Star Science Fiction 2 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Frederik Pohl

  I laugh too. “Not need to telepath here!”

  He say, “Yes, on Earth we can be blind with the blind, and we will never miss our vision. While I was here I was happy to share myself by speaking. When I went home I could share only with other . . . damaged . . . people. I had to go home to find out that I did not feel damaged when I was here, so I came back.”

  I look to ship, to wondering silents. I say, “What name you have here?”

  He say, “They called me George.”

  “I think, I have message for you: Elena dying for you. I say, “Elena waiting for you.”

  He make large shout and hug on me and run. I cry, “Wait! wait!” He wait, but not wanting. I say, “I learn talk like you, word and word, and one day find Elena for me too.”

  He hit on me gladly, say, “All right. I’ll help you.”

  We go down hill togetherly, most muchly homelike. Behind, ship wait, ship wait, silents watch and wonder. Then ship load up with all pity I need no more, scream away up to stars.

  I have a happy now that I get sick lose telepathy come here learn talk find home, por Dios.

  <>

  * * * *

  A. J. BUDRYS

  Science-fiction writers are coming along younger and younger every year; for example, take twenty-two-year-old Algis Budrys, possibly the only holder of a captain’s commission in the Lithuanian Army ever to appear in the pages of a science-fiction magazine. Of Budrys’s first dozen published stories, four were at once snapped up for anthologies of the best science fiction in the field, and his first novel was signed by a publisher before he even had it written. It’s quite a record for a young fellow; and to show that his early brilliance was no flash in the pan, you need only examine his latest story, entitled-

  The Congruent People

  “The tie,” Dexter Bergenholm’s wife said dryly just as he put his hand on the doorknob. “It doesn’t match your socks.”

  Bergenholm turned the knob and pulled the door open. “It’s all right, dear. Nobody’ll notice. Besides, I haven’t got time to change it.”

  “Change it.”

  Bergenholm shut the door and went back to change his tie.

  Nevertheless, the first chisel-mark had yet to be put on the shape of the day. Anything that he did or had done to him before he left the apartment was only so much routine —in a class with waking up, and similar invariables. It was only the world outside his apartment door that each day brought him something special, something that happened on that day, and on that day alone, and thus established its individuality.

  All days begin like other days. Colored by half-remembered dreams and half-visualized anticipations though it may be, a day is a day are days like the rest of them, until the first thing happens to mark this off as (a) the Day the Shoelace Finally Broke, or, (b) the Day the Rent is Due, or, (c) etcetera.

  Therefore, for Dexter Bergenholm, the Day did not really begin until he had left his apartment, whistlingGloria, ridden down in the elevator, crossed Fourteenth Street into Avenue A, reached the newsstand at A and Thirteenth, and seen the well-dressed man with the graying burnsides collect a nickel from the newsdealer and drop a paper on the counter.

  Note, please, that this is not superficially different from dropping a nickel and collecting a paper. Dexter Bergenholm, however, chanced to notice this inverted form of barter.

  That is to say, his subconscious noted it, and clamored to impress this fact on his conscious, which, by now, was so used to the accepted rituals of Buying the Paper that it didn’t even blink, but when Bergenholm laid his nickel down, and, naturally, got the paper the well-dressed man had just dropped, his subconscious came striking home with a heavy hand. The headline read:

  “STAGE ONE’S STILL SQUABBLING AT U.N.”

  Bergenholm’s breath whistled out, “Hooooh!” and he craned his neck to look at the next Times on the stack. That headline read:

  “U.N. DISARMAMENT TALKS CONTINUE”

  Odd, he thought. He looked more closely at the paper in his hand. A gag, maybe?

  If so, it was a thoroughly worked-out one. In the familiar modified Old English type, the paper announced itself as The New York Times, and the date, as it should have been, was May 6, 1954. But the weather report predicted: “Rain from 6:30 to 11:54 A.M., followed by cloudy to 2:17 P.M., followed by scattered showers falling between 2:1701 and 3:0350, 4:56 and 6:3906, and from 10:0248 continuing into tomorrow, with interspersed cloudiness.”

