A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  The door to the engine room was open. Jon pushed the steerer in before him and stepped through, covering the three crewmen with the pistol. Two of them raised their hands and as the third reached for a wrench Jon shot him in the chest. He fell moaning and would, like the cook, awaken in a few hours with acute nausea.

  Jon found the men couldn’t understand his yelling—they’d been in the hellish noise for over an hour—so he managed to get his command across by means of emphatic gestures.

  One man stepped to a red-painted valve wheel and turned it. From an exhaust port outside there was an ear-splitting whistle and then hissing of steam as the booming pistons slowed and stopped.

  “Now take the wheel off.” Jon’s voice was loud in the new silence. It came off rather easily, unscrewing in the same direction it had been turned to let out the steam.

  All the portholes were open for ventilation in the hot engine room. Jon went to one and threw the wheel out to sea.

  “We stopped by the wireless room before we visited you,” Jon said, bringing a tiny object from his pocket. “Without this transistor, you won’t be able to contact Isola.” So saying, he tossed the transistor out the porthole.

  “You—don t try to follow us or raise any alarm. If you do, I’ll kill the steerer. You—come with me. I’ll need a man to lower the launch.”

  The launch, a rowboat with an imported alcohol motor attached, was mounted just aft of the engine room. Jon motioned the steerer into the boat and followed him.

  “Now crank us down gently, or it’ll be hard on your steerer. Not too slowly, either,” Jon added. People would be wondering why the engines were shut down; would be investigating.

  They hit the water and Jon raised the gun to put a dart in the witness, then decided against it. It could gain them only a few seconds of secrecy, at best.

  ( . . . excellent! Less fortuitous violence.)

  The steerer had primed the motor on the way down; he started it and they were off.

  “So far, good fortune,” the steerer said. He set a course just starboard of the city lights. “I doubt we’ll get into the spaceport harbor undetected, though.”

  “I don’t know. Let’s hope the police are only expecting me at the regular harbor, aboard the Anniversary.”

  Approaching the harbor, they cut the engine and proceeded with oars. The docks were practically deserted. The only person to see them was a small boy; they waved and he waved back.

  They tied up to a piling close by a rope ladder. Climbing out of the boat, the gun fell out of Jon’s waistband

  (. . . good, good, rejecting the violence symbol.) and disappeared into the murky water. The steerer cursed under his breath.

  “If our luck holds, we won’t need it,” Jon whispered. The steerer didn’t reply.

  Clambering over the side of the dock, they could see the sweeping bulk of Jon’s spaceship a few blocks away. In a little puddle of light at its base, an armed guard paced back and forth.

  “You go straight down the road and get the guard’s attention—talk to him.” Jon was whispering, unnecessarily. “I’ll go down that row of warehouses and sneak up behind him.”

  The guard stood in the pool of light, peering at footsteps in the darkness. The steerer walked up to him and started talking, drunkenly, as Jon crept up behind and brought his elbow smashing up to the base of his skull.

  John, do you remember why you made Jon a black man? I don’t know any more, I could have told you once.

  They ran up the unloading ramp, the steerer just behind Jon. His key still fit the lock. Good thing; the Isolans would be in trouble if they’d tried to tamper with a CPC ship.

  John, only a few days ago this fantasy was more real to you than the walls of this room. Well now that I know it’s just a story do I have to keep telling it?

  The outer lock sighed open. He slipped in and, once the steerer was clear, palmed the CLOSE switch. As the lock clicked shut the exhaust-replace cycle hummed to life. The air stirring around made Jon’s hair dance.

  No, it’s served its purpose. You have good readings. Good. I was getting tired of it. Besides, we both know how it’s going to end.

  The inner door opened with a little squeak. They went through it into the ship’s control room. Standing by the ship’s computer was a tall man in a white coat with a big ugly black revolver in his handy a .457 Magnum Smith & Wesson snub-nosed Enforcer.

  The cure is just about complete. Unusually effective in your case.

