worlds of science and space ... A magnificent example of space journalislll and photography--excitingly beyond any thing of its kind you have ever seen! Read General Robert L. Scott's ilnportant article, A Call to Arms, follow the cameraman's reports on the Luna and Mars rockets, witness the human side of America~s space ven tures in The Men Behind the Missiles, and other unusual word and pic ture features in the current issue. Ask your news dealer-50c a copy.
94 IN THE JAG-WHIFFING SERVICE
By DAVID R. BUNCH
HAD ALWAYS said there was a little now and then like a greeting I an easier way. And I think, when going past. But tell the people that! we invade, I'll be proved right. But They'd throw a big glass on one of you know how things get started, the whirlcrs and see spikes sticking and how powerful tradition can be out and maybe a big pair of eyes and how old-line thinking can keep inside and a nose and a long red people, even a \vhole planet, in a tongue hanging down. "The rut. Earthits !" they'd scream like they'd The big cargo saucers were get just fallen into one of the hot ting bigger a.nd bigger each year, canals, and they'd race off to a jag what with the growing popularity whiff jag like Judgment-Day-of of the jag-whiff places, and the jag Sins itself was after them. And the ,vhiff places thernsclvcs were grow funny part of it is, I guess the peo ing in number with more and more ple were right being scared like people going "on the jag" because that, the way things turned out. -well, partly because-of troubles But is it any wonder we were in the sky, like strange balls whirl having to increase the size of the ing around and unexplainable ob saucers to space-haul all that jag jects going beel) and lL'Ut! and li'UfJ whiff up through the rattleballs? lL'UfJ. We of the saucers had slipped And a big reason makes nle think it past these first baby objects O.K. could have been done nlore effi and knew they were just little old ciently, we '\Tere having to take so hannless ping-pongs that chattered much junk stuff, extra accessories
The jag-stuff in those black rzngs was wonderful, but why did they have to package it with so many extra accessories? 95 I guess you'd call ~t, to get the jag reaches of our breath bags and go whiff. Our Earthlt contacts were into our blood and suddenly all five ah"lays giving us the old breeze of our eye sticks would start whirl about cost of labor, cost of materi ing and focusing and zeroing-in for als, improvement in design and dames and our arms and legs would next year's inventories. Apparently start a kick and a slap dance, the dealers didn't understand at all enough to shake the planet do\vn. \vhat the play was with us because And when our face spines and head they'd give us so much blab-blab tubes would go into that special that didn't apply, all about futur sharp buzz of contentment, we'd istic design and about how one jag know we were on our jag, full and whiffer machine had it all over an 'Nann and happy with as much other jag-whiffer machine, which pleasure as any Martian is ever sup to us didn't mean a thing. And \Ne posed to know. But we never re didn't talk, because we'd heard al vealed the play to our Earthit con ready how some Earthits feared the tacts, just slipped in at night in our saucers, and how some Earthits said noiseless saucers with all lights they didn't exist at all, and how dimmed, cleared our cargo tubes some other Earthits were on the of the tons of pay-picture we'd fence, saying maybe they did maybe brought (green copy of the Earthits' they didn't so what? and how there currency) and took on as many of was wide fear and great unrest the gleaming jag-whiffer machines among the Earthits in general. And as our cargo tubes \vould hold. when it's like that, and you're a possible source of the wide fear and unrest, a whole planet full of peo UT IT IS ten years no\v since ple can easily decide they don't B a jag-whiffer captain has \vant any part of contributing to steered his saucer through the your pleasure. whirling balls. It got so the satellites And that's what the jag-whiff would drum on the saucer from a \vas to us actually, pleasure. Back long way out. Deafening! Dreadful! home when our troubles had us We saw what was coming and we down, or maybe we just felt like tried to beat it. We saucered around raising a little dust, we'd go to a the clock for a while trying to stock jag-whiff place. We'd plunk down pile enough jag-whiff to last us. But our pay-pictures, and the whiff of course we couldn't. We are about tender would wheel out one of those out of it now, and our lanel is black rings, which they have to keep strewn with the glittery shells that under special pressures in our cli were once attached to the black nlatc. Then he'd screw on the tube tubes of the jag-whiff. with the face piece and we'd take And it could all have been done our \vhiff and something out of the so different. I'm sure it could. Th~t black ring-just seemed like real stuff \vasn't just in the tubes of the thick chest filler to me-would jag-whiffer lTI.achines down there, spread all through to the farthest I'm convinced of that. That stuff 96 may have been all around us down ment to catch and explode the there. I believe it was. But our whirlyballs, I think we're going to government would insist we get find out plenty. Among other into these suits, about so far out, things, I think we're going to find you see, about the time we'd start out that the stuff we cargoed up contacting the rattle balls. And they here at such great cost, that was so threatened us with removal of the inefficiently packaged, is all around contacts if we broke the rules about us down there. I think when we the suits. In addition to that, they take over down there, with the right said we'd die anyway. So you see filtering equipment, jag-whiffing how life can be-grim and fuzzy may become as common and eco and unsafe most of the time. And nomical as breathing. And another to make things even more uncer thing, I think we're going to find tain, just because they couldn't out we were taken for quite a ride duplicate the product we were haul by the Earthits with their silly way ing, our scientists got uppity and of packaging jag-whiff. Imagine ignored the whole problem. Except having to buy all that chrome and to run off to the jag-whiff places steel, guaranteed to go over one of course to ease their frustrations, hundred miles per hour, just to get which they did plenty often when four little black rings of whiff. And they thought they wouldn't be seen. for all the Earthits talked about it, But when we invade down the rings with the white sidewalls through there, which we plan to do didn't whiff one bit better than the soon now, with our special equip- others! END
~.- THE LAST DAYS OF L.A. smashes against your head. You see (Continued from page 74) a woman's nylon-clad leg as she a man in working clothes hits you raises her spiked heel and brings it with a lunch bucket. You let go of ripping down a'cross your cheek. the woman and hit back at him. Other feet crash into you. "Help! Help!" the woman is still "Let me help you," you're still yelping. yelling, but they keep on kicking. "Call the cops-a man's trying Some of the shoes have blood on to rape a girl!" them, you notice through the haze, Someone hits you with an um but they still keep on kicking. brella, and you know it's the same dear little old lady. A guy grabs you Then iCs getting dark and you by the neck and tries to throw you lie there and think how Henny to the ground but you kick him in Penny-or was it Chicken Little? the groin and trade punches \vith must have felt. You want to tell two others. Then they're all over someone about it but you don't. you. The old lady trips you and You just lie there and \vait for the you go down. She starts beating you screaming sirens to come and take with the wnbrella as a man's foot you away. END 97 /
tanta knew the red star was the home of his people after
death ... And for months now 'I, it had been growing briahter.
