The Mammoth Book Of Science Fiction

by Mike Ashley (Editor)

“No.”

  “You give me your word of honor?”

  “Yes,” Bibleman said.

  “You are herewith expelled from the College,” Major Casals said.

  “What?” Bibleman said.

  Casals pressed a button on his desk. “Come in.”

  The door opened and Mary Lorne stood there.

  “I do not represent the College,” Major Casals said to Bibleman. “You were set up.”

  “I am the College,” Mary said.

  Major Casals said, “Sit down, Bibleman. She will explain it to you before you leave.”

  “I failed?” Bibleman said.

  “You failed me,” Mary said. “The purpose of the test was to teach you to stand on your own feet, even if it meant challenging authority. The covert message of institutions is: ‘Submit to that which you psychologically construe as an authority.’ A good school trains the whole person; it isn’t a matter of data and information; I was trying to make you morally and psychologically complete. But a person can’t be commanded to disobey. You can’t order someone to rebel. All I could do was give you a model, an example.”

  Bibleman thought, When she talked back to Casals at the initial orientation. He felt numb.

  “The Panther Engine is worthless,” Mary said, “as a technological artifact. This is a standard test we use on each student, no matter what study course he is assigned.”

  “They all got a readout on the Panther Engine?” Bibleman said with disbelief. He stared at the girl.

  “They will, one by one. Yours came very quickly. First you are told that it is classified; you are told the penalty for releasing classified information; then you are leaked the information. It is hoped that you will make it public or at least try to make it public.”

  Major Casals said, “You saw on the third page of the printout that the engine supplied an economical source of hydroelectric power. That was important. You knew that the public would benefit if the engine design was released.”

  “And legal penalties were waived,” Mary said. “So what you did was not done out of fear.”

  “Loyalty,” Bibleman said. “I did it out of loyalty.”

  “To what?” Mary said.

  He was silent; he could not think.

  “To a holoscreen?” Major Casals said.

  “To you,” Bibleman said.

  Major Casals said, “I am someone who insulted you and derided you. Someone who treated you like dirt. I told you that if I ordered you to piss purple, you –”

  “Okay,” Bibleman said. “Enough.”

  “Goodbye,” Mary said.

  “What?” Bibleman said, startled.

  “You’re leaving. You’re going back to your life and job, what you had before we picked you.”

  Bibleman said, “I’d like another chance.”

  “But,” Mary said, “you know how the test works now. So it can never be given to you again. You know what is really wanted from you by the College. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Major Casals said.

  Bibleman said nothing.

  Holding out her hand, Mary said, “Shake?”

  Blindly, Bibleman shook hands with her. Major Casals only stared at him blankly; he did not offer his hand. He seemed to be engrossed in some other topic, perhaps some other person. Another student was on his mind, perhaps. Bibleman could not tell.

  Three nights later, as he wandered aimlessly through the mixture of lights and darkness of the city, Bob Bibleman saw ahead of him a robot food vendor at its eternal post. A teenage boy was in the process of buying a taco and an apple turnover. Bob Bibleman lined up behind the boy and stood waiting, his hands in his pockets, no thoughts coming to him, only a dull feeling, a sense of emptiness. As if the inattention which he had seen on Casal’s face had taken him over, he thought to himself. He felt like an object, an object among objects, like the robot vendor. Something which, as he well knew, did not look you directly in the eye.

  “What’ll it be, sir?” the robot asked.

  Bibleman said, “Fries, a cheeseburger, and a strawberry shake. Are there any contests?”

  After a pause the robot said, “Not for you, Mr Bibleman.”

  “Okay,” he said, and stood waiting.

  The food came, on its little throwaway plastic tray, in its little throwaway cartons.

  “I’m not paying,” Bibleman said, and walked away.

  The robot called after him, “Eleven hundred dollars. Mr Bibleman. You’re breaking the law!”

  He turned, got out his wallet.

