The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 4 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  “Tough,” said Smith carelessly. “Still, maybe she’ll wait.”

  “Hold your tongue!” snapped Boris. He glanced at Sammy, then at Smith, then at Sammy again. Nervously he wet his lips. “There’s one way,” he said suggestively.

  “There’s the Agreement,” reminded Sammy. He’d already thought of what Boris had in mind and dismissed it because of that.

  “We’re a quorum,” pointed out Boris. “We could agree to suspend the Agreement for just this once.” He became urgent. “Be sensible, Sammy. The way things are the two of us wouldn’t stand a chance to survive until they come out. From what Lupe said it might take another year and those Red Cross stocks are mostly smashed and useless. And when they do come out, what then?”

  “Geometrical progression,” said Sammy understandingly. “Two makes four and four makes eight and—”

  “He’s young,” said Boris. “That means that he’ll have a hell of an appetite. He won’t be able to use discretion, he hasn’t had the experience. And you heard what he said about contacting them. What’s the betting that he just cuts us out?”

  “What are you talking about?” Smith glanced from one to the other. They ignored him.

  “I’m not sure,” said Sammy slowly. “We’ve got to stick together now or we’ll all be sunk.”

  “We’ll be sunk anyway,” said Boris. “He’ll foul things up for sure.” His hand closed pleadingly on Sammy’s arm. “Please, Sammy. Just for this once.”

  “What are you two freaks talking about?” snapped Smith again. Youth and confidence in his superiority made him contemptuous of these old has-beens. Sitting beside the fire he had made his own plans and they didn’t include either of the others. He lost both confidence and contempt as he read Sammy’s expression. “No!” he screamed, understanding hitting like a thunderbolt; “No! You wouldn’t! You couldn’t! You—”

  He rose together with Sammy and, turning, raced into the dark safety of the woods. He didn’t get far.

  Fresh guys rarely do.

  <>

  * * * *

  THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS

  by Arthur Zirul

  A story about bears—but no Goldilocks.

  Like Mrs. Emshwiller, Professor Bone, and Patent Attorney Thomas, Arthur Zirul has been writing and publishing s-f, on a part-time basis, for the last five years or so. As with them, s-f was favorite reading for him long before he tried writing it. “Science fiction to me,” he says, “is the last, and likely the only, refuge for genuine satire . . . the biting kind only fantasy can provide.”

  Mr. Zirul’s more usual, workaday refuge is an out-of-the-way back building in Greenwich Village which he describes as “1,500 square feet of a former night club, filled with fine dust, a dozen assorted machines, shelves full of very odd odds and ends, and me (I’m the one that’s moving).”

  Sorry. No Things or Shottlebops or genii-jars. He calls it Diorama Studios, and builds industrial models there.

  * * * *

  Last spring season, just before the Forest Council was about to disband in search of mates, I introduced a Bill to provide funds for a sanctuary for Man. A place where men would be able to live unmolested, and where they would create beautiful things for us. I have become convinced that we Bears cannot make the beautiful things; we have no feeling for it. Only Man seems to have this divine ability. When I told the Elders of the Council of my thoughts they scoffed and asked what had made a Bruin of my rank even consider such fantastic ideas.

  I told them of how I had captured a man last winter near the ruins of the Great City. I had kept him alive, over the objections of my hungry cubs, when I discovered that he could make the beautiful things. I told them of how my family had learned to appreciate the delicate art of my man and had gained great pleasure from it. I was certain that other Bears would also be benefited if they had the opportunity to obtain similar works of art.

  The Elders said nothing until I showed them samples of my man’s work. They then roared with displeasure and said that Bears had no need for such frivolities. Bears had need only for the stout club and the sharp fang. The things my man had made, they said, were born of the same dark thoughts that had led to the destruction of Mankind by the Thunder Gods.

  At the mention of the sacred Gods the Elders bowed their heads reverently. It is written, in the Holy Books found in the Great City, that the Thunder Gods destroyed the cities of men because of their sinful ways. They leveled their cities with the Fires That Burned Forever, the same fires which had given the Bears the ability to think, and to use their paws like hands. This was done so that we might inherit the Earth. The Elders believed that it was the God-given mission of the Bears to destroy the remnants of Mankind and not to perpetuate its follies. They could not support my proposal.

  Their blind dogmatism, and their refusal to pursue my thoughts any further angered me to a point where I challenged the Council thusly: at the next session of the Council I would present much more conclusive proof that man can create beautiful, important, things for us. If, after due consideration, the Elders found my proof convincing then they must open a state sanctuary; otherwise, if they refused to give me even this opportunity to prove my theory, they must be prepared to meet my wrath in the mating arena.

  The Elders of the Council sat in deep thought for a while, rubbing their backs on the thick trees that ringed the Council clearing. A Prince’s challenge, such as mine, cannot be taken lightly. They asked me how I intended to obtain this conclusive proof I spoke of. I told them that I would open a sanctuary, at my own expense, where men would make the beautiful things for me. I was certain that many men working together, under my protection, could create much greater things than my lone slave is able to do. Things that would convince the Elders of Man’s ability. The Elders muttered among themselves for some time but they finally agreed to my proposal; with the condition that they should not be expected to reimburse me for my experiments if my proposal was not adopted.

