by Ray Bradbury
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The name I shriek beneath the gallows-tree Was mine. The dead thing swinging there was me!
The truth about goldfish
KUTTNER
For some time I have been wondering what the world is coming to. Morethan once I have got up in the middle of the nite, padded toward thebureau, and, peering into the mirror, exclaimed, "Stinky, what is theworld coming to?" The responses I have thus obtained I am not at libertyto reveal; but I am coming to believe that either I have a mostmysterious mirror or something is wrong somewhere. I am intrigued by mymirror.
It came into my possession under extraordinary and eerie circumstances,being borne into my bedroom one Midsummer's Eve by a procession of catsdressed oddly in bright-colored sunsuits and carrying parasols. I wasasleep at the time, but awoke just as the last tail whisked out thedoor, and immediately I sprang out of bed and cut my left big toe ratherbadly on the edge of the mirror. I remember that as I first looked intothe fathomless, glassy depths, a curious thot came into my mind. "What,"I said to myself, "is the world coming to? And what is science-fictioncoming to?"
It is quite evident that a logical and critical analysis ofscience-fictional trends is a desideratum today. The whole trouble, Ifeel, can be laid to velleity. (I have wanted to use that word foryears. Unfortunately I have now forgotten exactly what it means, but onecan safely attribute trouble to it. Where was I?)
Today science-fiction is split by schisms and impaled on the trylon ofbad thots. The fans, I mean, not the writers. The writers have beensplit and impaled for years, but nothing can be done about that. In away, it's a good thing. Look at Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, and, for thatmatter, the late unfortunate Tobias J. Koot.
I put flowers on his grave only yesterday. He lies at rest, tho hisghastly fate pursued him even to the grave. And I attribute Mr. Koot'sfate to nothing less than the schisms of fandom. For Koot was a hardworking young man, serious, earnest, with promise of becoming afirst-class writer. He took life very solemnly--almost grimly. "My job,"he told me once, "is to give people what they want."
"I want a drink," I said to him. "Give me one."
But Koot couldn't be turned from his rash course. He began to writescience-fiction. That was where the trouble started. "Is it science?" hepondered. "Or is it fiction?" Already the cleavage--the split--hadbegun.
It was a matter of logical progression toward ultimate division. Kootgot in the habit of typing the science into his stories with his lefthand, and the fiction with his right. He began to twitch and worry. Hegot up nites. He was troubled, uneasy. "I have one thing left to clingto," he muttered desperately, "Fandom! I can point to that and say: Itis real. It exists. It is dependable."
When fandom had its schism, Koot immediately developed a splitpersonality. It was rather horrible. His left side--the scientificside--grew cold and hard and keen. He grew a Van Dyke on the left sideof his face and his left hand was stained with acids and chemicals. Butthe right side of his face became dissipated and disreputable, with aleer in the eye end a scornful, sneering curve to the lip. He grew atiny moustache on the right side, waxed it, and twirled it continually.It was rather horrid, but worse was yet to come.
One day the inevitable happened. Tobias J. Koot split in half, with afaint ripping sound and a despairing wail. He was, of course, buried intwo coffins and in two graves, the wretched man's fate pursuing him evenbeyond death.
Well, you can understand how I feel, what with the mirror, the cats insunsuits and the weasel. Or haven't I mentioned the weasel? I mean thebrown one, of course, and he is, perhaps, worst of all. It isn't what hesays so much as his sneering, ironic tone. The other weasels, who livein the spare bedroom with the colt, were happy enuf till HE arrived, butnow THEY are arranging a schism. As you will readily see, something mustbe done about it before science-fiction collapses and the standard fallstrailing into the dust.
I suggest that we mobilize, and, to avoid dissension, give everybody therank of general. Then, first of all, we can march to my house and getrid of that weasel.
The Brown One, of course. The others are welcome to stay as long as theylike. I feel that they are weak rather than wicked, and need only a goodexcuse, or should I say example, in order to brace themselves up.
Contributions to the fund for the mobilization of science-fiction andthe extermination of brown weasels may be sent to me in care of thismagazine. Do not delay. Each moment you wait brings us closer to doom,and, besides, I need a new piano.
H.K.
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READ freehafer's POLARIS!
404 S. Lake Ave. Pasadena, Calif.
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GOD BUSTERS
ERICK FREYOR
Mark Twain, in his _mysterious stranger_, makes no bones about hissentiments towards Christianity and the God illusion. Speaking ofChristian progress he says, "It is a remarkable progress. In five or sixthousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished,commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; andnot one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping andadequate way to kill people. They all did their best--to kill being thechiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in itshistory--but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to beproud of. Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that allthe competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go toschool to the Christian, not to acquire his religion, but his guns. The_turk_ and the _chinaman_ will buy these to kill missionaries andconverts with."