y BER ARC WALL 9 VERYONE should have its footprints in the snow. Indeed, E known. They should have Atanta was sure, the leopard his known as surely as though it were people wanted would be much too written in the curved palm of the large to fit into the cave. Well, per wind. They should have known haps there would be a bird. when they looked up at the empty He held himself very tall and sky; they should have known when straight so that his dejection might they looked down at the hungry ·not show to either his people or his children. Yet somehow they did not gods. But after forty days of the know that their last migratory hunt trackless hunt, .Atanta felt with cer was almost over. tainty that the gods were deaf or The straggling band had woven dead ... or at least very far away. its slow trail among the mountains The sun was hot and the gods for forty days of vanishing hopes were gone, and he would not keep and shrinking stomachs. Ahead of his people waiting with false hopes. the main party, the scouts had He closed his eyes and took up the crawled until their knees and palms crude bone cross that hung from were raw; but still there was no his waist, and he cursed the gods track of game, and the only scent with silent venom. And· when his was that of the pungent air that chastisement of the delinquent g~ rose from the ragged peaks of ice. was done, he dropped the cross to At last they halted, only a few dangle at his waist again. footsteps from The Cave of the Two hunters moved stealthily Fallen Sun, the farthest western forward, their spears disappearing reach 'of their frozen domain. In the before them into the cave. It was rear of the column the women somehow pathetic, Atanta felt, the threatened the children into silence way they moved so courageously and the scouts went first to the into the empty darkness. mouth of the cave to look for signs. How many caves had there been, of an animal having entered. Pres- Atanta wondered, since they left endy the scouts stood up with their the mouth of the river? Fully a massive shoulders drooping, turned dozen, always empty, except for the to the rest and made a hopeless ges- scattered bones of bears and men. ture. Perhaps he should have kept his Atanta, who stood alone and mo- people at the river. No, he told tionless between the ·scouts and the himself. He had done the only thing rest of his band, knew that all were he could do. The season had been waiting for him to use his magic to bad and their meager catch of fish make a great leopard appear in the carefully stored. But the already empty cave. "A very great leopard," heavy ice thickened with the ap he thought sarcastically. Enough to proach of winter and made fishing feed them all for a hundred days. A almost impossible. When their sup leopard so huge it would whine piti- plies were almost gone, he had done fully while they killed it. A leopard as so many had done before him. so gigantic that it would not leave .He had led his people on the futile 99 hunt, hoping for the miracle of a I he could rest. dozen sleeping bears or a great "Listen to Ine," he said, and his white leopard. Such miracles had voice rang through the ice-sheeted happened in the past. Once he had cave. The tired eyes of the men gone with his father on such a win and women opened and everyone ter hunt. sat up. But miracles without footprints How should he tell them? They were quite another matter. That were waiting no\v. Should he simply was the way his people lived: just say it swiftly and have done with it? existing when the catch was good, Tell them that they had followed stalVing when it was not. an impotent god until now they Presently the two hunters stepped \vere to die? Surely he should pre out of the darkness with the blunt pare thenl sonleho\v. Prepare them ends of their spears dragging be for the hnportance of \vhat he \vas hind them, and their countenances to say. told the others that the cave was in- -~Listen, for I tell you of the end deed empty. of the empty caves." Children bef.{an to cry. \Vomcn He stood silent for a nlonlent picked up their packs and slung \vat.ching hope filter into their faces, them across their shoulders. rrhc hope that Inade their dull eyes shine men mumbled inaudible words that in the semi-darkness. turned into whisps of smoke in the "Do not let joy curl your lips icy air. At Atanta's sig;nal, everyone until you have listened, for it "'ould entered the ice-floored cave, thank- be a false joy." ful at least to be out of the blinding The lines of tiredness and worry brightness of the sun and snow, and returned to the faces about him. into the soothing dark where they Atanta did not look down at his could rest. woman's face, for she knew him Atanta stood while his people very ,veil and she would kno\v what stretched their furry bodies out over he had to do. the frozen ground. lIe looked down at his woman who lay before him. watching him with her black eyes "W E ARE told of a time large and warm. It made his long- ago, ,vhen the cave of stomach ~lutch itself into an angry man was filled with food as the knot, to see her young face so drawn night is filled with stars, and the \vith exhaustion and hunger. There caves and the Inen covered the' five \vere lines in her face he had never corners of the world. But these were seen lJefore; the fur of her head and not the caves that we know now. body had lost its sheen and was now They were Inagic caves, and these brittle and dry. She patted the ice were magic men. The men of that and motioned him to lie down be long-ago world created the very side her; but he turned his eyes mountains into which they dug their away from her, because he knew caves. rrhe mountains they created that he must tell the others before raised their peaks through the high- 100 BERNARD WALL est clouds, and every mountain held "' ~Yes, father,' the son ans\\lercd, countless caves ... caves stuffed 'if you can.' with bear and fish and captive win "'No,' the old man told him. 'I ter winds. These were magic times am so near to death there is no when every man was a priest. Every time. A woman will have to do.' man could make fire blossom from "And so the old man drew from nowhere and every man could fly his chest another rib which he through the air like a bird. fashioned into a woman. This being "All this was long ago when the done, he turned to his son and said: world \vas young, and the world was 'My son, the time has come for me hot, and our people could live in to die. Do not mourn for mc, for the heat. But Nuomo the God of when each evening comes you will Night becanlC jealous of these sec my home--thc red star wlIich magic lHen, for he had seen them travels quickly in the night. For fly into the night itself in search many ten tens of years, I have been of the stars. And so Nuomo preparing it to become a suitable \vrapped his black wings around the place to be born again. When your world and shook it for ten tens of time comcs, you too will be wel days. The world cracked and burst come there.' \vith flame that sprouted up into "Thus saying, the old man placed the darkened sky. The people ran his hands upon the shoulders of his in terror and their mountain-caves son. Then he wrapped his cloak were sucked down into the earth or about him and rose up into the burned i.nto ash by the flame. At the heavens to the star of rebirth. end of the ten tens of days, NUOlno "Only when, the old man had thought that all were dead and so gone to the star of rebirth, did the he rolled a sheet of ice across the son turn to his woman. Only then earth to cool it. did he see that she had not been "Only one man was able to es made in his image, for she was cape the wrath of that ancient hairless and delicate and not made god. H~ \vas an old man with only to live upon the ice. She was a little lnagic and he felt hinlself on Hotland woman. But the son, whose the edge of death. He took from his name was Dectar, took his woman body a rib which he fashioned into whose name was Sontia, shielded a son. But he made the son in such her from the icy winds and com a way that he could live upon the forted her as best he could. Some of ice itself, as we do now. their children had hair and loved "The son knew that the old nlan the cold; some were weak and hair was about to die, and so he said: less and did not. In those days the 'Father, use your Inagic to make hunting was good and the strong a woman to keep me from being sheltered the weak, fed them, car lonely.' ried them on the long hunts. But " 'Woman!' the old man cried. 