  He raised the gun and fired at the steerer. The gun didn’t make any noise—just lots of white smoke and orange flame—but the steerer made a noise like a soap bubble popping and he disappeared. Jon crossed his arms over his chest and smiled sickly.

  Good, for a while there I thought I felt sicker, sicker than when I checked in, you know what I mean

  This time the gun barked, a loud obscene cough, and before Jon could change expression the big bullet smacked into his right forearm, a hole slightly smaller than a half-inch in diameter, severed the ulna very neatly, emerged and entered the left forearm, bullet slightly larger for the mushrooming, crushed the radius and started to rotate and was pointed upward when it hit the sternum.

  because he was so real to me

  Sternum exploded into fragments and deflected bullet 45 degrees, and even though Jon was dead it tore his heart in two and carrying half the heart with it snapped the upper spinal column and made a huge exit wound and spattered the lee hull with a pint of blood and half a heart and a stringy gobbet of something and punched a hole through the thin hull and, kinetic energy almost spent, flew out into the sky of Farbis.

  “Naturally; that was what the drug is all about

  a wet red lead insect humming through the sky of Farbis . . . and you responded beautifully, really the best results we’ve had yet

  The man in the white coat set the gun on the gray computer and smiling watched Jon’s body jerking and twitching lifeless in a widening pool of slimy gore.

  and I think we can release you by Thursday. You are completely cured,” he said.

  (“He teas totally insane” he said.)

  WEEP NO MORE, OLD LADY

  C.L. Grant

  During the past few weeks, I have been struck with an almost desperate feeling of empathy with anyone who is or has been imprisoned. I imagine I know exactly what it is like to be stripped naked of whatever freedoms there may be, to be forcibly placed in a room so isolated that it precludes any meaningful communication with the so-called “outside world”. It does happen, of course, and in fact happens quite often. There are various kinds of prisoners and different types of wardens. In my case, I suppose, there should really be some attempt at formulating a distinction in order that I not be confused with, say, a prisoner of war. I myself have tried on one or two occasions to do just that. But it’s awfully hard to be objective.

  You see, in this . . . cell such decidedly unpleasant and even morbid thoughts come easily, most of the time unbidden and usually from reacting over-emotionally to my predicament and indulging in a tasteless bath of self-pity.

  But I cannot be sure that I’m not lowering myself to rationalizing when I eventually get hold of myself and contend that I’m not a prisoner at all. Not all the time, anyway.

  In fact, this place is as comfortable as a small room can be. When I begin to forget things, I stretch out on the floor and re-establish its length and width at nine and ten feet, respectively. By standing squarely in the center of the room and raising my hand and arm over my head, estimate the height at approximately eight feet. There’s a wonderfully soft double bed that waits within one wall—if you look carefully between the animal patterns on the wallpaper, you can just make out the almost invisible lines which mark its place. It really is comfortable. And I sleep quite well at night, except when I have nightmares.

  There’s a bookcase that hides one complete wall and has been thoughtfully stocked (by me?) with a generous mixture of fact and fiction, though nothing too steep for my purpose
s. The only flaw here is a collection of Gideon Fell novels slipped in by some sadistic son-of-a-bitch—I believe they’re called locked room mysteries. I have read none of them. I never will. Among the others I have my favorites, but I am afraid that they will pale soon.

  Perhaps I shall be free by then.

  But dammit, I’m not a prisoner!

  I’m a Brain-Child.

  It’s easy to dream. And less than easy to do something about your dreams.

  When I tend toward petulance in irrational moments, I lay the blame for my condition on my parents. Justifiable in some ways, but not wholly so. As intelligent as I am, I should have been able to foresee something like this happening.

  Father was not really an extraordinary person: a professor of Ancient History who had a fondness for dry sherry, leather upholstery, the Boston Red Sox and Rex Stout. He enjoyed being alone. Mother, on the other hand, was a joiner—a president of so many women’s clubs that often, when I was younger, I would read in a newspaper something like “President Visits Brazil” and would run through the house crying because she didn’t say goodbye to me. She had a fondness for cognac, blue satin draperies, the Boston Bruins and Ellery Queen.

