Antigrav: Cosmic Comedies by SF Masters
Edited by PHILIP STRICK
Taplinger Publishing Company / New York
First published in the United States in 1976 by TAPLINGER PUBLISHING CO., INC.
New York, New York
Compilation and Introduction copyright © 1975 by Philip Strick
All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-26328
ISBN 0-8008-0237-3
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Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to include the following copyright material:
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Space Rats of the C.C.C. © 1974 by Edward L. Ferman and Barry N. Malzberg.
How the World Was Saved © 1974 by Seabury Press Inc. New York from The Cyberiad: Fables from the Cybernetic Age.
It Was Nothing—Really/ © 1969 by Sirkay Publishers Corp.; originally appeared in Sturgeon is Alive and Well published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, and reprinted by permission of the author and the E. J. Carnell Agency.
The Glitch © 1974 by James Blish.
Conversation on a Starship in Warpdrive © 1975 by John Brosnan, published by permission of the author and Michael Bakewell & Associates Ltd.
The Alibi Machine © 1973 by the Mankind Publishing Company; originally appeared in Vertex, Vol. 1 No. 2, and reprinted by permission of the author and the E. J. Carnell Agency.
Emergency Society © 1975 by Uta Frith.
Look, You Think You’ve Got Troubles? ©1969 by Damon Knight and reprinted from Orbit 5 by permission of the author.
A Delightful Comedic Premise © 1974 by the Mercury Press Inc. First published in the magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 1974 and reprinted by permission of the author.
Trolls © 1975 by Robert Borski, published by permission of the author and Michael Bakewell & Associates Ltd.
Elephant With Wooden Leg © 1975 by UPD Publishing Corporation, with first U.S. publication in Galaxy.
Planting Time © 1975 by Pete Adams and Charles Nightingale.
By the Seashore © 1973 by UPD Publishing Corporation and reprinted by permission of the author and his agent Virginia Kidd.
Hardcastle © 1971 by Ron Goulart, originally appeared in What’s Become of Screwloose?, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, and reprinted by permission of the author.
The Ergot Show © 1972 by Harry Harrison and reprinted from Nova 2 by permission of the author.
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For Lizanne who laughs as well
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Introduction
You are holding, I should warn you, an anti-gravity device. Hold on tight! The ground may at any moment disappear from beneath your feet.
The suspension of laws, natural or otherwise, is the prerogative of science fiction. It is the most disrespectful of literatures, taking nothing for granted, no present, past or future stone unturned. It deals with ideas that are on the attack, refusing to accept that the way things are today is any guarantee they’ll be like that tomorrow.
Science fiction writers, as Eliot Rosewater reminds us, are the only ones who know what’s going on any more. They see that the world is square and flat and made of concrete, its inhabitants tiny, vulnerable, and much given to self-destruction, music, dreams and melancholy. They see that the world might well be a useful place to relinquish in favour of brighter, more seductive planets, sprinkled like treasure islands across an infinite ocean. They see, too, that man may never bother to make the effort to change his life and times unless he’s constantly jabbed, kicked and goaded. And they see that when he does get out there, skimming gleefully across the stars in an orgy of tourism, he’ll try and take his old laws with him, his perpetual fears, instincts and idiocies, heavy around his neck.
So science fiction dares to be impossible, to place the secret of anti-gravity in our hands and fling us out of the dimensions that grow more claustrophobic, more insupportable around us year by year. It dares to ask if the curious rules by which society defines its boundaries are really the rules by which any rational person wants to live. It dares to point out the consequences of those rules, and their alternatives. It dares to lift us off the ground so that there’s a chance we’ll see more clearly just what we’ve been standing in.
Yet science fiction is human. It’s no more certain of its answers than any of the rest of us. It recognizes that an excessively detached view of the planet might also have its dangers. The Apollo astronauts have taken some strange directions since they returned from the experience of watching us all fall into the sky like a tumbling blue-green marble. Demolish too many principles, and you can get left with nothing more than a severe case of insecurity. Travel too high, and you forget where you started from, and why you left.
The answer is a safety-belt, and few science fiction stories travel without one. The world may be roasted, blown apart, or turned to crystal, but the survivors manage to demonstrate reassuring powers of courage and rehabilitation. They even manage, if a little gloomily at times, to enjoy themselves. Overpopulation and ecological breakdown may render the planetary surface a mile thick all over with starving bodies, but love and ingenuity are still hard at work in an irresistible confidence that life will, no matter what, have been worth the candle. The future may prove to be quite abominable, but science fiction never seems to be in any doubt that there’ll be one. And one of the most effective ways to make it tolerable, of course, is to subject it to a certain amount of scorn.
Such is the solemnity with which the merits of science fiction are argued and defended these days that one of its greatest talents seems to have been overlooked. Science fiction can indeed be brutal, grim, and fraught with warning. It can indeed be majestic, visionary, resounding with hope and expectation. It can be trivial, ludicrous and banal, populated with dragons and swordsmen on the prowl. But it can also be funny, and it spends a heartening amount of its time being just that. Tears may sometimes be in its eyes, a suggestion of hysteria in its voice, but science fiction resounds with irony and good clear laughter.