'I Sontia was a jealous woman. should think you would want me to Jealous of her strong husband and teach you the use of magic.' their offspring of his kind. She STAR' OF REBIRTH 101 prayed to Ram, God of the Sun, lying somewhere on the white float and begged him to melt the ice. ing ice of heaven, wallowing in And so the ice began to melt, leav idleness while my people starve." ing the Hotlands a paradise for He dropped the cross to the \\'eak selfish creatures. Sontia de smooth ice floor, knelt and smashed serted Dectar, taking with her those the cross into pieces with one swift of their children who were hairless blow of his hammerstone. and weak like herself. When he looked up the people "When the ice began to melt, we were silent and unmoving. Perhaps sons of Dectar were forced to hunt he had been a fool. Perhaps he had farther northward year by year. The told them nothing they didn't know. game became not so plentiful as it Perhaps they had already given up had been. Our people learned to and knew that they viould die here fish and hunt as we do now-to fish in the cave and that he could pro in the summer, to hunt when the duce no magic to help them. ice becomes thick. "Will you take another god?" one "But the jealous sons of Sontia of the scouts asked. ,vho swarm in the Hotlands were "I see no other god to take." not content to see us perish year by "Then do you think we can be year. Even to this day, if we should delivered without a god?" wander down to the edge of their Wasn't it evident? Surely they domain to beg for a few scraps of must know. Should he tell them food, they would answer our plea there was no deliverance, with or \vith death. And even in death they without a god? \vould allow us no dignity, but "I don't know," he lied. "I don't \vould strip us of our hides and know." \vear them in mockery. Ark's woman drew a strip of "1 tell you of this now, because leather from the mouth of a sleep \vhen a man comes on a long hunt ing child and put it in her own \vhich ends in an empty cave, it is mouth. "Then you'll have to deliver well to remember and be proud of us yourself," she said and lay down the successful hunts of other years." to go to sleep. Atanta took the white bone cross A sudden rage burned in Atanta's carefully from about his waist. brain. The muscles in his square "It was I who first saw this god jaw trembled as he glared at the go across the sky." He held up the sprawling furry figures, who would cross for all to see. "It went slowly lie there and die while they waited like a bird from horizon to horizon like children for him to provide for and I knew that it was not a bird the future. for it did not flap its wings, but kept Abruptly he turned and left the them still and outstretched. I be cave, and walked out under the lieved it to be the god who would yellow sun that made the ice-cov fill our hunting trails with game, ered mountains shimmer. He felt but now I know that this god is im that he must get away from them. potent. At worst it is a foolish god, He did not want to die with fools. 102 BERNARD·WALL HE SUN blazed hot upon the see him and perhaps he would not T hair of his head and back as he die in the sun. Perhaps he would traveled rapidly downward and find some game by the edge of the away from his people in the cave. Hotlands. Perhaps ... He traveled too quickly to think of The sun had tucked itself behind anything else bu t where his next a white western peak when Atanta footstep should be, and within an at last came to the end of the ice hour he was at the edge of a great field. Tired now, he crouched for a ice field that stretched itself out be moment like a bird with his bottom fore him like the footprint of a sitting squarely upon his heels. Pres giant. There could be no more swift ently his tiredness became true 'ex traveling nO\\7. Cautiously, he haustion, so he dug hiUlself a little started out over the Clnpty plain, space in a shadowed snow bank prodding the ice befQre him with and then covered himself with a his spear. nlound of snow. I t was not that they were chil While Atanta slept,.a great lost dren. He knew that he had been bird came on the last feeble rays of wrong to judge them so. There was light, flapping its black wings be nothing they could do. They had cause there was no wind to glide walked their lives away on the long upon and there was no footing but hunt that cnded now without a sign the frozen ground. When above or scent of prey. Atanta, the bird caught a slight And he, Atanta, had led them. scent in the air, held its wings stiff They were strong and loyal people, and tilted itself to glide in slow cir. too, for if he ordered them up and cles that became smaller and small back along the trail tliat they had er and ever lower until at last the COlne, each man would go without bird's tired feet sank deep into the a word and hope that there was snow beside the mound where some magic Atanta had yet to use. Atanta lay. The bird folded its But the animals were gone and wings about itself and pecked at the the gods were gone, and there was mound, its beak digging cautious but one thing left. He would go holes in the snow. Atanta stirred down below this range where the slightly at this intrusion, and the Hotlanders were known to be. bird drew its beak away and flapped Probably he would simply die in the its wings against the windless air sun. If not, the Hotlanders would and flew away. kill him on the spot, as they were When Atanta woke, the night usually so quick to do. The Hot wind had curled itself with a scream landers had good magic. Not as about the mountains and brought good as his ancestors', Atanta was with it a fresh snow. He dug him sure. But still, they could kill a man self from his bed and smiled with from a great distance, simply by his eyes closed at the night that sent pointing a magic charm and mak the wind and snow to caress his ing a certain noise. hair. When he opened his eyes, his Perhaps the Hotlanders wouldn't face was tilted upward to the sky, STAR OF REBIRTH 103 and he smiled at the lonely stars. let his people starve? He raised his The moon was full and heavy eyes, and saw the very head of the tonight, and it hung low in the god peering up above the next rise. western sky. Atanta wished his He stood up with a semblance of woman could be here beside him, dignity on his unsteady legs. When nestling close to him in the soft the god did not move from behind snow, her delicate hands caressing the rise for many minutes, Atanta's the hair on his cheek. He thought of courage overbalanced his fear and her hands rubbed ra\v from the he kicked the snow with his foot straps of the heavy pack. Perhaps and obliterated the sign of the cross. it was better that he had left with He waited for the god to strike him out saying goodbye. dead, but nothing happened. The He felt rested enough to go on, head of the god was motionless. and was about to hoist himself to Atanta set out with cautious his feet when the red star caught steps. Presently he hid behind a his attention. For Dl0nths now it little ice dune where he could see had. been growing brighter with the god in its aweSOlne entirety~ every night that passed, as if herald Now he was close enough to hurl ing some important event. This was his spear at it if the"god suddenly the red star of rebirth, and he struck in anger; and he gripped the wished he could believe that he and spear in readiness. Suddenly he was his people would someday go to live filled with a new awe, for he real there; but he no longer believed in ized that this was not the god of the anything. cross! There were no stiff wings at It was then that Atanta saw the its side. It was like a huge shining god. It was a great and fearful god spear with its dull end stuck in the that turned