  I have dreams of fairies and goblins and elves and visions of sugar plums and the Big Rock-Candy Mountain.

  My parents were beautifully matched and I was their only child. Occasionally they were mistaken for brother and sister, and I often wondered what I was to be then—their distorted mirror? I am blond, have brown eyes, am barely perceptively buck-toothed, gently hook-nosed, slightly on the heavy side and—though I try to hide it—painfully pigeon-toed.

  But they were handsome and I am not. They were my parents and I am their son. They caused my being; they molded me; they were the ones, rightly or not, who fed me with knowledge and saw to it that my potential as a genius was exploited.

  And it is very hard to try to undo all that which has been done.

  And Jesus, it’s lonely.

  Special schools (public schools and public children apparently could not handle me) and special tutors with the damnedest educational theories were the forces that drove me headlong out of my early years. And through it all were the binding webs of ecology, astronomy, philosophy, geology and mathematics. Not to mention theology, entology, biology and oceanography. Freedom of choice. Study what I wanted. Even now, I grin a little remembering the expressions on my teachers’ faces when I soared past them so rapidly that my incessant “Whys” and “Hows” toppled their egos and crushed them. Of course, I was too young to know that then, they merely looked humorous to me.

  Dreary, difficult and frustrating. I must have cried myself to sleep a thousand times for the understanding I was unable to achieve in depth because of my age and lack of experience. And then I began to think myself ugly and refused to allow mirrors in the house. Father used to tease me about being a vampire and it frightened me. Scared me. God, but I was scared.

  God, I’m scared.

  God, I’m lonely.

  Sometimes I dream of gazelle and lions and tigers and elephants and Batman and the Lone Ranger.

  Did I tell you I was a Brain-Child?

  I am, you know.

  I’m sleepy.

  But it’s not time for the bed to come. Not now. Later. At eight o’clock. It’s the experiment, you see. But don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret.

  Then there was the Time of Crisis (as Mother calls it in her book which was twenty-three months on the Times best seller list. The names were changed, but that still made me rather famous to those in the know. The book is supposed to be fiction. I hate her for that). It became readily apparent that even geniuses of my particular ilk had their limits of absorption. Father’s wobbly little Renaissance Man was turning out to be just another bright kid who peaked a few years before anyone else. Mother was only disappointed, but Father’s face would redden and his voice fairly thundered throughout the house when I was totally unable to assimilate another iota of material. And he damn near cried when I began forgetting things. My paintings became static, my compositions stale, and together we pronounced my academic future as bleak as an English moor in autumn. I hated that, I really did, and I raged and threw tantrums and even wept at my helplessness—one of the few childlike things I ever did.

  Enter, the Government, which shares the blame and I cannot forgive them for they knew exactly what they were doing—the bastards.

  I never saw the President or a Cabinet member or even an assistant to an Assistant Secretary. For me the Government was Mr. Bernard Polaisky, as plain a man you’ll never see. He appeared out of nowhere and I used to sit on the bottom step in the hall and fall asleep to the drone of his monotonous voice. He came once a week, then every night, talking and listening and arguing for about an hour or so, and then there would be nothing left of him when he’d gone. No feeling, no atmosphere, no odor—no memory of him. It was just as if he had never been. I doubt seriously that I’d know him if he walked through the door this moment (only there is no door, or windows. Just several hidden shafts that bring me food and air and an ice cream cone or two).

  However, what turned out to be the final conversation did finally involve me. We were introduced and Mr. Polaisky smiled warmly as he shook my hand. I remember that because it was obvious he recognized my abilities and treated me as an equal.

  “You’re a fine young lad,” he said, and I grinned so idiotically I couldn’t answer. I believe I spent the rest of the evening by Mother’s chair, clutching her arm—and grinning.

  “Richard,” Father said to me, “this gentleman would like very much to assist us . . . rather, assist you with your problem. Your Mother and I have done all that we can, and I think you’re intelligent enough to realize that without some further, perhaps even artificial guidance, you’ll remain just about where you are now.”