  Ah? thought Bergenholm, followed byuh! Even for the Times, this was meterology on an unexpected scale.

  He didn’t have time for a closer examination just then. Instead he bought a copy of the “DISARMAMENT TALKS CONTINUE” Times with another nickel, pushed both papers under his arm, and ran for the bus. He was, to a large extent preoccupied. But not preoccupied enough not to notice that the well-dressed man was flagging down a moving van at the other corner.

  The van stopped, slid open a panel in its side, and then admitted him. Bergenholm caught a glimpse of seats and passengers inside the van, and a strap-festooned horizontal rail with customers clinging to the straps and reading their newspapers with the same dogged apathy as the riders in Bergenholm’s own bus. As a matter of fact, he could almost have sworn he saw the conductor hand the well-dressed man a dime as he got on.

  At lunchtime, he compared the two papers with exhaustive thoroughness. He discovered that both versions carried approximately the same news items, but that while one newspaper dealt rather seriously with the troubles of the world, the other reported the facts with a touch of tongue-in-cheek amusement at the way the Stage One’s were bumbling along.

  Never was there any overt explanations of what “Stage One” meant, but the sense was there, as though a superior culture were describing the activities of something just one or two steps above the savage. There were other disquieting points, as well.

  Granting that the strange newspaper was not a hoax, then the culture which had produced it was technologically superior to the one in which Dexter Bergenholm lived. The weather report, for instance, and the advertising. Macys’ was selling radar-piloted motorized perambulators, it seemed, and Gimbels’ was selling a similar model for $1.98 less. Macys’ audiovisual Plug-it-Yourself telephone extensions, however, figured at6% less for cash, came out cheaper than Gimbels’.

  Bergenholm considered the possibility of time travel. Tomorrow’s newspaper was not exactly a new idea. But the dates on both papers were the same. He turned to the masthead. Exactly the same people filled the same positions. The baseball results were identical.

  Was it a hoax? Then what about the moving van that was a bus?

  His glance crossed over the front page of the newspaper again. And this time he saw that it was not The New York Times at all. His eye, accustomed to seeing the same thing in the group of modified Old English characters every day, had betrayed him. It wasA New York Times.

  And, of course, as you noticed, it wasn’t Macy’s and Gimbel’s.

  By eight o’clock the following morning, Dexter Bergenholm was completely ready to accept the idea of parallel worlds. His wife ran off him like water off a duck’s back, and the evening news broadcast seemed much less ominous when considered in the light of what A New York Times would have said about the same disasters.

  As a matter of fact, perhaps, if he got down to the newsstand five minutes late again, he would again be able to get the copy the well-dressed man left. With that thought in mind, he dawdled over his breakfast until his wife almost pushed him out the door, and then stopped the elevator at every floor. He reached the newsstand at exactly the same time as he had the day before.

  The well-dressed man was there again. This time, Dexter noticed that his elegantly-cut suit lapped from right to left as it buttoned in front. When the white-cuffed wrist slid out of the sleeve as the man dropped his paper, Dexter saw that he wore his watch on his right wrist.

  But most of Dexter’s faculties were concentrated on getting that newsp
aper. He realized with a leap of his heart that a fat, pipe-puffing man in a Homburg was going to reach it first. Or would have. The chubby fingers had just touched A New York Times when the well-dressed man suddenly took a step back, and collided with the Homburged man. During that second’s delay, Dexter got the newspaper with an eel-like insinuation of his arm past the two men.

  Once away from the stand, he opened the paper avidly. This time the headline read:

  “THEY’RE STILL AT IT.”

  He ignored everything else on the page and searched out the weather report. The prediction for today was for “Generally sunny and mild, except between 11:0543 and 11:1026 A.M., when an artificially seeded cloud will be moved in under Authorization 56, Sec. D (Met. Admin. R&R).”

