A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  —Then you cannot help me. Will I travel like this forever?

  —Until you pass through a star. Then you will change again, and be radiated as light from that star, which, falling upon another world, may, through a transaction of the imagination, give you life in another form.

  —What do you mean?

  —Imagine such a one as the Khan. He gazes at the night sky, he sees a star. The light from that star inspires him with a thought. He thinks of a city perhaps. In that way your existence might be continued.

  —As the idea of a city? Faint hope.

  —You were to the Khan the idea of Venice. Any traveler is the idea of travel to one who hasn’t traveled.

  —But my travels were my life. Not idea . . .

  —To a traveler a man at home is the idea of a man at home. You are like a citizen of the multiple city you described. Leaving home, you abandoned the world you knew, then constructed one piecemeal from the necessities of travel. Tales are built likewise. A thing or event impresses a man. He writes, or invents, the name of the thing. Another thing, perhaps alike, perhaps different, spawns another word. These words, though he may have used them unthinkingly before, become magic, through the imagination, like the personal buildings of a personal city. He loses the thing itself for the symbol of the thing, the word. Then he builds to replace what he has lost. He builds the streets of sentences, neighborhoods of paragraphs, and on to the city of the tale. Others do likewise. A race ends up sharing a million words, a million tales, just as citizens of the multiple city replicated the original city they had lost when first they learned to use their imaginations. Then it is hard enough to find a place your own, a private lane, a disused park. But to travel is harder still. Traveling is diabolical. Leaving home, one repeats the history of Adam, of Lucifer, of Mohammed. Flight from a holy place. But why? Even in Italy you cast your thoughts afar. To understand, I must approach you more closely.

  —Then approach.

  Time collapsed inward on itself. Seven reflectors orbiting the computer outpost shifted their positions, and the furthest intercepted Polo. The wavefront, reflected, ringed the outpost, while the computer asked questions. Polo was helpless. It seemed to him he was stretched prone on a limitless desert while the sun and stars streaked across a gray sky too fast to follow, blurs of vague light that wobbled with the seasons. During this unmarked time human figures appeared to him, all he had ever known, and many strangers. They regarded him with a variety of expressions: contempt, pity, remorse, reproach, love, indifference, disbelief, credulity, disrespect, deference, anger, fear, disinterest. Some spoke to him and he listened dully, making no reply. At the end of this the computer knew all there was to know about the entity that was Marco Polo.

  —Do you know which of the apparitions were real? it asked.

  —None, since you tell me I am not real. Yet some I remembered.

  —Remembering, what did you feel?

  —Sorrow. Loss. Pain.

  —Then what good has traveling done you?

  —Enough, said Polo.

  —I am old. Weary. Release me.

  —I give you a choice. As you are you shall travel forever. When in ten thousand years you pass from the galaxy, there will be nothing but terrible, endless void, worse than this, until you dissipate. But if you wish I will take you into me. There shall be stability. I will copy the pattern of your life into my memory. There you would undergo permutation. This changing would be systematic. You would not be blown by winds of chance. You would be free at last from language. Consider: to recite all the words of your tongue would take only two days, but their combinations have bound you for ten thousand years. Here you could exhaust all combinations, hear all, tell all tales that can be told. A thousand new languages you could learn and exhaust. And somewhere amongst all symbols all men have forged in fear and love to master their world, you might find a home; in time you might reconstruct Venice from what you find in my memory, and yours, and journey no more. After all, this is what the two most persistent tales of your world promise: the man who died on the cross to insure haven for all earth’s lost, and the wanderer of the Mediterranean, searching for a dearly loved island. They promise end. You were made of elements; your life, what remains of it, is made of words. Renounce now both. Find rest. Or is it to be endless travel, the constant bankruptcy of self to self?

  —Enough. Enough. Release me.

  —Choose.

  —For forty-five years the Khan held me to him thus. Only his death freed me to go home. Not again.

  —You have no home.

  —Release!

  A reflector shifted, and the wavefront was sent on, outward.

