The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction Fifth Series

by Edited by Anthony Boucher

  "You can?" He turned speculative eyes toward her. "You can," he amended his words to a statement.

  "Do you want to forget?" Valancy asked.

  "Of course not," he snapped. Then, "I'm sorry. It's just that I don't often work miracles in the wilderness. But if I did it once, maybe—"

  "Then you understand what you did?" Valancy asked smiling.

  "Well, no, but if I could—if you would— There must be some way—"

  "Yes," Valancy said, "but you'd have to have a Sensitive working with you, and Bethie is it as far as Sensitives go right now."

  "You mean it's true what I saw—what you told me about the—the Home? You're extraterrestrials?"

  "Yes," Valancy sighed. "At least our grandparents were." Then she smiled. "But we're learning where we can fit into this world. Someday—someday we'll be able—" She changed the subject abruptly.

  "You realize, of course, Dr. Curtis, that we'd rather you wouldn't discuss Bendo or us with anyone else. We would rather be just people to Outsiders."

  He laughed shortly, "Would I be believed if I did?"

  "Maybe no, maybe so," Valancy said. "Maybe only enough to start people nosing around. And that would be too much. We have a bad situation here and it will take a long time to erase—" Her voice slipped into silence, and I knew she had dropped into thoughts to brief him on the local problem. How long is a thought? How fast can you think of hell—and heaven? It was that long before the doctor blinked and drew a shaky breath.

  "Yes," he said. "A long time."

  "If you like," Valancy said, "I can block your ability to talk of us."

  "Nothing doing!" the doctor snapped. "I can manage my own censorship, thanks."

  Valancy flushed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be condescending."

  "You weren't," the doctor said. "I'm just on the prod tonight. It has been a day, and that's for sure!"

  "Hasn't it, though?" I smiled and then, astonished, rubbed my cheeks because tears had begun to spill down my face. I laughed, embarrassed, and couldn't stop. My laughter turned suddenly to sobs and I was bitterly ashamed to hear myself wailing like a child. I clung to Valency's strong hands until I suddenly slid into a warm welcome darkness that had no thinking or fearing or need for believing in anything outrageous, but only in sleep.

  ~ * ~

  It was a magic year and it fled on impossibly fast wings, the holidays flicking past like telephone poles by a railroad train. Christmas was especially magical because my angels actually flew and the glory actually shone round about because their robes had hems woven of sunlight—I watched the girls weave them. And Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, complete with cardboard antlers that wouldn't stay straight, really took off and circled the room. And as our Mary and Joseph leaned raptly over the manger, their faces solemn and intent on the miracle, I felt suddenly that they . were really seeing, really kneeling beside the manger in Bethlehem.

  Anyway the months fled, and the blossoming of Bendo was beautiful to see. There was laughter and frolicking and even the houses grew subtly into color. Green things crept out where only rocks had been before, and a tiny tentative stream of water had begun to flow down the creek again. They explained to me that they had to take it slow because people might wonder if the creek filled overnight! Even the rough steps up to the houses were becoming overgrown because they were seldom used, and I was becoming accustomed to seeing my pupils coming to school like a bevy of bright birds, playing tag in the treetops. I was surprised at myself for adjusting so easily to all the incredible things done around me by the People, and I was pleased that they accepted me so completely. But I always felt a pang when the children escorted me home—with me, they had to walk.

  But all things have to end, and one May afternoon I sat staring into my top desk drawer, the last to be cleaned out, wondering what to do with the accumulation of useless things in it. But I wasn't really seeing the contents of the drawer, I was concentrating on the great weary emptiness that pressed my shoulders down and weighted my mind. "It's not fair," I muttered aloud and illogically, "to show me heaven and then snatch it away."

  "That's about what happened to Moses, too, you know."

  My surprised start spilled an assortment of paper clips and thumbtacks from the battered box I had just picked up.

  "Well, forevermore!" I said, righting the box. "Dr. Curtis! What are you doing here?"

  "Returning to the scene of my crime," he smiled, coming through the open door. "Can't keep my mind off Abie. Can't believe he recovered from all that—shall we call it repair work? I have to check him every time I'm anywhere near this part of the country—and I still can't believe it."

  "But he has."

  "He has for sure! I had to fish him down from a treetop to look him over—" The doctor shuddered dramatically and laughed. "To see him hurtling down from the top of that tree curdled my blood! But there's hardly even a visible scar left."

  "I know," I said, jabbing my finger as I started to gather up the tacks. "I looked last night. I'm leaving tomorrow, you know." I kept my eyes resolutely down to the job at hand. "I have this last straightening up to do."

  "It's hard, isn't it?" he said, and we both knew he wasn't talking about straightening up.

  "Yes," I said soberly. "Awfully hard. Earth gets heavier every day."

  "I find it so lately, too. But at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that you—"

  I moved uncomfortably and laughed.

  "Well, they do say: those as can, do; those as can't, teach."