  I agreed to their condition and proceeded to carry out my plans the very next day. I unearthed the greater part of my wealth and spent it wildly in a frenzy to have my project begun. First I bought an old den on the property of my neighbor. I ordered it cleared of its bones and refuse and be made ready for habitation. While the cave was being readied I set out to capture a group of humans to occupy it. I organized a hunting party. Beaters were sent out first; they flushed the humans from their holes in the ground and into the open. The men were fleet of foot and soon outran us but we were able to catch one female, too heavy with child to run. We used her as the bait. The beaters prodded her with sharp sticks to make her cry out. Humans are very curious by nature and after a while some of them returned to see what the noise was about. We captured six men this way quite easily and were forced to kill only one of them, a young one, who had thrown himself like a crazed dog at my head beater. I was sorry to have lost him but I received a good price for his carcass from the butcher.

  I had the humans brought to the sanctuary where I managed to explain, using the clumsy pidgin that we speak to humans with, that I wanted them to create beautiful things for me. Things such as their ancestors had created, with skill and feeling, in the old days. Those beautiful things that, in cold materials, had expressed the flaming souls of their creators for all to see, and to admire, and to stand in awe of. . . . The Beautiful Things. I did not let them see samples of my man-slave’s work as I did not wish them to blindly copy those things which the Council had not liked in the first; I urged them to use their God-gift to create new and better things.

  At first the humans appeared to be frightened at my words. Then they were incredulous, finally they were overjoyed to discover that they were not going to be tortured or eaten but were, instead, to be given an opportunity to preserve themselves and their art under my protection. One of the men explained eagerly that he had been taught to make the beautiful things by his father, who in turn had learned it from his father, who had been a great artist in the days be
fore the wars. I was delighted. The man claimed to be able to create things much more beautiful than anything I had ever seen. Foolishly, I accepted him at his word and put him in charge.

  I ordered that the humans be supplied immediately with all the materials they requested, no matter what the cost. Soon heaps of materials began to be delivered to the den. Most of the things I could not understand the need for. There were fats and oils, color pigments dug from the river bank and squeezed from herbs, logs of wood, and pieces of the hard flint from the mountains. They had even asked for white cloth, but of course, that was unobtainable. When they had all their supplies they asked to be let alone, and be allowed to work without outside distractions. I agreed reluctantly, but I made them promise that they would work as quickly as possible as I was very impatient to prove my theory.

  For weeks the men worked in silence, all through the hot, still summer and into the first days of fall. I began to fear that they would have nothing ready to show me before the first snows fell and the Council reconvened. I would not be able to feed them forever. My impatience made me suspect that they were malingering, trying to keep the soft berth I had given them as long as possible. When the first chill winds began to sweep the leaves from the trees, I sent word to the den that I would be kept waiting no longer. I insisted on seeing their creations immediately.

  My heart pounded fiercely as I approached the sanctuary. I envisioned a new world opening for my race. A world filled with the beautiful things that Man would create for us. As I entered the den, however, my breath caught in my throat. I could not believe my senses when I saw what the men had done. Those . . . those thieves had betrayed me! Their leader, the one who claimed to have had the art in him, stood in the center of the cave, his hands and arms were stained with color. He sneered at me in that simpering way men have of displaying their teeth as he showed me what they had been doing for the past months, at my expense.

  The walls were covered with ridiculous scribblings that looked like the outlines of men and bears when seen against the moon and were smeared over with oily colors. They showed me bits of wood that had been hacked with the flint tools they had made so that they looked like the shapes of men and bears, but smaller. They showed me scribblings they had drawn on the inside of sheets of bark. Their leader explained that it was called writing and that it would be very helpful to my people.

  “What have you done?” I roared. “What is all this...this dung? Where are all the beautiful things you promised me?”

  “B-but,” the leader whined, his eyes wide as he held up a piece of the carved wood. “Here they are. We created them for you as our ancestors created them for themselves.”

  “Leech!” I screamed. “You have the gall to call these knots beautiful?” I flung the statue from me so that it smashed against the wall. I snatched the latest creation of my man-slave from my belt. “Here!” I roared, holding it aloft. “Here is what I want!”

  I brought the sharp, singing edge down swiftly into the throat of the trembling fool.

  “This is a beautiful thing!” I bellowed in a voice that shook the cave as I flung the dripping dagger into the center of the room.

  The firelight glinted in flashes of beautiful fire from the polished steel blade of the dagger and from its keen, hairline edge. We Bears simply do not have the ability to match such exquisite workmanship in the clumsy stone things we make.