the black night yellow snow and its point stretching up to and scrcalned louder than the wind. the sky. But how could this be a In an instant it fell out of the sky; god? then the yellow light was gone and Perhaps he should not yet pray. the voice of the god was gone, and Time had shown there were many the dark night returned and the false gods. voice of the wind returned. Presently a black mouth ap Atanta fell to his knees and his peared magically in the side of the trembling hand etched out the sign great still thing. The mouth sucked of the cross in the snow. Surely this in the icy air for a moment and must be a sign. The god had COille then extended a long jagged tongue aut of the sky and fallen in the path do\vn to the fresh snow. before him-forbidding him to go Atanta saw something move in into the lowlands. He knew he must the blackness of the gaping mouth pray and ask forgiveness but for and then a figure stepped out onto lllany lTIOments he was too fright the tongue and looked about at the ened to pray, and when the fear falling snow and the white jagged subsided, he was too proud. Why mountains in the darkness. It was should he pray to a god who would the figlUe of a man. At least it was 104 BERNARD WALL in a man's shape, but it did not look in the moonlight. He spoke, but like a man of the mountains nor the man did not understand. Then did it look like the man-creatures he pointed up to the sky, then to of the Hotlands. It walked slowly the man, and tilted his head ques and laboriously down the tongue, tioningly. and it seemed to be made of the The man smiled and nodded his saIne shiny stun' as the tongue and head. He pointed to the sky, but the flying wingless god itself. For not straight up. He pointed to a a moment, Atanta wondered \vhich spot low in the west. ,vas the god. The great huge thing He pointed to the star of rebirth. with the nlouth and the tongue, or While Atanta watched in unbe the man-thing? lieving awe, the man touched his 1'he stranger stepped off the o\vn chest, then stooped to lay his tongue into the snow where he palms on the snow at his feet. rfhen knelt and scooped up the snow in l:te pointed once more to the red his arms, tossed it into the wind star and made a rapid upward ges which hurled it to the ground again. ture. Then he laid his closed hands Then he stood and clutched his beside his head and pretended to be head. For a moment Atanta asleep. His fingers opened and thought he had taken his own head closed, again and again. "~1any off, but then he could tell that sleeps," said Atanta, understanding. he had taken a covering off his head "Tens of ten sleeps." \vhich he tossed into the snow. Smiling, the man straightened Then it seemed that the man had and made a rapid down\",ard ges been entirely covered, like the men ture, ending with his palms again of the Hotlands \vho wore furs. on the snow. Then he stepped for Presently the lnan had taken off ward, placing one hand on his chesL all his covering, and stretched his the other on Atanta's. furry arms up to feel the sweetness The two furry men stood as tall of the wind. Atanta leaped up, and straight as their dignity could shouting his surprise. For tIus was make them, and their faces were a true man. bright with joy. Then Atanta took For a moment the man was the halnlnerstone out of the binding startled and then his face filled with about his \vaist, and tossed it into joy. Showing his empty palms, he the snow. began to walk slo\vly toward The nlan nodded. Stepping- back, Atanta. he lifted his hand in an arc across Atanta moved to meet him, the the sky, and offered Atanta the dark fur of his shoulders glistening stars. END ••••• Human history is in essence a history of ideas. -H. G. Wells
STAR OF REBIRTH 105 ,
( We may even spy into the brain of the chief rascal
himself. ... Wouldn't. it be wonderful if our machine
'could stun him and leave him addled at his desk?"
By CORDWAI ER SMIT
106 hat ,Gold.n hap on th aolden truction, mankind had leaped ~ teps shook and flutt l' d lik a bird amona the stars. oon mad-lik a bird imbued with Out of the shock 0/ meeting in an int II ct and a oul, and, ne er human art of on/ronting non tIL I . driven mad b c a i sand human dan mankind had made t r or. b yond human under tand a sup rb e th tic effort and had in . A thou 'and orlds atched. leaped upon the stage of all th Had tli anci nt calendar con orlds. tinu d, thi ould hav been A. D. The golden steps reeled. Some 13,582. After defeat, after disap eyes that watched had retinas. Some pointment~ after. ruin and recon- had crystalline cones. Yet all eyes 107 were fixed upon the golden shape are good to me. I am an academi which interpreted HThe Glory and cian of the All Union Academy of Affirmation of Man" in the 1nter Sciences, a major general in the fV orid Dance Festival of what Red Air Force, a professor in the might have been A. D. 13,582. University of Kharkov, a deputy Once again mankind was lvin works manager of the Red Flag ning the contest. Music and dance Combat Aircraft Production Trust. were hypnotic be)'ond the limits of From each of these I dra\v a systems, compelling, shocking to hu salary." man and inhuman eyes. The dance Sometimes he would narrow his was a triumph of shock-the shock eyes at his Russian scientific col of dynamic beauty. leagues and ask them in dead The golden shape on the golden earnest, "Would I serve capital steps executed shimmering intrica ists?" cies of meaning. The body was gold The affrighted colleagues would and still human. The body was a try to stammer their \vay out of the woman, but more than a woman. embarrassment, protesting their On the golden steps, in the golden common loyalty to Stalin or Beria, light, she trembled and fluttered or Zhukov, or Molotov, or Bul like a bird gone mad. ganin, as the case may have been. Rogov would look very Russian: calm, mocking, amused. He would HE MINISTRY of State Se let them stammer. T curity had been positively Then he'd laugh. shocked when they found that a Solemnity transformed into hilar Nazi agent, more heroic than pru ity, he would, explode into bubbling, dent, had almost reached N. Rogov. effervescent, good-humored laugh Rogov was worth more to the ter: "Of course I could not seIve Soviet armed forces than any two the capitalists. My little Anastasia air armies, more than three motor would not let me." ized divisions. His brain was a The colleagues would smile un weapon, a weapon for the Soviet comfortably and would wish that power. Rogov did not talk so wildly, or so Since the brain was a weapon, comically, or so freely. Rogov was a prisoner. Rogov was afraid of nothing. He didn't mind. Most of his colleagues were afraid Rogov was a pure Russian type, of each other, of the Soviet system, broad-faced, sandy-haired, blue of the world, of life, and of death. eyed, with whimsy in his smile and Perhaps Rogov had once been amusement in the wrinkles at the ordinary and mortal like other peo tops of his cheeks. ple, and full of fears. "Of course I'm a prisoner," But he had become the lover, the Rogov used to say. "I am a prison colleague, the husband of Anastasia er of State service to the Soviet peo Fyodorovna Cherpas. ples. But the workers and peasants Comrade Cherpas had been his 108 CORDWAINER SMITH rival, his antagonist, his competitor, and Cherpas, there is a team. in the struggle for scientific emi They're Communists, good Com nence in the frontiers of Russian munists; but they're better than science. Russian science could never that! They're ·Russian, Russian overtake the inhuman pClfection of enough to beat the world. Look at Gennan method, the rigid intellec them. That's the future, our Rus tual and moral discipli.ne of Ger sian future!" Perhaps the quotation man teamwork, but the Russians was an exaggeration, but it did could and did get ahead of the Ger show the enormous respect in which mans by giving vent to their bold, both Rogov and Cherpas were held fantastic ima~inations. Rogov had by their colleagues in Soviet science. pioneered the first rocket launchers Shortly. after their marriage of 1939. Cherpas had finished the strange things happened to them. job by