  “Thank you, Mr Bibleman,” the robot said. “I am very proud of you.”

  What Have I Done?

  Mark Clifton

  Mark Clifton (1906–63) didn’t live long enough to discover how much his work was appreciated. He died unheralded aged only 57 with the view that many regarded his work as bitter, acerbic and misanthropic. He, of course, maintained it wasn’t. Clifton had been a personnel officer and his experiences dealing with thousands and thousands of people gave him a pessimistic view of humankind as a whole but a fairly positive one of the capabilities of individuals. He firmly believed that it was only individuals acting as individuals that could overturn the mess that governments and conglomerates had caused. This fuelled all of his science fiction, which includes the early award-winning They’d Rather be Right (Astounding, 1954) and Eight Keys to Eden (1960). It was not until 1980 that a collection of his short fiction was made, The Science Fiction of Mark Clifton, compiled and championed by Barry Malzberg. The following is Clifton’s first published story and they don’t come much more downbeat than this.

  It had to be I. It would be stupid to say that the burden should have fallen to a great statesman, a world leader, a renowned scientist. With all modesty, I think I am one of the few who could have caught the problem early enough to avert disaster. I have a peculiar skill. The whole thing hinged on that. I have learned to know human beings.

  The first time I saw the fellow, I was at the drugstore counter buying cigarettes. He was standing at the magazine rack. One might have thought from the expression on his face that he had never seen magazines before. Still, quite a number of people get that rapt and vacant look when they can’t make up their minds to a choice.

  The thing which bothered me in that casual glance was that I couldn’t recognize him.

  There are others who can match my record in taking case histories. I happened to be the one who came in contact with this fellow. For thirty years I have been listening to, talking with, counseling people – over two hundred thousand of them. They have not been routine interviews. I have brought intelligence, sensitivity and concern to each of them.

  Mine has been a driving, burning desire to know people. Not from the western scientific point of view of devising tools and rules to measure animated robots and ignoring the man beneath. Nor from the eastern metaphysical approach to painting a picture of the soul by blowing one’s breath upon a fog to be blurred and dispersed by the next breath.

  Mine was the aim to know the man by making use of both. And there was some success.

  A competent geographer can look at a crude sketch of a map and instantly orient himself to it anywhere in the world – the bend of a river, the angle of a lake, the twist of a mountain range. And he can mystify by telling in finest detail what is to be found there.

  After about fifty thousand studies where I could predict and then observe and check, with me it became the lift of a brow, the curve of a mouth, the gesture of a hand, the slope of a shoulder. One of the universities became interested, and over a long controlled period they rated me 92 per cent accurate. That was fifteen years ago. I may have improved some since.

  Yet standing there at the cigarette counter and glancing at the young fellow at the magazine rack, I could read nothing. Nothing at all.

  If this had been an ordinary face, I would have catalogued it and forgotten it automatically. I see them by the thousands. But this face would not be catalogued nor forgotten,
because there was nothing in it.

  I started to write that it wasn’t even a face, but of course it was. Every human being has a face – of one sort or another.

  In build he was short, muscular, rather well proportioned. The hair was crew cut and blond, the eyes were blue, the skin fair. All nice and standard Teutonic – only it wasn’t.

  I finished paying for my cigarettes and gave him one more glance, hoping to surprise an expression which had some meaning. There was none. I left him standing there and walked out on the street and around the corner. The street, the store fronts, the traffic cop on the corner, the warm sunshine were all so familiar I didn’t see them. I climbed the stairs to my office in the building over the drugstore. My employment agency waiting room was empty. I don’t cater to much of a crowd because it cuts down my opportunity to talk with people and further my study.

  Margie, my receptionist, was busy making out some kind of a report and merely nodded as I passed her desk to my own office. She is a good conscientious girl who can’t understand why I spend so much time working with bums and drunks and other psychos who obviously won’t bring fees into the sometimes too small bank account.