  That is why I plead not to exterminate the few men left in the world. If there was an error in my plan it lay only in incorrect experimentation. I claim what every true scientist knows. One incorrect experiment does not rule out an entire hypothesis. My theory is sound and must not be disregarded. We must seek out those men who can make the beautiful things and we must conserve them and train them to produce those things for us. Things like those lovely, shining knives that are so light to carry and kill so easily—or perhaps something even better.

  <>

  * * * *

  THE COMEDIAN’S CHILDREN

  by Theodore Sturgeon

  There is very little remaining to be said by any editor or anthologist about Theodore Sturgeon, whose stories have been so thoroughly collected and so assiduously introduced that every scrap of biographical information has been worked thin.

  And I have found, in the course of introducing my own share of Sturgeoniana, that his stories are seldom susceptible to summing-up or finger-pointing. You can’t say, “Here’s what it’s about.” It’s about too many things. . . .

  * * * *

  PROLOGUE

  The quiet third of the Twenty-First Century came to an end at ten o’clock on the morning of May 17, 2034, with the return to earth of a modified Fafnir space cruiser under the command of Capt. Avery Swope. Perhaps in an earlier or a later day, the visitation which began on the above date might have had less effect. But the earth was lulled and content with itself, and for good reason—international rivalries having reverted to the football fields and tennis courts, an intelligent balance of trade and redistribution of agriculture and industry having been achieved.

  Captain Swope’s mission was to accomplish the twelfth off-earth touchdown, and the body on which he touched was Iapetus (sometimes Japetus), the remarkable eighth satellite of Saturn. All Saturn’s satellites are remarkable, each for a different reason. Iapetus’ claim to fame is his fluctuating brilliance; he always swings brightly around the eastern limb of the ringed planet, and dwindles dimly behind the western edge. Obviously the little moon is half bright and half dark, and keeps one face turned always to its parent; but why should a moon be half bright and half dark?

  It was an intriguing mystery, and it had become the fashion to affect all sorts of decorations which mimicked the fluctuations of the inconstant moonlet: cuff links and tunic clasps which dimmed and brightened, bread-wrappers and book-jackets in dichotomous motley. Copies were reproduced of the mid-century master Pederson’s magnificent oil painting of a space ship aground on one of Saturn’s moons, with four suited figures alighting, and it became a sort of colophon for news stories about Swope’s achievement and window displays of bicolored gimcrackery—with everyone marveling at the Twentieth Century artist’s unerring prediction of a Fafnir’s contours, and no one noticing that the painting could not possibly have been of Iapetus, which has no blue sky nor weathered rocks, but must certainly have been the meticulous Pederson’s visualization of Titan. Still, everyone thought it was Iapetus, and since it gave no evidence as to why Iapetus changed its brightness, the public embraced the painting as the portrait of a mystery. They told each other that Swope would find out.

  Captain Swope found out, but Captain Swope did not tell. Something happened to his Fafnir on Iapetus. His signals were faintly heard through the roar of an electrical disturbance on the parent world, and they were unreadable, and they were the last. Then, voiceless, he returned, took up his braking orbit, and at last came screaming down out of the black into and through the springtime blue. His acquisition of the tail-down attitude so very high—over fifty miles—proved that something was badly wrong. The extreme deliberation with which he came in over White Sands, and the constant yawing, like that of a baseball bat balanced on a fingertip, gave final proof that he was attempting a landing under manual control, something never before attempted with anything the size of a Fafnir. It was superbly done, and may never be equaled, that roaring drift down and down through the miles, over forty-six of them, and never a yaw that the sensitive hands could not compensate, until that last one.

  What happened? Did some devil-imp of wind, scampering runt of a hurricane, shoulder against the Fafnir? Or was the tension and strain at last too much for weary muscles which could not, even for a split second, relax and pass the controls to another pair of hands? Whatever it was, it happened at three and six-tenths miles, and she lay over bellowing as her pilot made a last desperate attempt to gain some altitude and perhaps another try.

  She gained nothing, she lost a bit, hurtling like a dirigible gone mad, faster and
faster, hoping to kick the curve of the earth down and away from her, until, over Arkansas, the forward section of the rocket liner—the one which is mostly inside the ship—disintegrated and she blew off her tail. She turned twice end over end and thundered into a buckwheat field.

  Two days afterward a photographer got a miraculous picture. It was darkly whispered later that he had unforgivably carried the child—the three-year-old Tresak girl from the farm two miles away—into the crash area and had inexcusably posed her there; but this could never be proved, and anyway, how could he have known? Nevertheless, the multiple miracles of a momentary absence of anything at all in the wide clear background, of the shadows which mantled her and of the glitter of the many-sharded metal scrap which reared up behind her to give her a crown—but most of all the miracle of the child herself, black-eyed, golden-haired, trusting, fearless, one tender hand resting on some jagged steel which would surely shred her flesh if she were less beautiful—these made one of the decade’s most memorable pictures. In a day she was known to the nation, and warmly loved as a sort of infant phoenix rising from the disaster of the roaring bird; the death of the magnificent Swope could not cut the nation quite as painfully because of her, as that cruel ruin could not cut her hand.