Selected Stories of Alfred Bester

by Alfred Bester

  “Repeat after me,” the Senior Rabbit said. “On my honor.”

  “On my honor.”

  “I will do my best to do my duty.”

  “I will do my best to do my duty.”

  “For God and my country.”

  “For God and my country.”

  “And to obey the scout law.”

  “And to obey the scout law.”

  “I will help other people at all times.”

  “I will help other people at all times.”

  “And keep myself physically strong.”

  “And keep myself physically strong.”

  “Mentally awake.”

  “Mentally awake.”

  “And morally straight.”

  “And morally straight.”

  “Good. You are now an official Tenderfoot. We’ll start knot-tying tomorrow with the bowline.”

  “Excuse me, sir. What does morally straight mean?”

  “Now watch me,” the debutante said. “First you take a step/And then you take another/And then you take a step/And then you take another/And then, you’re doing the Gazpacho. Now you try it.”

  “But I can’t even walk, Ma’am.”

  “That’s right,” the debutante said brightly. “So how can you dance? Shall we sit this one out? Tell me, have you read any good books lately?”

  “My professor at Rutgers,” the White Rat said, “taught me everything I know. He was a Phi Beta Kappa. He said that we are always faced with problems in the humanities and scientific disciplines and that the most important step is to first decide whether it’s a problem of complexity or perplexity. Now, do you know the difference?”

  “No, sir. I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Hmp! Arrested!”

  “Sir, what is the difference?”

  “George Woodchuck wants to tell you about surveying.”

  “I can’t understand why the Professor said that,” Geo. W. said. “Surveying can be an awfully dull line of work. I wouldn’t want to wish it on my worst enemy.”

  “Then why do you do it, sir?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, I suppose, because I’m the dull type that enjoys it. But you’re not a dull boy; you’re very bright.”

  “Thank you, sir. Why don’t you try me and see if I like it, too?”

  “Well, all right, provided it’s understood that I’m not trying to lay this on you.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Fair enough. Now, a proper surveying job can’t be done unless you’ve got a fix on latitude and longitude. The altitude of the sun gives you your latitude and time gives you your longitude. Got that?”

  “But I can’t tell time.”

  “Of course you can, my boy. You have your biological clock.”

  “I don’t know what that is, sir.”

  “We all have it. You must have it, too. Quick, now. What time is it?”

  “Just before supper.”

  “No! No! How long since the sun culminated, that is, reached its highest altitude in the sky at noon? Quick, now! In hours, minutes and seconds. Off the top of your head.”

  “Six hours, seventeen minutes and five seconds.”

  “It should be three seconds. You’d be out by eight hundred yards.” The Peerless Surveyor patted James generously. “You’re a brilliant boy and you have your biological clock. Tomorrow we will beat the bounds of the farm.”

  “Ladies, I say, Kaff Kaff, women are changeable. Never forget that. We can’t live with them and we can’t live without them. As the great poet wrote: When as in silks my pheasant goes, then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows the liquifaction of her clothes. You are, I am afraid, a little too young for the second stanza which is, to say the least, a trifle bawdy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now we come to the matter of the moment,” the Chairman said. “I hope you’re not colorblind.”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Color perception is essential for survival. Very well, we’ll test you. What is the color of that flower?”

  “It’s the color of an Iris.”

  “I know that, but what color? The name? The name?”

  “Blue?” James said at a venture.

  “It is Marine Purple Navy. And that tulip?”

  “Red?”

  “It is Cerise. Really, my young friend! Survival! Survival! And the lilacs?”

  “Lilac, sir.”

  “Ah! Now you’re exhibiting some perception. Very good. Tomorrow we will study ROYGBIV.”

  “I don’t know what that is, sir.”

  “They are the initial letters of the colors of the spectrum,” the Chairman said severely, and stalked off in a marked manner.

  “Hey, kid.”

  “Yes, your Eminence?”

  “Which one is your father?”

  “The tall one, sir.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Well, he talks a lot, your Eminence; and I listen a lot.”

  “What’s he talk about?”

  “Practically everything. Science and the State of the Nation. Society. Ecology. Books. Ideas. The theater.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know, sir. He also does a lot of cooking when he’s home; mostly in a foreign language.”

  “He does, huh? Say, kid, any chance of him putting out some suet for me? I’m queer for suet.”

  All was not perpetual sweetness and light in the Big Red Schoolhouse; there were unpleasant moments occasionally.

  There was the time that James crawled in cranky. He’d had a bad night owing to a surfeit of chocolate pudding w. whipped cream at supper, and was tired and sullen. He rejected the gracious advances of the debutantes. He made faces while the Professor was lecturing. He was quite impossible. He spoke just one word. It wasn’t creature, it was human, and it wasn’t “Da,” it was “Damn!” Then he began to sob. The creatures, who never cry, gazed at him perplexedly.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s crying,” the voice of the Burmese Princess explained.

  She entered the barn. “I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion, but I managed to get out and came after him. Hello, George. You’re looking handsome today. This must be the Professor. James never told me you were so distinguished. The Chairman and His Eminence are magnificent, as usual. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve admired you through the windows.”