We decided it was time to invalidate the notion that science fiction writers, world-famed as the most enthusiastic of partygoers and drinking companions, are only cheerful away from their typewriters. This anthology was planned as a way to show that science fiction is the most irreverent and inventive cabaret in all contemporary writing. Yet I have to admit that in some senses the writers have had the last laugh—they’re an uncontrollable race. The stories you are about to encounter are on a rampage, recognizing no limits, no constants, no comforts. If they have anything in common, it’s that they’re unconventional. They take one look at today and discard it as irrelevant.
On the example of at least some of the evidence that follows, I believe that science fiction is the most exciting and the most important writing to be found anywhere in this world. I’m delighted that some of its greatest showmen are represented in this collection, several of them caught in mid-flight through the surrealistic altitudes that they have increasingly begun to explore. Part of the new function that science fiction has taken upon itself in the past dozen years is that of a literature investigating the whole structure of writing, the whole extent to which style must change to match new themes. Big waves and little, old and new, are pounding the shore in
this anthology. Their sound is the most adventurous kind of music.
They confirm, too, one certain thing about the future. We’ll need a sense of humour in order to cope with it.
Philip Strick
Space Rats of the C.C.C
Harry Harrison
That’s it, matey, pull up a stool! Sure, use that one. Just dump old Phrnnx onto the floor to sleep it off. You know that Krddls can’t stand to drink, much less drink flnnx’, and that topped off with a smoke of the hellish krmml weed. Here, let me pour you a mug of flnnx, oops, sorry about your sleeve. When it dries you can scrape it off with a knife. Here’s to your health and may your tubeliners never fail you when the kpnnz hordes are on your tail.
No, sorry, never heard your name before. Too many good men come and go and the good ones die early, aye! Me? You never heard of me. Just call me Old Sarge, as good a name as any. Good men, I say, and the best of them was—well, we’ll call him Gentleman Jax. He had another name, but there’s a little girl waiting on a planet I could name, a little girl that’s waiting and watching the shimmering trails of the deepspacers when they come, and waiting for a man. So for her sake we’ll call him Gentleman Jax, he would have liked that, and she would like that if only she knew, although she must be getting kind of grey, or bald by now, and arthritic from all that sitting and waiting but, golly, that’s another story and by Orion it’s not for me to tell. That’s it, help yourself, a large one. Sure, the green fumes are normal for good flnnx, though you better close your eyes when you drink or you’ll be blind in a week, ha-ha!, by the sacred name of the Prophet Mrddl!
Yes, I can tell what you’re thinking. What’s an old space rat like me doing in a dive like this out here at galaxy’s end, where the rim stars flicker wanly and the tired photons go slow? I’ll tell you what I’m doing, getting drunker than a Planizzian pfrdffl, that’s what. They say that drink has the power to dim memories and by Cygnus I have some memories that need dimming. I see you looking at those scars on my hands. Each one is a story matey, aye, and the scars on my back each a story and the scars on my . . . well, that’s a different story. Yes, I’ll tell you a story, a true one by Mrddl’s holy name, though I might change a name or two, that little girl waiting, you know.
You heard tell of the C.C.C.? I can see by the sudden widening of your eyes and the blanching of your space-tanned skin that you have. Well yours truly, Old Sarge here, was one of the first of the Space Rats of the C.C.C., and my buddy then was the man they know as Gentleman Jax. May Great Kramddl curse his name and blacken the memory of the first day when I first set eyes on him . . .
‘Graduating class . . . ten-SHUN!’
The sergeant’s stentorian voice bellowed forth, cracking like a whiplash across the expectant ears of the mathematically aligned rows of cadets. With the harsh snap of those fateful words a hundred and three incredibly polished bootheels crashed together with a single snap and the eighty-seven cadets of the graduating class snapped to steel-rigid attention. (It should be explained that some of them were from alien worlds, and had different numbers of legs, etc.) Not a breath was drawn, not an eyelid twitched a thousandth of a millilitre as Colonel von Thorax stepped forward, glaring down at them all through the glass monocle in front of his glass eye, close-cropped grey hair stiff as barbed wire, black uniform faultlessly cut and smooth, a krmml weed cigarette clutched in the steel fingers of his prosthetic left arm, black gloved fingers of his prosthetic right arm snapping to hatbrim’s edge in a perfect salute, motors whining thinly in his prosthetic lungs to power the brobdignagian roar of his harshly bellowed command.
‘At ease. And listen to me. You are the hand-picked men—and hand-picked things, too, of course—from all the civilized worlds of the galaxy. Six million and forty-three cadets entered the first year of training and most of them washed out in one way or another. Some could not toe the mark. Some were expelled and shot for buggery. Some believed the lying commy pinko crying liberal claims that continuous war and slaughter is not necessary and they were expelled, and shot as well. One by one the weaklings fell away through the years, leaving the hard core of the Corps—you! The Corpsmen of the first graduating class of the C.C.C.! Ready to spread the benefits of civilization to the stars. Ready at last to find out what the initials C.C.C. stand for!’