  I sat down at my desk and said aloud to myself, “The guy is a fake! As obvious as a high school boy’s drafting of a dollar bill.”

  I heard myself say that and wondered if I was going nuts, myself. What did I mean by fake? I shrugged. So I happened to see a bird I couldn’t read, that was all.

  Then it struck me. But that would be unique. I hadn’t had that experience for twenty years. Imagine the delight, after all these years, of exploring an unreadable!

  I rushed out of my office and back down the stairs to the street. Hallahan, the traffic cop, saw me running up the street and looked at me curiously. I signaled to him with a wave of a hand that everything was all right. He lifted his cap and scratched his head. He shook his head slowly and settled his cap back down. He blew a whistle at a woman driver and went back to directing traffic.

  I ran into the drugstore. Of course the guy wasn’t there. I looked all around, hoping he was hiding behind the pots and pans counter, or something. No guy.

  I walked quickly back out on the street and down to the next corner. I looked up and down the side streets. No guy.

  I dragged my feet reluctantly back toward the office. I called up the face again to study it. It did no good. The first mental glimpse of it told me there was nothing to find. Logic told me there was nothing to find. If there had been, I wouldn’t be in such a stew. The face was empty – completely void of human feelings or character.

  No, those weren’t the right words. Completely void of human – being!

  I walked on past the drugstore again and looked in curiously, hoping I would see him. Hallahan was facing my direction again, and he grinned crookedly at me. I expect around the neighborhood I am known as a character. I ask the queerest questions of people, from a layman’s point of view. Still, applicants sometimes tell me that when they asked a cop where was an employment agent they could trust they were sent to me.

  I climbed the stairs again, and walked into my waiting room. Margie looked at me curiously, but she only said, “There’s an applicant. I had him wait in your office.” She looked like she wanted to say more, and then shrugged. Or maybe she shivered. I knew there was something wrong with the bird, or she would have kept him in the waiting room.

  I opened the door to my office, and experienced an overwhelming sense of relief, fulfillment. It was he. Still, it was logical that he should be there. I run an employment agency. People come to me to get help in finding work. If others, why not he?

  My skill includes the control of my outward reactions. That fellow could have no idea of the delight I felt at the opportunity to get a full history. If I had found him on the street, the best I might have done was a stock question about what time is it, or have you got a match, or where is the city hall. Here I could question him to my heart’s content.

  I took his history without comment, and stuck to routine questions. It was all exactly right.

  He was ex-G.I., just completed college, major in astronomy, no experience, no skills, no faintest idea of what he wanted to do, nothing to offer an employer – all perfectly normal for a young grad.

  No feeling or expression either. Not so normal. Usually they’re petulantly resentful that business doesn’t swoon at the chance of hiring them. I resigned myself to the old one-two of attempting to steer him toward something practical.

  “Astronomy?” I asked. “That means you’re heavy in math. Frequently we can place a strong math skill in statistical work.” I was hopeful I could get a spark of something.

  It turned out he wasn’t very good at math. “I haven’t yet reconciled my math to –” he stopped. For the first time he showed a reaction – hesitancy. Prior to that he had been a statue from Greece – the rounded expressionless eyes, the too perfect features undisturbed by thought.

  He caught his remark and finished, “I’m just not very good at math, that’s all.”

  I sighed to myself. I’m used to that, too. They give degrees nowadays to get rid of the guys, I suppose. Sometimes I’ll go for days without uncovering any usable knowledge. So in a way, that was normal.

  The only abnormal part of it was he seemed to think it didn’t sound right. Usually the lads don’t even realize they should know something. He seemed to think he’d pulled a boner by admitting that a man can take a degree in astronomy without learning math. Well, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them take their degree without knowing how many planets there are.

  He began to fidget a bit. That was strange, also. I thought I knew every possible combination of muscular contractions and expansions. This fidget had all the reality of a puppet activated by an amateur. And the eyes – still completely blank.