making the best of the Rogov remained happy. Cherpas rockets radio-directed. was radiant. Rogov in 1942 had developed a Nevertheless, the two of them whole new system of photo-map began to have haunted expressions, ping. Comrade Cherpas had ap as though they had seen things plied it to color film. Rogov, sandy which words could not express, as haired, blue-eyed, and smiling, had though they had stumbled upon recorded his criticisms of Comrade secrets too important to be whis Cherpas' naivete and theoretical pered even to the most secure unsoundness at the top-secret meet agents of the Soviet State Police. ings of Russian scientists during the In 1947 Rogov had an intervie'v black winter nights of 1943. Com with Stalin. As he left Stalin's office rade Cherpas, her butter-yellow in the Kremlin, the great leader hair flowing down like living water himself came to the door, his fore to her shoulders, her unpainted face head wrinkled in thought, nodding, gleaming with fanaticism, intelli "Da, da, da." gence, and dedication, would snarl Even his own personal staff did her own defiance at him, deriding not know why Stalin was saying his Conlffiunist theory, pinching at "Yes, yes, yes," but they did see the his pride, hitting his hypotheses orders that went forth marked where they were weakest. ONLY BY SAFE HAND, and TO By 1944 a Rogov-Cherpas quar BE READ AND RETURNED. rel had become something ,vorth NOT RETAINED, and further~ traveling to see. more stamped FOR AUTHOR In 1945 they were married. IZED EYES ONLY AND UN Their courtship was secret, their DER NO CIRCUMSTANCES wedding a surprise, their partner TO BE COPIED. ship a miracle in the upper ranks of Into the true and secret Soviet Russian science. budget that year by the direct per The emigre press had reported sonal orders of a noncommittal that the great scientist, Peter Stalin, an item was added for Kapitza, once relnarked, "Rogov "Project Telescope." Stalin toler- -NO, NO, NOT ROGQV! lCW ated no inquiry, brooked no com big, big, big. There'll be no cold ment. war if they do it. There won't be A village which had had a name any war of any kind. We'll finish became nameless. capitalism before the capitalists can A forest which had been opened ever begin to fight. If they do it. If to the workers and peasants became they do it." Khrushchev was re military territory. ported to have shaken his head Into the central post office in slowly in perplexity and to have Kharkov there went a new box said nothing more but to have put number for the village of Ya. Ch. his initials on the unmodified Rogov and Cherpas, comrades budget of Project Telescope when a and lovers, scientists both and Rus trusted messenger next brought him sians both, disappeared from the an envelope from Rogov. everyday lives of their colleagues. Anastasia Cherpas became a Their faces were no longer seen at mother. Their first boy looked like scientific meetings. Only rarely did the father. He was followed by a they emerge. little girl. Then another little boy. On the few occasions they were The children didn't stop Cherpas' seen, usually going to and from work. The family had a large dacha Moscow at the time the All Union and trained nursemaids took over budget was made up each year, the household. they seemed smiling and happy. But Every night the four of them they did not make jokes. dined together. What the outside world did not Rogov, Russian, humorous, cou know was that Stalin in giving them rageous, amused. their own project, granting them Cherpas, older, more mature, a paradise restricted to themselves, more beautiful than ever, but just had seen to it that a snake went as biting, just as cheerful, just as with them in the paradise. The sharp as she had ever been. snake this time was not one, but But then the other two, two who two personalities-Gausgofer and sat with them across the years of Gauck. all their days, the two colleagues who had been visited upon them by the all-powerful word of Stalin TALIN DIED. himself. S Beria died too-less willingly. Gausgofer was a female: blood The world went on. less, narrow-faced, with a voice like Everything went into the forgot a horse's whinny. She was a scientist ten village of Ya. Ch. and nothing and a police woman, and com came out. petent at both jobs. In 1920 she had It was rumored that Khrushchev reported her own mother's where himself visited Rogov and Cherpas. abouts to the Bolshevik Terror It was even whispered that Khrush Committee. In 1924 she had com chev said as he went to the Kharkov manded her father's execution. He airport to fly back to Moscow, "It's was a Russian German of the old 110 CORDWAINER SMITH Baltic nobility and he had tried to Gauck was solid, impassive, adjust his mind to the nevv system, blank-faced. In body he was about but he had failed. In 1930 she had the same height as Rogov. Where let her lover trust her a little too Rogov \vas muscular, Gauck was much. He was a Rumanian Com flabby. Where }{ogov's skin was fair munist, very high in the Party, but and shot through with the pink he had a sneaking sympathy for and health of exercise, Gauck's skin Trotsky. When he whispered into was like stale lard, greasy, gray her ear in the privacy of their bed green, sickly even on the best of room, whispered with the tears days. pouring down his face, she had lis Gauck's eyes were black and tcned affectionately and q~ietly and small. His glance was as cold and had delivered his \\lords to the sharp as death. Gauck had no police the next morning. friends, no enemies, no beliefs, no With that she came to Stalin's enthusiasms. attention. Gauck never drank, never went Stalin had been tough. He ad out, never received mail, never sent dressed her brutally, "Comrade, you mail, nevcr spoke a spontaneous have some brains. I can see you word. He was never rude, never know what Communism is all kind, never friendly, never really about. You understand loyalty. withdrawn: He couldn't withdraw You're going to get ahead and serve any more than the constant with the Party and the working class, but drawal of all his life. is that all you want?" He had spat Rogov had turned to his wife in the question at her. the secrecy of their bedro8m soon She was so astonished that she after Gausgofer and Gauck came gaped. and had said, "Anastasia, is that The old man had changed his ex man sane?" pression, favoring her with leering Cherpas intertwined the fingers benevolence. He had put his fore of her beautiful, expressive hands. finger on her chest, "Study science, She who had been the wit of a Comrade. Study science. Commun thousand scientific meetings \vas ism plus science equals victory. now at a loss for words. She looked You're too clever to stay in police up at her husband with a troubled work." expression. "I don't know, com Gausgofer fell in love with Rogov rade ... I just don't know." the moment she saw him. Rogov smiled his amused Slavic Gausgofer fell in hate-and hate smile. "At the least then I don't can be as spontaneous and miracu think Gausgofer knows either." lous as love-with Cherpas the mo Cherpas snorted with laughter ment she saw her. and picked up her hairbrush. But Stalin had guessed that too. "That she doesn't. She really With the bloodless, fanatic Gaus doesn't know, does she? I'll wager gofer he had sent a man nanled B. she doesn't even know to \vhom he Gauck. reports." -NO, NO, NOT ROGOV! 