  "Umm," the doctor said noncommittally, but I could feel his eyes on my averted face and I swiveled away from him, groping for a better box to put the clips in.

  "Going to summer school?" His voice came from near the windows.

  "No," I sniffed cautiously. "No, I swore when I got my Master's that I was through with education—at least the kind that's come-every-day-and-learn-something."

  "Hmm!" There was amusement in the doctor's voice. "Too bad. I'm going to school this summer. Thought you might like to go there, too."

  "Where?" I asked bewildered, finally looking at him.

  "Cougar Canyon summer school," he smiled. "Most exclusive."

  "Cougar Canyon! Why that's where Karen—"

  "Exactly," he said. "That's where the other Group is established. I just came from there. Karen and Valancy want us both to come. Do you object to being an experiment?"

  "Why, no—" I cried, and then, cautiously, "What kind of an experiment?" Visions of brains being carved up swam through my mind.

  The doctor laughed. "Nothing as gruesome as you're imagining, probably." Then he sobered and sat on the edge of my desk. "I've been to Cougar Canyon a couple of times, trying to figure out some way to get Bethie to help me when I come up against a case that's a puzzler. Valancy and Karen want to try a period of training with Outsiders—" that's us—he grimaced wryly, "to see how much of what they are can be transmitted by training. You know Bethie is half Outsider. Only her mother was of the People."

  He was watching me intently.

  "Yes," I said absently, my mind whirling, "Karen told me."

  "Well, do you want to try it? Do you want to go?"

  "Do I want to go!" I cried, scrambling the clips into a rubber-band box. "How soon do we leave? Half an hour? Ten minutes? Did you leave the motor running?"

  "Woops, woops!" The doctor took me by both arms and looked soberly into my eyes.

  "We can't set our hopes too high," he said quietly. "It may be that for such knowledge we aren't teachable—"

  I looked soberly back at him, my heart crying in fear that it might be so.

  "Look," I said slowly. "If you had a hunger, a great big gnawing-inside hunger and no money and you saw a bakery shop window, which would you do? Turn your back on it? Or would you press your nose as close as you could against the glass and let at least your eyes feast? I know what I'd do." I reached for my sweater.

  "And, you know, you never can tell. The shop door might open a
crack, maybe—someday—"

  <>

  ~ * ~

  CHARLES BEAUMONT

  “If ever,” Ray Bradbury wrote in a recent letter, “I could safely predict a large, a very large future for anyone, it is for Charles Beaumont.” That I’m in full agreement is evidenced by the fact that F&SF has printed six Beaumont stories in something over a year, plus a regular column of Beaumont film reviews; it’s obviously an editor’s duty to publish as much Beaumont as possible before, like Bradbury, he is Discovered by the major slicks and begins selling each story for more than the entire budget of any s.f. magazine. I don’t think you’ll find many stories combining such a disturbing start and such a joyous ending as this touching fable of

  THE VANISHING AMERICAN

  He got the notion shortly after five o’clock; at least, a part of him did, a small part hidden down beneath all the conscious cells—he didn’t get the notion until some time later. At exactly 5 p.m. the bell rang. At two minutes after, the chairs began to empty. There was the vast slamming of drawers, the straightening of rulers, the sound of bones snapping and mouths yawning and feet shuffling tiredly.

  Mr. Minchell relaxed. He rubbed his hands together and relaxed and thought how nice it would be to get up and go home, like the others. But of course there was the tape, only three-quarters finished. He would have to stay.

  He stretched and said good night to the people who filed past him. As usual, no one answered. When they had gone, he set his fingers pecking again over the keyboard. The click-clicking grew loud in the suddenly still office, but Mr. Minchell did not notice. He was lost in the work. Soon, he knew, it would be time for the totaling, and his pulse quickened at the thought of this.

  He lit a cigarette. Heart tapping, he drew in smoke and released it.

  He extended his right hand and rested his index and middle fingers on the metal bar marked total bar.

  There was a smooth low metallic grinding, followed by absolute silence.

  Mr. Minchell opened one eye, dragged it from the ceiling on down to the adding machine.

  He groaned, slightly.

  The total read: 18037447.

  “God.” He stared at the figure and thought of the fifty-three pages of manifest, the three thousand separate rows of figures that would have to be checked again. “God.”

  The day was lost, now. Irretrievably. It was too late to do anything. Madge would have supper waiting, and F.G. didn’t approve of overtime; also—

  He looked at the total again. At the last two digits.

  He sighed. Forty-seven. And thought, startled: Today, for the Lord’s sake, is my birthday! Today I am forty—what? forty-seven. And that explains the mistake, I suppose. Subconscious kind of thing . . .

  Slowly he got up and looked around the deserted office.

  Then he went to the dressing room and got his hat and his coat and put them on, carefully.

  “Pushing fifty now . . .”

  The outside hall was dark. Mr. Minchell walked softly to the elevator and punched the down button. “Forty-seven,” he said, aloud; then, almost immediately, the light turned red and the thick door slid back noisily. The elevator operator, a bird-thin, tan-fleshed girl, swiveled her head, looking up and down the hall. “Going down,” she said.