  I led him up one mental street and down the next. And of all the false-fronted stores and cardboard houses and paper lawns, I never saw the like. I get something of that once in a while from a fellow who has spent a long term in prison and comes in with a manufactured past – but never anything as phony as this one was.

  Interesting aspect to it. Most guys, when they realize you’ve spotted them for a phony, get out as soon as they can. He didn’t. It was almost as though he were – well, testing; to see if his answers would stand up.

  I tried talking astronomy, of which I thought I knew a little. I found I didn’t know anything, or he didn’t. This bird’s astronomy and mine had no point of reconciliation.

  And then he had a slip of the tongue – yes, he did. He was talking, and said, “The ten planets –”

  He caught himself, “Oh, that’s right. There’s only nine.”

  Could be ignorance, but I didn’t think so. Could be he knew of the existence of a planet we hadn’t yet discovered.

  I smiled. I opened a desk drawer and pulled out a couple science-fiction magazines. “Ever read any of these?” I asked.

  “I looked through several of them at the newsstand a while ago,” he answered.

  “They’ve enlarged my vision,” I said. “Even to the point where I could believe that some other star system might hold intelligence.” I lit a cigarette and waited. If I was wrong, he would merely think I was talking at random.

  His blank eyes changed. They were no longer Greek statue eyes. They were no longer blue. They were black, deep bottomless black, as deep and cold as space itself.

  “Where did I fail in my test?” he asked. His lips formed a smile which was not a smile – a carefully painted-on-canvas sort of smile.

  Well, I’d had my answer. I’d explored something unique, all right. Sitting there before me, I had no way of determining whether he was benign or evil. No way of knowing his motive. No way of judging – anything. When it takes a lifetime of learning how to judge even our own kind, what standards have we for judging an entity from another star system?

  At that moment I would like to have been one of those space-opera heroes who, in similar c
ircumstances, laugh casually and say, “What ho! So you’re from Arcturus. Well, well. It’s a small universe after all, isn’t it?” And then with linked arms they head for the nearest bar, bosom pals.

  I had the almost hysterical thought, but carefully suppressed, that I didn’t know if this fellow would like beer or not. I will not go through the intermuscular and visceral reactions I experienced. I kept my seat and maintained a polite expression. Even with humans, I know when to walk carefully.

  “I couldn’t feel anything about you,” I answered his question. “I couldn’t feel anything but blankness.”

  He looked blank. His eyes were nice blue marble again. I liked them better that way.

  There should be a million questions to be asked, but I must have been bothered by the feeling that I held a loaded bomb in my hands. And not knowing what might set it off, or how, or when. I could think of only the most trivial.

  “How long have you been on Earth?” I asked. Sort of a when did you get back in town, Joe, kind of triviality.

  “For several of your weeks,” he was answering. “But this is my first time out among humans.”

  “Where have you been in the meantime?” I asked.

  “Training.” His answers were getting short and his muscles began to fidget again.

  “And where do you train?” I kept boring in.

  As an answer he stood up and held out his hand, all quite correctly. “I must go now,” he said. “Naturally you can cancel my application for employment. Obviously we have more to learn.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “And I’m supposed to just pass over the whole thing? A thing like this?”

  He smiled again. The contrived smile which was a symbol to indicate courtesy. “I believe your custom on this planet is to turn your problems over to your police. You might try that.” I could not tell whether it was irony or logic.

  At that moment I could think of nothing else to say. He walked out of my door while I stood beside my desk and watched him go.

  Well, what was I supposed to do? Follow him?

  I followed him.

  Now I’m no private eye, but I’ve read my share of mystery stories. I knew enough to keep out of sight. I followed him about a dozen blocks into a quiet residential section of small homes. I was standing behind a palm tree, lighting a cigarette, when he went up the walk of one of these small houses. I saw him twiddle with the door, open it, and walk in. The door closed.