111 That conversation had reached The first product Stalin had into the past. Gauck, Gausgofer, asked for was a receiver, if possible, bloodless eyes and the black eyes one capable of tuning in the they remained. thoughts of a human mind and of Every dinner the four sat down translating those thoughts either together. into a punch tape machine, an Every morning the four met in adapted German Hellschreiber ma the laboratory. chine, or phonetic speech. If the Rogov's great courage, high grids could be turned around, the sanity, and keen humor kept the brain-equivalent machine as a work going. transmitter might be able to send Cherpas' flashing genius fueled out. stunning forces which would him whenever the routine over paralyze or kill the process of loaded his magnificent intellect. thought. Gausgofer spied and watched At its best, Rogov's machine was and smiled her bloodless smiles; designed to confuse human thought sometimes, curiously enough, Gaus over great distances, to select hu gofer made genuinely constructive man targets to be confused, and to suggestions. She never understood maintain an electronic jamming the whole frame of reference of system which would jam straight their work, but she knew enough into the human mind without the of the mechanical and engineering requirement of tubes or receivers. details to be very useful on occa He had succeeded-in part. He sion. had given himself a violent head Gauck came in, sat down quietly, ache in the first year of work. said nothing, did nothing. He did In the third year he had killed not even smoke. He never fidgeted. mice at a distance of ten kilometers. He never went to sleep. He just In the seventh year he had brought watched. on mass hallucinations and a wave The laboratory grew and with it of suicides in a neighboring village. there grew the immense co~figura It was this which impressed Khrush tion of the espionage machine. chev. Rogov was now working on the receiver end. No one had ever ex N THEORY what Rogov had plored the infinitely narrow, in I proposed and Cherpas seconded finitely subtle bands of radiation was imaginable. It consisted of an which distinguished one human attempt to work out an integrated mind from another, but Rogov was theory for all the electrical and trying, as it \vere, to tune in on radiation phenomena accompany minds far away. ing consciousness, and to duplicate He had tried to develop a tele the electrical functions of mind pathic helmet of some kind, but it without the use of animal material. did not work. He had then turned The range of potential products away from the reception of pure was immense. thought to the reception of visual 112 CORD\Vi\INER S,\~IIH and auditory images. Where the One November there had been nerve-ends reached the brain itself, seventy cases of hysteria, most of he had managed over the years .to them ending in suicide,' down in distinguish whole packets of micro the city of Kharkov several hun phenomena, and on sOlne of these dred kilometers away, but Rogov he had managed to get a fix. was not sure that his own machine With infinitely delicate tuning he was doing it. had succeeded one day in picking Comrade Gausgofer dared to up the eyesight of their second stroke his sleeve. Her white lips chauffeur, and had managed, slniled and her watery eyes grew thanks to a needle thrust in just happy as she said in her high, cruel below his own right cyelid, to "see" voice, .;you can do it, comrade. through the other man"s eyes as the You can do it." other man, all unaware, washed Cherpas looked on with con their Zis limousine sixteen hundred tempt. Gauck said nothing. meters away. The female agent Gausgofer saw . Cherpas had surpassed his feat Cherpas' eyes upon her, and for a later that winter, and had rnanaged moment an arc of living hatred to bring in an entire fanlily having leaped between the two women. dinner over in a nearby city. She The three of them went back had invited B. Gauck to have a to work on the machine. needle inserted into his cheekbone Gauck sat on his stool and so that he could see ,vith the eyes watched them. of an unsuspecting spied-on stran ger. Gauck had refused any kind of needles, but Gausgofer had T WAS the year in which Eris joined in the experirnent and had I tratov died that the machi~ expressed her satisfaction ,,\lith the luadc a breakthrough. Eristratov work. died after the Soviet and People's The espionage machine ,vas be democracies had tried to end the ginning to take fornl. cold war with the Americans. T"vo lllore steps rClnained. The It was May. Outside the labora first step consisted of tuning in on tory the squirrels ran among the some relnote target, such as the trees. The leftovers from the night's White House in Washington or the rain dripped on the ground and NATO Headquarters outside Paris. kept the earth moist. It was com The second problem consi'ited of fortable to leave a few windows finding a method of jamrning those open and to let the smell of the minds at a distance, stunning thenl forest into the workshop. so that the subject personnel fell The smell of their oil-burning into tears, confusion, or insanity. heaters, the stale smell of insula Rogov had tried, but he had tion, of ozone, and of the heated never gotten more than thirty kilo electronic gear was something with meters from the nameless village of which all of them were much too Va. Ch. familiar. NO, NO, NOT ROGOV! 113 Rogov had found that his'eye got in my way. We're all good seN sight was beginning to suffer be ants of the Soviet State. It's not a cause he had to get the receiver question of loyalty. It's a question needle somewhere near his optic of enthusiasm. Don't you ever want nerve in order to obtain visual im to glimpse the science we're mak pressions from the machine. After ing? We are a hundred years or a months of experimentation with thousand years ahead of the capi both animal and human subjects he talist Americans. Doesn't that ex had decided to copy one of their cite you? Aren't you a human be last experiments, successfully per ing? Why don't. you take part? formed on a prisoner boy fifteen How will you understand me when years of age, by having the needle I explain it?" slipped directly through the skull, Gauck said nothing; he looked up and behind the eye. Rogov had at Rogov with his beady eyes. His disliked using prisoners, because dirty-gray face did not change ex Gauck, speaking on behalf of se pression. Cherpas said, "Go ahead, curity, always insisted that a pris Nikolai. The comrade can follow oner used in experiments be de if he wants to." stroyed in not less than five days Gausgofer looked enviously at from the beginning of the experi Cherpas. She seemed inclined to ment. Rogov had satisfied himself keep quiet, but then had to speak. that the skull-and-needle technique She said, ~'Do go ahead, cOlnrade was safe, but he was very tired of professor." trying to get frightened, unscien Said Rogov, "Kharosho, I'll do tific people to carry the load of in what I can. The machine is now tense, scientific attentiveness re ready to receive minds over im quired by the machine. mense distances." He wrinkled his Somewhat ill-humored, he shout lip in amused scorn. "We may even ed at Gauck, "Have you ever spy into the brain of the chief ras kno\vn what this is all about? cal himself and find out what You've been here years. Do you Eisenhower is planning to do today know what we're trying to do? against the Soviet people. Wouldn't Don't you ever want to take part it be wonderful if our machine in the experiments yourself? Do could stun him and leave him sit you realize how many years of ting addled at his desk?" mathematics have gone into the Gauck commented, "Don't try it. making of these grids and the cal Not without orders." . culation of these wave patterns? Rogov ignored the interruption Are you good for anything?" and went on. "First I receive. I Gauck had said, tonelessly and don't kno\v \vhat I \\rill get, who I without anger, "Comrade profes will get, or where they will be. All sor, I am obeying orders. You are I know is that this machine will obeying orders too. I've never im reach out across all the minds of peded you." men and beasts now living and it Rogov raved, "1 know you never will bring the eyes and ears of.a 11~ CORDWAINER SMITH single mind directly into mine. push through the dura mater at ex With the new needle going directly actly the right point. into the brain it will be possible for All this work she did deftly with me to get a very sharp fixation of kind, very strong fingers. She was position. The trouble with that boy gentle, but she was firm. She was last week was that even though we his wife, but she was also his fellow knew he was seeing something out scientist and his colleague in the side this room, he appeared to be Soviet State. getting sounds in a foreign lan She stepped back and looked at guage arrd did not know enough her work. She gave him one