  So, an artificially seeded cloud would be moved in, eh? This put a different light on things. Up to now, his impression had been that of a parallel world standing slightly apart from his own, regarding the childish goings-on with an air of faint amusement. But now it seemed that these people were actually meddling with things in the Stage One world.

  He looked around for the well-dressed man, and saw him standing on the opposite corner, looking up the street. Dexter followed the line of his sight, and saw the moving van that was a bus coming toward the corner.

  He stood irresolute for about a moment, then made up his mind. Tucking the paper under his arm, he sprinted across the street and reached the corner just as the moving van pulled up. Propelled by his curiosity, he followed the well-dressed man aboard, and held out his hand for his dime with well-feigned detachment on his face, as he kept his eyes on the well-dressed man. Walking-up the aisle, he dropped into a seat behind him.

  From the inside, the van looked just like any other bus. Or, rather, like what a bus should look like in about ten years. The seats were more comfortable, and local air conditioners made smoking possible. There was nothing spectacularly special about the windows except that they were clean, and invisible from the outside.

  The well-dressed man turned around and held out his hand across the back of his seat. “How do you do, Mr. Bergenholm. Glad to have you aboard.”

  Dexter gaped, and then cursed himself for a fool at the same time. Here he’d been proceeding blithely on the assumption that his discovery of the parallel world was entirely accidental, when actually, considered in retrospect, it was fairly obvious that the entire chain of events had been part of an adroit maneuver. The paper had been left for him to see, and his glimpse of the van-bus interior had been equally contrived.

  And here he was on the bus, presumably surrounded by people who were not quite human. He looked up nervously, and saw that the well-dressed man was actually smiling. He also saw the outstretched hand, and realized that he was being welcomed. And that was more disquieting than anything else would have been.

  He reached out numbly and took the offered hand, shaking with some hesitation. “How do you do,” he murmured.

  The well-dressed man widened his smile. “It’s rather disconcerting, I imagine. But, don’t worry, it’ll all be explained to you. My name is Hubert De La Meter. I’ve been assigned to your indoctrination.”

  Indoctrination? The word sounded almost ominous, even though it actually wasn’t. But any kind of explanation would be better than the guesses which were all he had to go on at the present.

  “Thank you,” he managed to say.

  “Oh, don’t thank me, Mr. Bergenholm,” De La Meter said with a deprecating gesture of his hand. “You’ve certainly earned the privilege.”

  Ah? How?

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite-” he began.

  “Understand?” De La Meter’s voice was smooth with charm. “I wouldn’t feel any apprehension, if I were you, Mr. Bergenholm. You’ll soon see that you’re among friends —perhaps the best friends you’ve ever had.

  “But we’re getting close to your stop. Could you come to my apartment after supper tonight? Or perhaps you’d care to join me at a restaurant for dinner? We’d have time for a thorough explanation.”

  “Well—uh—couldn’t you drop over to my place?”

  De La Meter’s expression became slightly uncomfortable. “I’m afraid not,” he said, picking his words carefully. “I’m afraid—well, we’ve found cases like this work out much more smoothly if the wife or husband of the selectee isn’t burdened with tiresome details.”

  Bergenholm cocked his brow. His mind made a prodigious leap. “You mean—I’m in, whatever that means, but my wife isn’t?”

  De La Meter touched his finger tips to the knuckles of his other hand. His face reflected mingled embarrassment and relief. “That is substantially the case, yes.”

  Hmm. Dexter, seeing his stop approach, got up bemusedly. “That’s very interesting.”

  “You’ll find that the devotion of some thought to the problem will generally provide you with experimental data which will make your ultimate decision easier,” De La Meter said.

  Meaning that he would remember what a dog she was, Dexter deciphered. “Yes, no doubt,” he said. He moved over to the door, breaking the photocell circuit that automatically brought the bus into its stop, which, as before, was the corner opposite the Stage One stop.

  “Wait!” De La Meter said hastily. “My address.”