  “Kaff Kaff. I thank your highness.”

  “You ain’t so bad-looking yourself, baby.”

  “Come on, James, we’ll go back to the house.”

  “But is he sick?” the Professor asked.

  “No, just out of sorts. He has a temper, you know, inherited from his mother who is rather Bohemian. Come along, James. Back to the house.”

  The Princess began to vamp James, tickling him with her cuddly fur but moving off a few steps each time he tried to embrace her for comfort. He crawled after her, out of the Schoolhouse and through the grass toward the house.

  “He’ll be all right tomorrow,” she called. “Charming place you have here. Bye, all.”

  “I told you she was a right royalty,” George W. said.

  And there was the time when one of the Endmen reeled into the Schoolhouse singing, “How you gonna keep’em down on the farm after they seen Paree?” He examined the assembly with a bleary eye, rocking slightly. “You’re all plastered,” he informed them. “You’re stoned.” Then he was sick.

  “What’s the matter with our entertaining, I say, thespian friend?” the Chairman inquired.

  “The berries on one of the bushes fermented,” the other Endman explained, “and I couldn’t stop him from eating them. He’s blind drunk.”

  “Actors!” the Senior Rabbit burst out. “Let this be a lesson to you, James. Well, just don’t stand there. Somebody get him out of here and walk him around.”

  “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “The hose is spraying the rose bushes. If we put him under the cold spray…?”<
br />
  “That is keeping yourself mentally awake. By all means put this clown under the hose. I only hope he sits on a thorn.”

  “Connie,” Constance said to Constantine, “I’m worried about Jamie.”

  “Why?”

  “Shouldn’t he be going to pre-school?”

  “Why?”

  “He seems to be arrested.”

  “He isn’t three yet. What do you want, Connie, some sort of prodigy entering Harvard aged ten and blighted for life? I want James to grow up a healthy normal boy without having his mind forced prematurely.”

  “If you will permit me, Professor,” James said, “I would like to disagree with my learned colleague, Moe Mole, on the Big Bang theory of cosmology.”

  “Cosmogony,” the White Rat corrected shortly.

  “Thank you, sir. The idea of a giant proto-atom exploding to produce the expanding universe as we know it today is most attractive but in my opinion is pure romance. I believe in the Steady State theory—that our universe is constantly renewing itself with the birth of new stars and galaxies from the primordial hydrogen.”

  “But what is your proof?” Moses Mole asked.

  “The eternal equation,” James answered. “Energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light raised to the second power.”

  A voice called in human, “James? Jamie? Where are you?”

  “Excuse me, Professor,” James said politely. “I’m wanted.”

  He crawled to the crack in the barn door and squirmed through with difficulty. “Da!” he cried in human.

  “We’ll have to open that door more,” the Professor said irritably. “He’s grown. Why in the world hasn’t he learned how to walk? He’s old enough. When I was his age I had grandchildren.”

  The rabbits and fawns tittered.

  “Class dismissed,” the Professor said. He glared at Moses Mole. “You and your Big Bang theory! Why can’t you help me get microscopes for my biology seminar?”

  “I haven’t come across any underground,” Moe said reasonably. “As a matter of fact I wouldn’t know one if I saw it. Could you describe a microscope mathematically?”

  “E=Mc2,” the Professor snapped and marched off. He was in a terrible state of mind, and his classes were fortunate that they weren’t taking examinations just now. He would have flunked every one of his students.

  The Professor was deeply concerned about James James Morrison Morrison who was past two years old and should be walking and talking human by now. He felt a sense of impending guilt and went to the duck pond for a searching self-examination.

  “Now I am alone,” the White Rat said. The Mallard ducks paddled up to have a look at him but he ignored them. Everybody knows that ducks are incapable of appreciating a solemn soliloquy.

  “The quality of wisdom is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, so who are we mere fardels to do battle with the angels? All I ask, James, is that ye remember me. This day is called Father’s Day. He who shall outlive this day will stand a tiptoe when this day is named and yearly feast his neighbors. Old men forget, but is it not better to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?”

  Then he began something halfway between a growl and a song:

  My father sent me to old Rutgers,

  And resolved that I should be a man,

  And so I settled down

  In that noisy college town

  On the banks of the Old Raritan.

  Her ardent spirit stirred and cheered me

  From the day my college years began

  Gracious Alma Mater mine

  Learning’s fair and honored shrine;

  On the banks of the Old Raritan.

  I love her flaming far-flung banner,

  I love her triumphs proud to scan,

  And I glory in the fame

  That immortalized her name

  On the banks of the Old Raritan.

  My heart clings closer than the ivy

  As life runs out its fleeting span

  To the stately, ancient walls,

  Of her hallowed, classic halls,

  On the banks of the Old Raritan.

  On the banks of the Old Raritan, my boys,

  Where Old Rutgers evermore shall stand,

  For has she not stood since the time of the flood

  On the banks of the Old Raritan.

  Feeling much better, the Professor returned to the Big Red Schoolhouse to prepare his first lecture on the New Math. “Zero,” he said to himself. “One. Ten. Eleven. One hundred. One hundred and one…” He was counting in binary arithmetic.