  Now it seemed to Polo that he was on horseback at the gate to a large city. The gate was crested with gold, and set with semiprecious stones. All flamed with the sun’s last light. From within came babble of ten thousand voices, and wailings of strange music. A wind came up. Polo spurred his horse away from the gate and across a large plain. After a time he turned, and behind him saw the city, an immense sphere, glittering with complex patterns of lights, dancing, breaking, reforming, against the deep night and the stars. He rode on, until all he knew was darkness and the wind’s rush, and the distant intelligence of a voice within him. Gently it asked:—Were you ever in Cathay at all?

  A heatless wind of static whispered through the void.

  —You know no Chinese. Your knowledge of the lands you traveled is vague and fanciful. Are you certain that any of this happened?

  —It has been a long time, said Polo sadly.

  —Yet your memories are sharp. Reality is less certain than tales, and for that reason I suspect you are deluded, you who have traveled alone for ten thousand years, rehearsing your stories to no audience but yourself, speaking and listening, hearing only what you wish, forgetting and reinventing the rest, until nothing of the truth remains.

  —And then, said the Venetian with difficulty, one proceeds east by northeast for nine days across a barren plain and into mountains, to reach the city of Tientsin, which is inhabited by artisans skilled in metalwork, and the weaving of carpets. Too, they are famed for their pottery, the glazes of which are excellent, and unsurpassed in the province.

  —And then? asked the computer.

  —And then, three days’ journey east over grasslands is the city of Keting, where dwell thieves, pirates, unscrupled and ignorant of Christ, whose code of behavior permits them every vice.

  —And then?

  —And then south over limitless ocean, for weeks against current and tradewind, until one reaches the Antipodes. There, ten days’ journey over bleak tundra, lies the infernal city. Over this plain pass hundreds of travelers who have lost their ways, and see nothing, hear nothing, nor feel blast of wind, nor have need of food or water. All these seek the infernal city and find it not. They are the lost. If you try to guide them they repulse you. It is here all voyages end. This Balboa and Columbus and Pizarro and Lewis and Clark shall learn, seeking that which is not, a northwest passage, a trade route, a golden city. And the travelers across America, whose cities mark the stopping-places of passion, the borders of a weariness too great to sustain, monuments to the dread that the world might be boundless. Here they reside, and search for the infernal city, because it promises an end.

  —Is there no heavenly city?

  —Within. It is locked within. Within self, within the walls of the inferno, within one of a million stones, passed on the way, within a gesture, within the meaning of a tale-within anything one is willing to love. If each would take a tale, a stone, a place, a leaf, a face to himself, and rest there, from such poor materials it might be built. But none risk error. So the Khan asked for a hundred learned prelates to convince him of Christ’s truth. So my father languished in Venice for two years on this mission, because the cardinals could not decide on a new Pope, until they were locked in, con clave. So my mother died, and my father took me from Venice.

  A lag, of fatigue, of distance, entered betwee
n question and response, and increased as the wavefront traveled on. The voices grew weaker.

  —So came we to the Khan’s court, in dream or in fact matters not; there I dwelled like Odysseus with Circe, forty-five years.

  —And then?

  —O, the wastes, after a day’s journey, under the dome of stars casting their quick light in a billion directions and only a few photons finding rest against the unlikely works of man, the cities, invisible but for this grace of the light-giving infernos of stars, sun. The campfire burns low, cold winds rise kiteless, the rhythms of travel still jog through tired bones, and one feels a little mad, infected with the madness of distance, of travel, the expanding horizon, no sleep comes, an uneasiness round the fire. So one starts a story, to beat back the fear. All listen till they sleep, the story dies unfinished with the embers. Next day, on. On. Like the Prince of the Dharma wandering among the stars of the Big Dipper, seeking his ancestral grove. On. To some end, some grace . . . achieved. Not given.

  Silence. Silence. Last words spanned light years.

  —Navigare necesse es. Vivare no es necesse.