of English or German to realize where their own very special slnilcs., the or what the machine had taken him secret gay smiles which they usually to see." exchanged with each other only Cherpas laughed, "I'm not wor when they were alone. "You won't ried. I saw then it was safe. You go want to do this every day. We're first, my husband. If our comrades going to have to find some way of don't mind-?" getting into the brain without using Gauck nodded. this needle. But it won't hurt you." Gausgofer lifted her bony hand "Does it matter if it does hurt?" breathlessly to her skinny throat said Rogov. "This is the triumph and said, "Of course, Comrade of all our work. Bring it down." Rogov, of course. You did all the Cherpas, her eyes gleaming with work. You must be the first." attention, reached over and pulled Rogov sat down. down the handle which brought the A white-smocked technician tough needle to within a tenth of a brought the machine over to him. millimeter of the right place. It was mounted on three rubber Rogov spoke very carefully: "All tired wheels and it resembled the I felt was a little sting. You can small X-ray units used by dentists. turn the power on now." In place of the cone at the head Gausgofer could not contain her of the X-ray machine there was a self. Timidly she addressed Cher.. long, incredibly tough needle. It pas, "May I turn on the power?" had been Inade for them by the best Cherpas nodded. Gauck watched. surgical steel craftsmen in Prague. Rogov waited. Gausgofer pulled Another technician came up with down the bayonet switch. a shaving bowl, a brush, and a The power went on. straight razor. Under the gaze of With an impatient twist of her Gauck's deadly eyes he shaved an hand, Anastasia Cherpas ordered area of four square centimeters on the laboratory attendants to the the top of Rogov's head. other end of the room. Two or Cherpas herself then took over. three of thcln had stopped working She set her husband's head in the and were staring at Rogov, staring clamp and used a micrometer to like dull sheep. They looked em.. get the skull-fittings so tight and so barrassed and then' they huddled accurate that the needle wo1ll1d in a white-smocked herd at the --NO, NO, NOT ROGOV! 115 other end of the laboratory. Rogov did not know it, but the ma The wet May wind blew in on chine had conquered time. all of them. The scent of forest The machine had reached the and leaves was about them. dance, the human challenger and The three watched Rogov. the d~nce festival of the year that Rogov's complexion began to might have been A.D. 13,582. change. His face became flushed. Before Rogov's eyes the golden His breathing was so loud .and shape and the golden steps shook heavy they could hear it several and fluttered in a ritual a thousand meters away. Cherpas fell on her times more compelling than hyp knees in front of him, eyebrows notism. The rhythms meant noth lifted in mute inquiry. ing and everything to him. This Rogov did not dare nod, not with was Russia, this was Communism. a needle in his brain. He spoke This was his life-indeed it was his through flushed Iips, speaking soul acted out before his very eyes. thickly and heavily, "Do--not For a second, the last second stop--now." of his ordinary life, he looked through flesh and blood eyes and Rogov himself did not know saw the shabby "voman whom he what was happening. He had had once thought beautiful. He thought he might see an American sa,v Anastasia Cherpas, and he did room, or a Russian room, or. a not care. tropical colony. He might see palm His vision concentrated once trees, or forests, or desks. He might again on the dancing image, this see guns or buildings, washrooms woman, those postures, that dance! or.beds, hospitals, homes, churches. Then the sound came in-music He might see with the eyes of a that would have made a Tschaikov child, a woman, a man, a soldier, a sky weep, orchestras \vhich would philosopher, a slave, a worker, a have silenced Shostakovich or savage, a religious, a Communist, Khachaturian forever. a reactionary, a governor, a police The people-who-were-not-people man. He might hear voices; he between the stars had taught man might hear English, or French, or kind many arts. Rogov's mind. was Russian, Swahili, Hindi, Malay, the best of its time, but his time Chinese, Ukrainian, Armenian, was far, far behind the time of the Turkish, Greek. He did not knowlo great dance. With that one vision None of these things had hap- Rogov went firmly and completely pened. . mad. It seemed to him that he had He became blind to the sight. of left the world, that he had left Cherpas, Gausgofer, and Gauck. time. The hours and the centuries He forgot the village of Va. Ch. shrank up like the Ineters, and the He forgot himself. He was like a machine, unchecked, reached out fish, bred in stale fresh water, which for the most powerful signal which is thrown for the first time into a any human mind had transmitted. living stream. He was like all in.;.. 116 CORDWAINER SNtITH' se~t emer~ing from the chrysalis. want to be with that golden shape/ HIS twentIeth-century mind could and rubbish like that. Maybe not hold the imagery and the im you've ruined a first-class brain pact of the music and the dance. forever-" He stopped short as But the needle was there and though he had said too much. the needle transmitted into his After all, the problem was a se mind more than his mind could curity problem and apparently stand. both Gauck and Gausgofer repre The synapses of his brain flicked sented the security agencies. like switches. Th~ future flooded Gausgofer turned her watery into hinL eyes on the doctor and said in a He fainted. low, even, unbelievably poisonous Cherpas leaped forward and voice, "Could she have done it~ lifted the needle. Rogov fell out of comrade doctor?'~ the chair. The doctor looked at Cherpas, answering Gausgofer, "How? You were there. I wasn't. How could T WAS Gauck who got the doc she have done it? J11 hy should she I tors. By nightfall they had Ro do it? You were there.~- gov resting comfortably and under Cherpas said nothing. Her lips heavy sedation. There were two were compressed tight with grief. doctors, both from the military Her yellow hair gleamed, but her headquarters. Gauck had obtained hair was all that remained, at that authorization for their services by moment, of her beauty. She was a direct telephone call to Moscow. frightened and she was getting Both the doctors were annoyed. ready to be sad. She had no time The senior one never stopped to hate foolish women or to worry grumbling at Cherpas. about security; she was concerned "You should not have done it, with her colleague, her lover, her Comrade Cherpas. Comrade Rogov husband Rogov. should not have done it either. There was nothing much for You can't go around sticking things them to do except to \\'ait. They into brains. That's a medical prob went into a large room and waited. lem. None of you people are doc The servants had laid out im tors of medicine. It's all right for mense dishes of cold sliced meat, you to contrive devices with the pots of caviar, and an assortment prisoners, but you can't inflict of sliced breads, pure butter, genu things like this on Soviet scientific ine coffee, and liquors. personnel. I'm going to get blamed None of them ate much. At 9: 15 because I can't bring Rogov back. the sound of rotors beat against the You heard what he was saying. All house. The big helicoptor had ar he did was mutter, 'That golden rived from Moscow. shape on the golden steps, that mu Higher authorities took over. sic, that me is a true me, that golden shape, that golden shape, I The higher authority was a dep NO, NO, NOT ROGOV! 