  “Yes, Father.” I was grinning—did I say that already?

  “Do you know what your problem is?” That question, naturally, was for the benefit of the Government man. Father loved to show me off. He was kind of proud.

  “Yes, Father,” I said, but did not move away from Mothers side. “To put it very, very simply, it seems like I’m all stored up. As if there’s no place for anything to go anymore; partly because I’ve concentrated on all subjects instead of one; partly because I am unable to tap unused areas of my brain for further storage and recall. And what portions are being utilized are overburdened because they cannot strengthen themselves to handle the load. I am starting to forget things. It’s kind of like a solution which has so much salt dissolved in it that eventually the salt begins to re-form and precipitate.”

  Yet it was all play-acting, nothing more. Father was proud of me and wanted me very much to be chosen for something he felt would be a great honor.

  Did he think of me?

  I was picked, of course, and so undramatically that I was quite disappointed. Every two weeks I was carted off to a dingy office in Boston where all I got were pills! I could hardly believe it Pills, for crying out loud. After so many stories and articles I had read about experimental surgery and serums and injections—all to ‘give you’ knowledge, and all of them so tragically resolved. Pills! When I first saw them I thought they were aspirin. Mother and Father were terribly excited and so let down when I was unable to share in their enthusiasm. But believe me, there’s nothing at all exciting about pills—which I took. And they worked.

  So I climbed from my stagnant plateau and continued to reach greedily for more. I specialized in nothing and recalled everything, and eventually the price was paid.

  The price was me.

  My parents loved me, you see, and let me go. I saw the wisdom in this move, and since they were allowed to come and see me regularly (until I began this experiment and forbade it), there was little of the pain of parting. Tears, mostly, and effusive promises to write.

  They drove me all the way to Princeton where I was to live and study. Father was cheerful, as indeed he should have been.
His only son was at the top and still climbing for the fame no professor could realize. It was a beautiful day—the fall, if I remember correctly—and even though Mother tended to sniffle and wipe her eyes once in a while, she laughed too and was beautiful. And Father sang. Badly (does he still?) but gustily. He had never brought himself to learn more than one line of a song, and that not always correctly. I knew them all, but never helped him. You understand?

  So it was “Weep no more, old lady” a million times from Connecticut to New Jersey. And when we were finally alone in the car in the shadows of a hundred trees as old as the country, Mother hugged me and Father shook my hand. He told me I was a man. I wanted to cry.

  I dream of ankles and thighs and breasts and lips and Raggedy Ann and Mamie Stover.

  When he left he was still singing, only now as if he were going to a funeral. So melodramatic when I can remember it—but then Father was a great actor.

  It was nearly two years before I discovered exactly what the Government wanted with me. Although they had moved me to Princeton, had given me my own cottage and let me go my own way, not once did they express more than a passing interest in my various inventions, scientific studies, paintings or musical compositions. But, while I was puzzling their intentions and swallowing that miserable aspirin in varying amounts at staggered times, I was in an earth-bound heaven. For a short time I experienced great concern over the side-effects of those pills, but soon realized the dangers were minimal, if they existed at all. Meanwhile, I prepared myself physically, embarking upon a program of rigorous exercise: push-ups, one-two (buckle my shoe), walking and jogging to keep limber and nimble (Jack be quick), isotonic and isometric interludes to break the routine of my work.

  I almost wished I had permitted mirrors so that I could have seen myself grow.

  But obviously the Government was not treating me as an Anglo-Saxon Leonardo for purely altruistic reasons, and eventually I tired of my being placed on exhibit, however limited. I began brooding and complaining. I baited every visitor and demanded explanations (when my Mother cried from the moment she saw me on her last visit, Father kept her away. Or did I forbid them to come?). I am quite obviously the means, I would say. So what the hell are the ends? I became obdurate in my refusal to do anything at all. I allowed myself to grow slovenly and crude in my daily progress reports: Today I developed a self-flushing toilet and mastered Kama Sutra #56.