AUTOMATIC TIGER by Kit Reed

Including Venture S~ienee Fi~tion Automatic Tiger KIT REED 4 Sacheverell AVRAM DAVIDSON 17 Survival of the Fittest JACK SHARKEY 23 The Prodigals (verse) JEAN BRIDGE 31 Scien~e: Forget It! ISAAC ASIMOV 32 Lord Arthur Savile's Crime ( not~elet) OSCAR WILDE 42 Pure Water From Salt THEODORE L. THOMAS 70 Incident in the IND HARRY HARRISON 72 Books A VRAM DAVIDSON 79 Humanoid Sacrifice ( nOtJelet) J. T. MCINTOSH 84 The Conventional Approach ROBERT BLOCH 105 The Lost Leonardo J. G._ BALLARD 112 F&SF MMketpla~e 129 COtler by Mel Hunter Joseph W. Ferman, PUBLISHER Avram Davidson, EXECUTIVE EDITOR ]saac Asimov, SCIENCE EDITOR Edtvard L. Ferman, MANAGING EDITOR Ted White, ASSISTANT EDITOR The MagaziKe of Fanta.r:y and Science Ficlion, Volwme 26, No. ], Whole No. 154, Mar. 1964. Pwblished monthly by Mercwry Press, Inc., at 40~ a copy. Annual subscription $4.50; $5.00 in Canada and the Pan American Union; $5.50 '"all other countries. Publi· catioN office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H. Editorial and general mail slrortld be sent to 347 East 5Jrd St., New York 22, N.Y. Serond Class postage paid at Concord, N.H. Printed i11 U. S. A. © 1964 by Mercury Press, Inc. All nghts, including translations into other lang11ages, reserved. Submissio11s must be accompanied by stamped, self-addressed. ellt!elopes ,· the Publisher ass11mes "" ruponsibility for return of tcnsolicited manuscripts. Kit ( Mrs.]oseph) Reed i8 the author of the soon to be published novel, AT WAR WITH CHILDREN (Fa"ar Straus). Her first novel, MOTHER ISN'T DEAD SHES ONLY SLEEPING (Houghton M itfl.in), somewhat parallels her first F&SF story, THE WAIT ( April1958), which surprised and delighted our· many my riads of readers with its description of a good young girl and her hypochondriac mother caught up in the curious ways and sexual mores of a small town which was definitely not Middletown, Connecticut. Young Mrs. Reed has been a newspaper reporter (she was once voted New England Newspaperwoman of the Year) and navy wife; she is still a wife, and the mother of two little boys. She is, moreover, like Rosel George Brown and Shirley Jackson, a faculty wife; unlike either of them she is the wife of Joseph Reed, English Department, Wesleyan University. Her interests, she says, are house-wifery and people-watching; and she now makes her home in Middletown, Connecticut. The quality of Kit Reed's first story was sustained in her subsequent ones as it is in this most recent one. Widespread as the cult of the lion is, the lure of the tiger exceecls it in intensity. Or, so many people consider. It was a Tyger, for example, that Blake saw "burning bright I In the forests of the night"-not a Lyon. It was Shir Khan, a tiger-lord, against whom Kipling's Mowgli pitted his man cunning. India, in fact, is the only place where lions and tigers are found together-and the tigers are gradually gaining sole sway of the turf. Nor must we forget Hilaire Belloc (in this connection at least; in others, we would be glad to); he "had an aunt in Y uca tan I who bought a tiger from a man. She has it yet." Kit Reed's Benedict also bought a tiger from a man-perhaps with some gaudy notion of using it for Mr. Belloc's proposed purpose (popula tion control, vis-a-vis small children)-but it burned too fiercely in the forests of his own personal night . AUTOMATIC TIGER by Kit Reed HE GOT THE TOY FOR HIS SECOND Pride, the box commanded~ Ed cousin Randolph, a knobby-kneed ward Benedict, removed from toys boy so rich he was still in short more by income than by inclina trousers at thirteen. Born poor, tion, had no idea that the tiger cost Benedict had no hope of inherit ten times as much as any of its ing his Uncle James's money but mechanical counterparts. Had he he spent too much for the toy any known, he probably wouldn't-have way. He had shriveled under his cared. It would impress the boy, uncle's watery diamond eyes on and something about the baleful two other weekend visits, shrink eyes on the box attracted him. It ing in oppressive, dark-paneled cost him a month's salary and rooms, and he wasn!t going back seemed cheap at the price. After to Syosset unarmed. The expensive all, he told himself, it had real fur. gift for Randolph, the old man's He wanted more than anything grandson, should assure him at to open the box and touch the fur least some measure of respect. But but the clerk was watching him