  Meanwhile, James James Morrison Morrison had finished his lunch (chicken salad, 1 slice bread w. butter, applesauce and milk) and was upstairs in his cot theoretically having a nap, actually in drowsy conversation with the Princess who had made herself comfortable on his chest.

  “I do love you,” James said, “but you take me for granted. All you women are alike.”

  “That’s because you love everything, James.”

  “Shouldn’t everybody?”

  “Certainly not. Everybody should love me, of course, but not everything. It reduces my rank.”

  “Princess, are you really a Burmese Princess?”

  “I thought you said you loved me.”

  “But I happen to know you were born in Brooklyn.”

  “Politics, James. Politics. Daddy, who was also an admiral, was forced to flee Burma at a moment’s notice. He barely had time to throw a few rubies into a flight bag and then came to Brooklyn.”

  “Why Brooklyn?”

  “The plane was hijacked.”

  “What’s a ruby?”

  “Ask your professor,” the Princess snapped.

  “Ah-ha! Jealous. Jealous. I knew I’d get you, sooner or later.”

  “Now who’s taking who for granted?”

  “Me. Shift up to my neck, Princess. I can’t breathe.”

  “You are a male, chauvinist pig,” the Princess said as she obliged. “I’m merely your sex symbol.”

  “Say, why don’t you join Miss Leghorn’s Chickens’ Lib movement?”

  “Me, sir? What have I to do with chickens?”

  “I notice you did all right with my chicken salad. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I saw you up on the table when mama was loading the dishwasher. I thought the mayonnaise was awful.”

  “Commercial.”

  “Can’t you teach mama how to make homemade mayo?”

  “Me, sir? What have I to do with kitchens? I leave that to the help.”

  “Ah-ha! Gotcha again.”

  “I hate you,” the Princess said. “I loathe and execrate you.”

  “You love me,” James James said comfortably. “You love me and you’re stuck with me. I’ve got you in my power.”

  “Are there any cats in the Red Barn?”

  “No,” James laughed. “You’re the one and only Princess on Red Hill.”

  There was an outlandish noise outside; a snarling and screaming in creature voices.

  “What’s that?” James exclaimed.

  The Princess got to the window in a scamper and returned.

  “Just a couple of farm dogs playing with George Woodchuck,” she reported lazily. “Now, as we were saying about me—”

  “Playing? That doesn’t sound like playing to me. I’d better see for myself.”

  “James, you know you can’t walk.”

  “I’m damn well going to walk now.”

  James James hove himself over the edge of the cot and fell to the floor. He gripped the edge of the bed and pulled himself upright. Then he tottered to the window.

  “They aren’t playing with George. He’s in bad trouble.”

  James made his way out of the room, clutching at walls and door frames, managed the stairs by sitting down on every tread, butted the screen door open with his head and was out on the soft meadow, trotting, tottering, falling, picking himself up and driving himself toward the Peerless Sur
veyor who was being torn by two savage mongrels.

  They snarled and snapped as James threw himself over George W. and were quite prepared to come in after both of them. James kicked and flailed at them. He also challenged and cursed them in the creature tongue, using language so frightful that it cannot be reported. The display of courage and determination discouraged the mongrels who at last turned and made off jauntily as though it had only been a game all along. James pulled himself to his knees, picked up George, lurched to his feet and began tottering toward the Big Red Barn.

  “Thank you,” George said.

  “Aw, shut up,” James replied.

  When they reached the Schoolhouse everyone was there. Nothing escapes attention on Red Hill. James James sat down on his fat bottom with the Surveyor still cradled in his arms. The debutantes made sympathetic sounds.

  “Hunters! Hoodlums!” the Senior Rabbit growled. “No one is safe from them. It’s all the fault of the Bleeding Hearts. Understand them. Be kind to them. Help them. Help them do what? Kill.”

  “There is a triangle of Red Hill farm,” Geo. W. said faintly, “measuring exactly one point six acres. It extends into the property next door where Paula, the pig, lives. Tell Paula she must respect our— She must— Our boundar—”

  “I’ll tell her,” James said, and began to cry.

  They took the body of the Woodchuck from his arms and carried it to the woods where they left George exposed to the weather and nature. Creatures do not bury their dead. James was still sitting in the Big Red Schoolhouse, silently weeping.

  “The kid’s a right guy,” one of the Endmen said.

  “Yeah, he’s got moxie. You see the way he fight them dogs to a Mexican stand-off? Two to one against, it was.”

  “Yeah. Hey, kid. Kid. It’s all over now. Kid, you ever hear the one about the guy who goes into a butcher store, you should excuse the expression?” The Endman poked his partner.

  “I’d like a pound of kidleys, please.”

  “You mean kidneys, don’t you?”

  “Well I said kidleys, diddle I?”

  “Oh, funny! Fun-nee! Huh, kid?”

  “He will have to fall into the pond, Kaff Kaff, I say be immersed,” the Chairman said. “He is covered with George’s blood and the two Commies will ask questions.”

  “That’s Connies.”

  “No matter. Will our lovely young debutantes be kind enough to convey our valiant friend to the pond and—”