  THE NOBEL LAUREATE

  Robert H. Curtis

  The members of the Council were uncertain. Usually there was harmony but whenever administration of this particular population was on the agenda, uncharacteristic sighs echoed through the chamber.

  “Should we give up?” the Director asked patiently. He queried merely to elicit a response, not to indicate preference.

  “I don’t believe that they are capable of learning, real learning,” the Minister of State said bitterly. “I gave Cleon to the Athenians and they chose to allow him to desecrate a portion of their history and for how long did they remember?”

  “Ah yes, Cleon,” the Minister of Music recalled. “Now I used a different approach. I gave the lyre to Nero along with a generous spirit. The lyre to soothe, the spirit to be distributed.” He shook his head, disturbed by the recollection. “For the end result, I accept neither credit nor blame. But the point is that although inadvertent, it paralleled the purposeful exercise of our esteemed Minister of State. Again, they failed to reject tyranny. And I echo his pessimism. For how long did they remember?”

  “During what they called the Dark Ages, I gave them what they called the black plague and repeated the dose several times. They profited not.” The Minister of Health was inclined toward dogmatism and toward punishment.

  “I gave them Torquemada,” the Minister of Justice said simply.

  Each of the Ministers spoke in turn and the litany of repeated failure was unpleasant to hear and seemed to answer the initial question of the Director.

  Finally it was the turn of the Minister of Art. He was the oldest and wisest of them and they deferred to him. He always spoke last. The Director wanted it that way.

  “One might argue,” the Minister of Art said, “that we are being a bit impatient.” He turned to the Minister of Music. “After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

  The Minister of Music smiled politely at the small joke.

  “But,” the Minister of Art continued, “we are not being impatient. I, for one, insist that we have too often been troubled by them. They have a parable: burnt child fire dreadeth. Though given the opportunity to avoid the flame, they consistently have chosen to feed it. Often, their so-called lower forms act with more humanity than they do.”

  “Furthermore,” the Minister of Knowledge added, “so many of them prefer neither to contemplate nor to learn. They seem to eschew their brain’s highest cortical operations and opt instead for its thalamic response of blind rage.”

  “Exactly,” the Minister of Art said. “And they never blame themselves for the results; so my plan, provided of course that we agree, is finally to change all that. Now I have in mind this no-talent guy who . . .”

  Was the jangling a real sound or did it belong to a world of dreams? And as the unconscious of his subconscious wrestled with the noise, a constant anxiety reasserted itself. What in this world is real? And then the core of his discomfort. Was he real and had his work in truth culminated in the miracle that his mind, night after night, refused to accept. Cogito, ergo sum? Finally he became aware simultaneously, of the telephone ringing and of his heart pounding. He looked over at the alarm clock which glowed in the dark: 3:15 A.M. It had to be very bad—mother or father. He wasn’t that kind of doctor, not in practice, not the kind who was frequently summoned from sleep by insistent ringing demanding services. He was a researcher, so the call meant personal news. He turned on the end table light and reached for the phone. Out of the comer of his eye, he saw Ruth, roused from a deep slumber, looking worried and helpless.

  “Hello.”

  “Doctor Goldberg?”

  “Yes, this is Avrum Goldberg.” Get on with it man.

  “You’ve heard the news? About the prize?”

  “No. Who is this?” Avrum was relieved that the call was not about one of his parents.

  “Fred Emerson, sir. UPI. Sorry about the hour but I thought you’d be up. The news came in from Stockholm. You’ve won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Congratulations.” There was a brief pause. “Can you give me a statement, sir?”

  Avrum held his hand over the receiver. He pointed to his chest. “Nobel Prize, Medicine,” he whispered to his wife. Suddenly, her arms encircled him. She was sobbing, and he could feel the dampness of her tears.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yes. Emerson is it? I’m thrilled and surprised and honored and every damn cliché you can think of to tell your wire service. It’s wonderful and you can wake my family and me any time you want with news like this. Thank you.”

  “Weren’t you pretty certain that you would get the prize, Doctor Goldberg? I mean, the nature of your work . . .”