Again, in speaking of God, comparing the God conception to an impossibledream, he continues, "Strange, because they are so frankly andhysterically insane--like all dreams: a God who could have made goodchildren as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who couldhave made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one;who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; whogave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his otherchildren to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed hisother children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; whomouths justice and invented hell--mouths mercy and invented hell; mouthsGolden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, andinvented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself;who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man withoutinvitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts uponman, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; andfinally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abusedslave to worship him!"
One wonders what the Christian Ethiopians thot when the ChristianItalians playfully, and undoubtedly with the sanction of the Holy MotherChurch, began to spray them with liquid fire, blast their cities, andmutilate their children with the newest Christian improvements on theChristian weapons of war. They probably couldn't quite understand thelogic or the fairness of it, but we must not blame the Ethiopians forfailing to comprehend, as they haven't had the benefits of Christiancivilization for as long a time as the Italians.
Let's put a stop to this shilly-shallying. Let's put these destructiveAtheists in their place. The Christians KNOW that God DOES exist. ThatGod _is_ all powerfull. So it would be only a simple matter to arrangean appointment with God, (we don't exactly know what his office hoursare,) and prevail upon him to write a message in fire saying, "YOU BET,GOD IS THE REAL MCCOY" or something similar, and spread it all over thesky. That'll convince even the most reluctant Atheists, and it should bea rather simple trick for a God who once stopped the sun (sic!), createda universe in 6 days, and engineered an immaculate conception.
Clarence Darrow, world famous criminal lawyer, the man who made theSilver-Tongued and Godly Bryant appear the verbose addlepate he was,beneath his platitudinous phrases, during the Scopes trial, said, to aninterviewer, "All my life I've been an Agnostic. But I am no longer anAgnost
ic, I am now an Atheist."
THE PENDULUM
Up and down, back and forth, up and down. First the quick flite skyward,gradually slowing, reaching the pinnacle of the curve, poising a moment,then flashing earthward again, faster and faster at a nauseating speed,reaching the bottom and hurtling aloft on the opposite side. Up anddown. Back and forth. Up and down.
How long it had continued this way Layeville didn't know. It might havebeen millions of years he'd spent sitting here in the massive glasspendulum watching the world tip one way and another, up and down,dizzily before his eyes until they ached. Since first they had lockedhim in the pendulum's round glass head and set if swinging it had neverstopped or changed. Continuous, monotonous movements over and above theground. So huge was this pendulum that it shadowed one hundred feet ormore with every majestic sweep of its gleaming shape, dangling from themetal intestines of the shining machine overhead. It took three or fourseconds for it to traverse the one hundred feet one way, three or fourseconds to come back.
THE PRISONER OF TIME! That's what they called him now! Now,fettered to the very machine he had planned and constructed. Apri--son--er--of--time! A--pris--on--er--of--Time! With every swing ofthe pendulum it echoed in his thoughts. For ever like this until he wentinsane. He tried to focus his eyes on the arching hotness of the earthas it swept past beneath him.
They had laughed at him a few days before. Or was it a week? A month? Ayear? He didn't know. This ceaseless pitching had filled him with anaching confusion. They had laughed at him when he said, some time beforeall this, he could bridge time gaps and travel into futurity. He haddesigned a huge machine to warp space, invited thirty of the worlds mostgifted scientists to help him finish his colossal attempt to scratch thefuture wall of time.
The hour of the accident spun back to him now thru misted memory. Thedisplay of the time machine to the public. The exact moment when hestood on the platform with the thirty scientists and pulled the mainswitch! The scientists, all of them, blasted into ashes from wildelectrical flames! Before the eyes of two million witnesses who had cometo the laboratory or were tuned in by television at home! He had slainthe world's greatest scientists!
He recalled the moment of shocked horror that followed. Somethingradically wrong had happened to the machine. He, Layeville, the inventorof the machine, had staggered backward, his clothes flaming and eatingup about him. No time for explanations. Then he had collapsed in theblackness of pain and numbing defeat.
Swept to a hasty trial, Layeville faced jeering throngs calling out forhis death. "Destroy the Time Machine!" they cried. "And destroy thisMURDERER with it!"
Murderer! And he had tried to help humanity. This was his reward.
One man had leaped onto the tribunal platform at the trial, crying, "No!Don't destroy the machine! I have a better plan! A revenge forthis--this man!" His finger pointed at Layeville where the inventor satunshaven and haggard, his eyes failure glazed. "We shall rebuild hismachine, take his precious metals, and put up a monument to hisslaughtering! We'll put him on exhibition for life within hisexecutioning device!" The crowd roared approval like thunder shaking thetribunal hall.
Then, pushing hands, days in prison, months. Finally, led forth into thehot sunshine, he was carried in a small rocket car to the center of thecity. The shock of what he saw brought him back to reality. THEY hadrebuilt his machine into a towering timepiece with a pendulum. Hestumbled forward, urged on by thrusting hands, listening to the roar ofthousands of voices damning him. Into the transparent pendulum head theypushed him and clamped it tight with weldings.