A mighty roar went up from the massed throats, a cheer of hoarse masculine enthusiasm that echoed and boomed from the stadium walls. At a signal from von Thorax a switch was thrown and a great shield of imperviomite slid into place above, sealing the stadium from prying eyes and ears and snooping spyish rays. The roaring voices roared on enthusiastically—and many an eardrum was burst that day!—yet were stilled in an instant when the Colonel raised his hand.
‘You Corpsmen will not be alone when you push the frontiers of civilization out to the barbaric stars. Oh no! You will each have a faithful companion by your side. First man, first row—step forward and meet your faithful companion!’
The Corpsman called out stepped forward a smart pace and clicked his heels sharply, said click being echoed in the clack of a thrown wide door and, without conscious intent, every eye in that stadium was drawn in the direction of the dark doorway from which emerged . . .
How to describe it? How to describe the whirlwind that batters you, the storm that engulfs you, the spacewarp that enwraps you? It was as indescribable as any natural force!
It was a creature three metres high at the shoulders, four metres high at the ugly, drooling, tooth-clashing head, a whirl winded, space-warped storm that rushed forward on four piston-like legs, great-clawed feet tearing grooves in the unbearable surface of the impervitium flooring, a monster born of madness and nightmares that reared up before them and bellowed in a soul-destroying screech.
‘There!’ Colonel von Thorax bellowed in answer, blood-specked spittle mottling his lips. ‘There is your faithful companion, the mutacamel, mutation of the noble beast of Good Old Earth, symbol and pride of the C.C.C.—the Combat Camel Corps Corpsman meet your camel!’
The selected Corpsman stepped forward and raised his arm in greeting to this noble beast, which promptly bit the arm off. His shrill screams mingled with the barely stifled gasps of his companions who watched with more than casual interest as camel trainers girt with brass-buckled leather harness rushed out and beat back the protesting camel with clubs while a medic clamped a tourniquet on the wounded man’s stump and dragged his limp body away.
‘That is your first lesson on combat camels,’ the Colonel cried huskily. ‘Never raise your arms to them. Your companion with a newly grafted arm will, I am certain, ha-ha!, remember this little lesson. Next man, next companion!’
Again the thunder of rushing feet and the high-pitched, gurgling, scream-like roar of the combat camel at full charge. This time the Corpsman kept his arm down and the camel bit his head off.
‘Can’t graft on a head, I’m afraid,’ the Colonel leered maliciously at them. ‘A moment of silence for our departed companion who has gone to the big rocket pad in the sky. That’s enough. Ten-SHUN! You will now proceed to the camel training area where you will learn to get along with your faithful companions. Never forgetting that they each have a complete set of false teeth made of imperviumite, as well as razor sharp claw caps of this same substance. DIS-missed!’
The student barracks of the C.C.C. was well known for its ‘no frills’ or rather ‘no coddling’ decor and comforts. The beds were impervitium slabs—no spine-sapping mattresses here!—and the sheets of thin burlap. No blankets of course, not with the air kept at a healthy four degrees centigrade. The rest of the comforts matched, so that it was a great surprise to the graduates to find unaccustomed luxuries awaiting them upon their return from the ceremonies and training. There was a shade on each bare-bulbed reading light and a nice soft two centimetre-thick pillow on every bed. Already they were reaping the benefits of all the years of labour.
Now, among all the students, the top student by far was named M----. There are some secrets t
hat must not be told,
names that are important to loved ones and neighbours, therefore I shall draw the cloak of anonymity over the true identity of the man known as M----. Suffice to call him
‘Steel’, for that was the nickname of someone who knew him best. ‘Steel’, or Steel as we can call him, had at this time a roommate by the name of L . Later, much later, L----
was to be called by certain people ‘Gentleman Jax’, so for the purpose of this narrative we shall call him ‘Gentleman Jax’ as well, or perhaps just plain ‘Jax’, or Jax as some people pronounce it. Jax was second only to Steel in scholastic and sporting attainments and the two were the best of chums. They had been roommates for the past year and now they were back in their room with their feet up, basking in the unexpected luxury of the new furnishings, sipping decaffinated coffee, called koffee, and smoking deeply of the school’s own brand of denicotineized cigarettes, called Denikcig by the manufacturer but always referred to humorously by the C.C.C. students as ‘gaspers’ or ‘lungbusters’.
‘Throw me over a gasper, will you, Jax,’ Steel said, from where he lolled on the bed, hands behind his head, dreaming of what was in store for him now that he would be having his own camel soon. ‘Ouch!’ he chuckled as the pack of gaspers caught him in the eye. He drew out one of the slim white forms and tapped it on the wall to ignite it then drew in a lungful of refreshing smoke. ‘I still can’t believe it . . .’ he smoke-ringed.
‘Well it’s true enough, by Mrddl,’ Jax smiled. ‘We’re graduates. Now throw back that pack of lungbusters so I can join you in a draw or two.’
Steel complied, but did it so enthusiastically that the pack hit the wall and instantly all the cigarettes ignited and the whole thing burst into flame. A glass of water doused the conflagration but, while it was still fizzling fitfully, a light flashed redly on the comscreen.
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