there was more to it than that. He icily so he fell back and let the had felt. a strange, almost feted man attack it with brown paper feeling growing in him from the and twine. The clerk pushed the moment he first spotted the box, box into his arms before he could solitary and proud, in the dim ask to have it delivered and he window of a toy store not far from took it without question, because the river. he hated scenes. He thought about It came in a medium-sized box the tiger all the way home on the with an Qrange-and-black illustra bus. Like any man with a toy, he tion and the words ROYAL BEN knew he wouldn't be able to resist GAL TIGER in orange lettering opening it to try it out. across the top. According to the His hands were trembling as he description on the package, it re set it in a comer of his living room. sponded to commands which the "Just to see if it works," he mut child barked into a small micro tered. 'Then I'll wrap it for Ran phone. Benedict had seen robots dolph." He removed the brown and monsters something like it on paper and turned the box so the television that year. Own It With picture of the tiger was on top. 5 6 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FIC1'10X Not wanting to rush things, he of stiff nylon filament. It stood fixed his dinner and ate it facing motionless in an aura of jungle the box. After he bad cleared the bottom and power, waiting for him table he sat at a distance, studying to find the microphone and issue the tiger. As shadows gathered in a command. An independent the room something about the mechanism inside it lashed the drawing seemed to compel him, to long, gold-and-black striped tail. It draw him to the verge of some filled half the room. thing important and hold him Awed, Benedict retreated to his there, suspended, and he couldn't couch and sat watching the tiger. help feeling that he and this tiger Shadows deepened and soon the were something more than man only light in the room came from and toy, gift and giver, and as the the creature's fierce amber eyes. It pictured tiger regarded him its stood rooted in the corner of the look grew more and more impera room, tail lashing, looking at him tive, so that he got up finally and yellowly. As he watched it his went over to the box and cut the hands worked on the couch, flex string. ing and relaxing, and he thought As the sides fell away he of himself on the couch, the mi dropped his hands, disappointed cronhone that would conduct his at first by the empty-looking heap ord~rs, the tiger in the corner of fur. The fur had a ruggy look waiting, the leashed potential that and for a minute he wondered if charged the room. He moved ever the packers at the factory had so slightly and his foot collided made a mistake. Then, as he poked with something on the floor. He it with his toe he heard a click and picked it up and inspected it. It was the steel frame inside the fur the microphone. Still he sat, sprang into place and he fell back, watching the gorgeous beast in the breathless, as the creature took light cast '!>y its own golden eyes. shape. At last, in the dead stillness of late It was a full-sized tiger, made night or early morning, strangely from a real tiger-skin skillfully fit happy, he brought the microphone ted to a superstructure of tempered to his lips and breathed into it metal so carefullv made that the tremulously. beast looked no l~ss real than the The tiger stirred. steely-limbed animals Benedict Slowly, Edward Benedict got to had seen at the city zoo. Its eyes his .feet. Then, calling on all his were of amber, ingeniously lit resources, he brought his voice in from behind by small electric to his throat. bulbs, and Benedict noted hysteri "Heel," he said. cally that its whiskers were made And hugely, magnificently, the AUTOMATIC TIGER 7 tiger moved into place. a horse in slow motion, moving "Sit," he said, leaning shakily restlessly at Benedict's heels. He against the door, not quite ready to looked at it and in a rush of sor believe. row realized that a part of it still The tiger sat. Even sitting it belonged to the jungle, that it had was as tall as he, and even now, in been in its box too long and it repose, .with glossy fur lying smooth wanted to run. and soft against the body, every "Go ahead," he said congestedly, line spoke of the coiled steel with half-convinced he would never see in.

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