Then they set the pendulum swinging and stood back. Slowly, very slowly,it rocked back and forth, increasing in speed. Layeville had poundedfutilely at the glass, screaming. The faces became blurred, were onlytearing pink blobs before him.
On and on like this--for how long?
He hadn't minded it so much at first, that first nite. He couldn'tsleep, but it was not uncomfortable. The lites of the city were cometswith tails that pelted from rite to left like foaming fireworks. But asthe nite wore on he felt a gnawing in his stomach, that grew worse. Hegot very sick and vomited. The next day he couldn't eat anything.
They never stopped the pendulum, not once. Instead of letting him eatquietly, they slid the food down the stem of the pendulum in a specialtube, in little round parcels that plunked at his feet. The first timehe attempted eating he was unsuccessful, it wouldn't stay down. Indesperation he hammered against the cold glass with his fists until theybled, crying hoarsely, but he heard nothing but his own weak,fear-wracked words muffled in his ears.
After some time had elapsed he got so that he could eat, even sleepwhile travelling back and forth this way. They allowed him small glassloops on the floor and leather thongs with which he tied himself down atnite and slept a soundless slumber without sliding.
People came to look at him. He accustomed his eyes to the swift fliteand followed their curiosity-etched faces, first close by in the middle,then far away to the right, middle again, and to the left.
He saw the faces gaping, speaking soundless words, laughing and pointingat the prisoner of time traveling forever nowhere. But after awhile thetown people vanished and it was only tourists who came and read the signthat said: THIS IS THE PRISONER OF TIME--JOHN LAYEVILLE--WHO KILLEDTHIRTY OF THE WORLDS FINEST SCIENTISTS! The school children, on theelectrical moving sidewalk stopped to stare in childish awe. THEPRISONER OF TIME!
Often he thot of that title. God, but it was ironic, that he shouldinvent a time machine and have it converted into a clock, and that he,in its pendulum, should mete out the years--traveling _with_ Time.
He couldn't remember how long it had been. The days and nites rantogether in his memory. His unshaven checks had developed a short beardand then ceased growing. How long a time? How long?
Once a day they sent down a tube after he ate and vacuumed up the cell,disposing of any wastes. Once in a great while they sent him a book, butthat was all.
The robots took care of him now. Evidently the humans thot it a waste oftime to bother over their prisoner. The robots brot the food, cleanedthe pendulum cell, oiled the machinery, worked tirelessly from dawnuntil the sun crimsoned westward. At this rate it could keep on forcenturies.
But one day as Layeville stared at the city and its people in the blurof ascent and descent, he perceived a swarming darkness that extended inthe heavens. The city rocket ships that crossed the sky on pillars ofscarlet flame darted helplessly, frightenedly for shelter. The peopleran like water splashed on tiles, screaming soundlessly. Alien creaturesfluttered down, great gelatinous masses of black that sucked out thelife of all. They clustered thickly over everything, glistenedmomentarily upon the pendulum and its body above, over the whirlingwheels and roaring bowels of the metal creature once a Time Machine. Anhour later they dwindled away over the horizon and never came back. Thecity was dead.
Up and down, Layeville went on his journey to nowhere, in his prison, astrange smile etched on his lips. In a week or more, he knew, he wouldbe the only man alive on earth.
Elation flamed within him. This was _his_ victory! Where the other menhad planned the pendulum as a prison it had been an asylum againstannihilation now!
Day after day the robots still came, worked, unabated by the visitationof the black horde. They came every week, brot food, tinkered, checked,oiled, cleaned. Up and down, back and forth--THE PENDULUM!
... a thousand years must have passed before the sky again showed lifeover the dead Earth. A silvery bullet of space dropped from the clouds,steaming, and hovered over the dead city where now only a few solitaryrobots performed their tasks. In the gathering dusk the lites of themetropolis glimmered on. Other automatons appeared on the rampways likespiders on twisting webs, scurrying about, checking, oiling, working intheir crisp mechanical manner.
And the creatures in the alien projectile found the time mechanism, thependulum swinging up and down, back and forth, up and down. The robotsstill cared for it, oiled it, tinker
ing.
A thousand years this pendulum had swung. Made of glass the round diskat the bottom was, but now when food was lowered by the robots throughthe tube it lay untouched. Later, when the vacuum tube came down andcleaned out the cell it took that very food with it.
Back and forth--up and down.
The visitors saw something inside the pendulum. Pressed closely to theglass side of the cell was the face of a whitened skull--a skeletonvisage that stared out over the city with empty sockets and anenigmatical smile wreathing its lipless teeth.
Back and forth--up and down.
The strangers from the void stopped the pendulum in its course, ceasedits swinging and cracked open the glass cell, exposing the skeleton toview. And in the gleaming light of the stars the skull face continuedits weird grinning as if it knew that it had conquered something. Hadconquered time.
The Prisoner Of Time, Layeville, had indeed travelled along thecenturies.
And the journey was at an end.
IS IT TRUE WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT KUTTNER?
OR
the man with the Weird Tale