117 uty minister, a man named V. Cherpas leaned over him so that Karper. her face was directly in his line of Karper was accompanied by t,,·o vision. "My darling! My darling, or three uniformed colonels, by an ,vake up. This is serious." engineer civilian, by a man from It was evident to all of them that the headquart~rs of the Communist Rogov did not hear her. . Party of the Soviet Union, and by For the first time in many years two doctors. Gauck took the initiative. He spoke They dispensed with the cour directly to the man from Moscow. tesies. Karper merely said, "You "Comrade, may I make a sugges are Cherpas. I have met you. You tion?" are Gausgofer. I have seen your re Karper looked at him. Gauck ports. You are Gauck." nodded at Gausgofer. "We were The delegation ,vent into Ro both sent here by orders of Conl gov's bedroom. Karpel" snapped, rade Stalin. She is senior. She bears "'Wake hiln." the responsibility. All I do is double The military doctor who had check." given him sedatives said, "Com The deputy minister turned to rade, you mustn't-" Gausgofer. Gausgofer had been Karper cut him off. "Shut up." staring at Rogov on the bed; her He turned to his own physician, blue, watery eyes were tearless and pointed at Rogov. "\Vake him up." her face was drawn into an expres The doctor from Moscow talked sion of extreme tension. briefly with the senior military doc Karper ignored that and said to tor. He too began shaking his head. her firmly; clearly, commandingly, He gave Karper a disturbed look. "What do you recommend?" Karper guessed what he might Gausgofer looked at him very di hear. He said, "Go ahead. I know rectly and said in a measured voice, there is some danger to the patient, "I do not think that the case is one but I've got to get back to Moscow of brain damage. I believe that he with a report." has obtained a communication The two doctors worked over which he must share with another Rogov. One of them gave Rogov human being and that unless one of an injection. Then all of them us follows him there may be no stood back from the bed. answer." Rogov writhed in his bed. He Karper barked: "Very well. But squirmed. His eyes opened, but ;he what do we do?" did not see the people. With child "Let me follow-into the ma ishly clear and simple words Rogov chine." began to talk, "... that golden Anastasia Cherpas began to shape, the golden stairs, the music, laugh slyly and frantically. She take Inc back to the music, I want seized Karper's ann and pointed to be with the music, I really am her finger at Gausgofer. Karper the music ..." and so on in an stared at her. endless monotone. Cherpas restrained her laughter 118 CORDWAINER SMITH and shouted at Karper, "The wom gofer will find it for both of us." an's mad. She has loved my hus The whole group of them went band for many years. She has hated back into the laboratory. The my presence, and now she thinks , frightened technicians were brought that she can save him. She thinks over frorn the barracks. The lights that she can follow. She thinks that were turned on and the windows he wants to communicate with her. were closed. The Mav \\rind had That'·s ridiculous. I will go myself!" become chilly. . Karper looked about. He selected The needle was sterilized. The two of his staff and stepped over electronic grids were warmed up. into a corner of the room. They Gausgofer~s face \vas an impas could hear him talking, but they sive n1ask of triumph as she sat in could not distinguish the words. the receiving chair. She smiled at After a conference of six or seven Gauck as an attendant brought the minutes he returned. soap and the razor to shave clean "You people have been making a patch on her scalp. serious security charges against Gauck did not smile back. His each other. I find that one of our black eyes stared at her. He said finest weapons, the mind of Rogov, nothing. He did nothing. He is damaged. Rogov's not just a watched. nlan. He is a Soviet project." Scorn Karper walked to and fro, glanc entered his voice. "I find that the ing from time to time at the hasty senior security officer, a policewom but orderly preparation of the ex an with a notable record, is charged periment. by another Soviet scientist with a Anastasia Cherpas sat down at a silly infatuation. I disregard such laboratory table about five meters charges. The development of the away from the group. She watched Soviet State and the work of Soviet the back of Gausgofer's head as science cannot be impeded by per the needle was lowered. She buried sonalities. Comrade Gausgofer will her face in her hands. SOIne of the follow. I am acting tonight because others thought they heard her my own staff physician says that weeping, but no one heeded Cher Rogov may not live and it is very pas very much. They were too in important for us to find out just tent on watching Gausgofer. what has happened to him and Gausgofer's face became red. why." Perspiration poured down the He turned his baleful gaze on flabby cheeks. Her fingers tightened Cherpas. "You will not protest, on the arm of her chair. comrade. Your mind is the prop Suddenly she shouted at them, ~rty of the Russian State. Your life "That golden shape on the golden and your education have been paid steps." . for by the workers. You cannot She leaped to her feet, dragging throw these things away because of the apparatus with her. personal sentiment. If there is any No one had expected this. The thing to be found, Comrade Gaus- chair fell to the floor. The needle NO, NO, NOT ROGOV! 119 holder, lifted from the floor, swung Gauck remained utterly impas its weight sidewise. The needle sive. With superhuman assurance twisted like a scythe in Gausgofer's and calm he said to Karper, "Com brain. rade, I do not dispute the matter. The body of Gausgofer lay on I know these people, though I do the floor, sWTounded by excited not know their science. Rogov is officials. done for." Karper was acute enough to look At last Karper believed him. around at Cherpas. They all looked at Anastasia She stood up from the laboratory Cherpas, at her beautiful hair, her table and walked toward him. A determined blue eyes, and the two thin line of blood flowed down thin lines of blood. from her cheekbone. Another line Karper turned to her. "What do of blood dripped down from a posi we do now?" tion on her cheek, one and a· half For an answer she dropped to her centimers forward of the opening knees and began sobbing, "No, no, of her left ear. not Rogov! No, no, not Rogov!" With tremendous composure, her And that was all that they could face as white as fresh snow, she get out of her. Gauck looked on. smiled at him. "I eavesdropped." Karper said, "What?" On the golden steps in the golden "I eavesdropped, eavesdropped," light, a golden shape danced a repeated Anastasia Cherpas. "I dream beyond the limits of all found out where my husband has imagination, danced and drew the gone. It is not somewhere in this music to herself until a sigh of world. It is something hypnotic be yearning, yearning which became a yond all the limitations of our sci hope and a torment, went through ence. We have made a great gun, the hearts of living things on Q but the gun has fired upon us be thousand worlds. fore we could fire it. Edges of the golden scene faded "Project Telescope is finished. raggedly and unevenly into black. You may try to get someone else to The gold dimmed down to a pale finish it, but you will not." gold-silver sheen and then to silver, Karper stared at her and then last of all to white. The dancer who turned aside. had been golden was now a forlorn Gauck stood in his way. white-pink figure standing, quiet "What do you want?" and fatigued, on the immense, white "To tell you," said Gauck very steps. The applause of a thousand softly, "to tell you, comrade deputy worlds roared in upon her. minister, that Rogov is gone as she She looked blindly at them. The says he is gone, that she is finished dance had overwhelmed her, too. if she says she is finished, that all Their applause could mean noth this is true. I know.'.' ing. The dance was an end in itself. Karper glared at him. "How do She would have to live, somehow, you know?" until she. danced again. END 120 CORDWAINER SMITH Great fun for puzzle lovers! LIKE VARIETY? Then you won't want to miss this favorite magazine of puzzles for everyone-crosswords~crostics, brain teas ers, word games, quizzes, math games~ etc. For those who like easy to medium puzzles~ here is a big value in puzzle pleasure. At all ne\\ysstands-just 25 cents. FAVORITE CROSSWORD PUZZLES
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