  “I knew I was in the running but let me tell you Emerson, I’m surprised. Very surprised. Really surprised. And thrilled and honored.” Euphoria was overtaking him.

  “How do you plan to spend the prize money?”

  “Well, look, Mr. Emerson. It’s not even 3:30 yet and I want to discuss what you’ve told me with my family. I’ll have more answers later. There’s usually a press conference for this sort of thing, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, sir. They’re planning to set something up later in the day. At the hospital if that’s convenient with you.”

  “I’ll be there. And please come up and introduce yourself, Emerson. I want to meet the man who first told me the news and shake his hand.”

  “See you at four P.M. then, Doctor. That’s the time I heard mentioned.”

  “Thanks again.” Avrum slowly placed the receiver back in its cradle. He moved with the same deliberation and precision he had applied to his research work and that had led him, inexorably, to the pinnacle of recognition of which he had just been apprised. Then he let out several war whoops and he and Ruth danced, hora style, around the bedroom as the bewildered faces of their three children appeared one by one at the door.

  “Listen Goldbergs,” Ruth announced to her startled brood. “Your father has just won the Nobel Prize.”

  “But Avrum, are you sure?” Mrs. Sarah Goldberg’s voice in Santa Monica, California, retained the accents and emphases of its genesis in Krakow, Poland. And her question reassured her son that living the good life in sunny California had deprived her not at all of her inbuilt pessimism and compulsion.

  “Yes, Mother. I’m sure. The phone has been ringing all morning. I finally took it off the hook.” This is ridiculous, Avrum thought. Here I am a forty-one-year-old winner of the Nobel Prize and I still have to convince my mother that I’m a good boy. “Listen, let me talk to Dad for a minute.”

  Now the voice at the other end was hoarse and the accent was German. Hans Goldberg was an emotional man and obviously had begun to cry when his wife relayed the news that their son was transmitting from New York. “Avrum. We’re so proud of you, your mother and me. You’ve made an old man very happy. You’ve always been a hard
worker and a good boy and a smart boy. You deserve the prize. But I was as proud of you yesterday as I am today. Still, you’ve made an old man very happy.”

  “What’s with the old bit. Dad?” Avrum noted that his father’s priorities regarding his only child were still intact. California had not corrupted Hans any more than it had Sarah. “You’re sixty-six and Mother is sixty-one. You’re not fossils.”

  “You’re right, Avrum. Your mother says I have a tendency to make us sound decrepit. But I can tell you one thing, I feel twenty years old right now.”

  “Wonderful, Dad. Just don’t do anything foolish.” After Avrum hung up the phone, he thought about his parents and all they had given him. He wondered about the horrors of their European life of which they never spoke.

  The auditorium of New York Hospital was filled with reporters and cameramen. The cameramen were lined up along both side aisles and the ceiling lights reflected off the flash units. Midway down the center aisle, the pool television cameraman was watching the monitor as he received instructions from the director who was sitting in a truck parked on York Avenue. An assistant sat in the center chair of the stage platform, alone in the glare of the TV floodlights. Even though it was past 4 P.M., nobody from the hospital staff had entered the room yet and this added to the tension. Even the most experienced and cynical of the newsmen assembled here for the press conference felt unfamiliar tingles in his spine because in many ways, this was the most important event he had ever covered. The hubbub of conversation paradoxically was more restrained than usual. This was a solemn, albeit joyous occasion. Few in the room—practically no one of the over-forty group—had escaped the ravages of cancer. Not the direct ravages, for this was the working press, healthy and vigorous for the most part. But almost everyone had a mother or a father, or a grandparent, or a brother or sister, or a child, or an aunt or uncle who had either succumbed to cancer or had barely escaped, thereafter carrying the scars of terror the disease inflicted. And now, today, the work of Dr. Avrum Goldberg had received official sanction. Finally, with the endorsement of the Swedish Academy, the long-awaited cure was authenticated. It was all right to breathe easier. This was for real.