  “Yes,” Mr. Minchell said, stepping forward.

  “Going down.” The girl clicked her tongue and muttered, “Damn kids.” She gave the lattice gate a tired push and moved the smooth wooden-handled lever in its slot.

  Odd, Mr. Minchell decided, was the word for this particular girl. He wished now that he had taken the stairs. Being alone with only one other person in an elevator had always made him nervous: now it made him very nervous. He felt the tension growing. When it became unbearable, he cleared his throat and said, “Long day.”

  The girl said nothing. She had a surly look, and she seemed to be humming something deep in her throat.

  Mr. Minchell closed his eyes. In less than a minute—during which time he dreamed of the cable snarling, of the car being caught between floors, of himself trying to make small talk with the odd girl for §ix straight hours—he opened his eyes again and walked into the lobby, briskly.

  The gate slammed.

  He turned and started for the doorway. Then he paused, feeling a sharp increase in his heartbeat. A large, red-faced, magnificently groomed man of middle years stood directly beyond the glass, talking with another man.

  Mr. Minchell pushed through the door, with effort. He’s seen me now, he thought. If he asks any questions, though, or anything, I’ll just say I didn’t put it on the time card; that ought to make it all right….

  He nodded and smiled at the large man. “Good night, Mr. Diemel.”

  The man looked up briefly, blinked, and returned to his conversation.

  Mr. Minchell felt a burning come into his face. He hurried on down the street. Now the notion—though it was not even that yet, strictly: it was more a vague feeling—swam up from the bottom of his brain. He remembered that he had not spoken directly to F. J. Diemel for over ten years, beyond a good morning. . . .

  Ice-cold shadows fell off the tall buildings, staining the streets, now. Crowds of shoppers moved along the pavement like juggernauts, exhaustedly, but with great determination. Mr. Minchell looked at them. They all had furtive appearances, it seemed to him, suddenly, even the children, as if each was fleeing from some hideous crime. They hurried along, staring.

  But not, Mr. Minchell noticed, at him. Through him, yes. Past him. As the elevator operator had done, and now F.J. And had anyone said good night?

  He pulled up his coat collar and walked toward the drugstore, thinking. He was forty-seven years old. At the current life-expectancy rate, he might have another seventeen or eighteen years left. And then death.

  If you’re not dead already.

  He paused and for some reason remembered a story he’d once read in a magazine. Something about a man who dies and whose ghost takes up his duties, or something; anyway, the man didn’t know he was dead—that was it. And at the end of the story, he runs into his own corpse.

  Which is pretty absurd: he glanced down at his body. Ghosts don’t wear $36 suits, nor do they have trouble pushing doors open, nor do their corns ache like blazes, and what the devil is wrong with me today?

  He shook his head.

  It was the tape, of course, and the fact that it was his birthday. That was why his mind was behaving so foolishly.

  He went into the drugstore. It was an immense place, packed with people. He walked to the cigar counter, trying not to feel intimidated, and reached into his pocket. A small man elbowed in front of him and called loudly: “Gimme couple nickels, will you, Jack?” The clerk scowled and scooped the change out of his cash register. The small man scurried off. Others took his place. Mr. Minchell thrust his arm forward. “A pack of Luckies, please,” he said. The clerk whipped his fingers around a pile of cellophaned packages and, looking elsewhere, droned: “Twenty-six.” Mr. Minchell put his twenty-six cents exactly on the glass shelf. The clerk shoved the cigarettes toward the edge and picked up the money, deftly. Not once did he lift his eyes.

  Mr. Minchell pocketed the Luckies and went back out of the store. He was perspiring now, slightly, despite the chill wind. The word “ridiculous” lodged in his mind and stayed there. Ridiculous, yes, for heaven’s sake. Still, he thought— now just answer the question—isn’t it true? Can you honestly say that that clerk saw you?

  Or that anyone saw you today?

  Swallowing dryly, he walked another two blocks, always in the direction of the subway, and went into a bar called the Chez When. One drink would not hurt, one small, stiff, steadying shot.

  The bar was a gloomy place, and not very warm, but there was a good crowd. Mr. Minchell sat down on a stool and folded his hands. The bartender was talking animatedly with an old woman, laughing with boisterous good humor from time to time. Mr. Minchell waited. Minutes passed. The bartender looked up several times, bu
t never made a move to indicate that he had been a customer.

  Mr. Minchell looked at his old gray overcoat, the humbly floraled tie, the cheap sharkskin suit-cloth, and became aware of the extent to which he detested this ensemble. He sat there and detested his clothes for a long time. Then he glanced around. The bartender was wiping a glass, slowly.

  All right, the hell with you. I’ll go somewhere else.

  He slid off the stool. Just as he was about to turn he saw the mirrored wall, pink-tinted and curved. He stopped, peering. Then he almost ran out of the bar.