  He held out a card with a few lines penned on it. Dexter took it and put it in his pocket. “Thank you,” he said absently, and stepped off the bus as the door opened. “No doubt,” he added to himself.

  * * * *

  During his lunch hour, he called his wife from a drugstore phone. As he reached for a dime, he remembered the one the conductor had given him. He looked at it closely. It appeared to be a perfectly ordinary dime, except for the motto, which now read “E Omnibus Pluri.”

  Dropping it into the slot, he spun out the number, but no one answered the phone. Well, his wife might have met a friend for lunch. He hung up and went back to work without devoting any inordinate thought to it.

  He wasn’t sure, yet, what he was going to do. Despite the fact that he’d had overwhelming proof to the contrary, there was still the faint possibility that the whole thing was just an elaborate practical joke, and, though no logic could support that supposition, it nevertheless hung on to one edge of his mind.

  He stepped into a puddle left by the seeded rain that had fallen just before lunch and cursed himself again.

  He realized that the parallel world could maintain itself indefinitely within the confines of Stage One, its inhabitants and their facilities concealed by the gestalt-conscious workings of the human mind.

  The business with the papers, for instance. He had seen a transaction involving a nickel and a newspaper. All his experience told him that there was only one logical result possible from the interaction of these two factors. So, he hadn’t even noticed that the usual process had been reversed—and he would have continued not to notice, if he hadn’t bought that particular paper and sent his conscious rummaging frantically through his subconscious data files in an attempt to find an explanation.

  A New York Times. A configuration of symbols which had never once varied in his lifetime. His eye saw the configuration—or something that resembled it closely—and read it as it always had been, not as it actually was. Macys’ instead of Macy’s. A man walked down the street, wearing a perfectly ordinary suit. Who would notice which side it buttoned on?

  But why had they invaded—was that the word?—this world, and why did they claim to want him as one of themselves?

  Did they really mean it, or was this some elaborate means of getting rid of him, now that he knew of their existence?

  He did something he would not have done under ordinary circumstances, or in an ordinary state of mind. As soon as he got back to the office, he used a company phone to try to get his wife again. When nobody answered, he sat looking out of the window, his confused eyes on the generally sunny and mild day.

  He tried calling his wife several times during the remainder of the afternoon, but apparentl
y she hadn’t come back. That, added to the accumulating strain of what had happened in the past two days, was beginning to get on his nerves.

  Should he go to see De La Meter? Or should he simply go home and try to ignore the parallel world? He couldn’t hope to escape it, he knew, but perhaps, if he gave them his word he wouldn’t betray them, they’d agree to leave him alone.

  His jerky-paced trips to the water cooler became more and more frequent, until, finally, he had worked himself into a frantic lather. By five o’clock, he had no intention of getting in touch with De La Meter, or anyone else except his wife. She still hadn’t answered the phone. The only thing to do was to go home and wait for her there.

  He tried one last phone call before he left. It was as fruitless as the others, and he almost ran out of the elevator on the main floor and out into the street. He didn’t have time to wait for buses. Moreover, there was an empty cab just pulling in to the curb in front of the building.

  He pulled the door open and got in hastily, never noticing that the door was trimmed in green-and-white diamonds instead of checkers. “Fourteenth and Avenue A, please,” he said in a nervous voice.

  “Certainly, sir,” the cabby answered. He pushed his flag down—to the left, instead of the right—and pulled away from the curb.

  * * * *

  Dexter Bergenholm’s mind raced on. For the first time, he was actively bothered by the thought that something might have happened to his wife. Her habits were usually ironclad, and being home to listen to a string of soap operas was one of them.

  What was happening? He had already discovered that his previous conception of the world was a fiction, that he had lived his entire life according to a set of arbitrary and preconceived notions. He couldn’t believe what had been proved to be false, he couldn’t believe what the last two days seemed to prove, and he couldn’t believe De La Meter’s friendly intentions. And now he didn’t know what had happened to his wife.