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

by Edited By Judith Merril

  “Help me,” said Heri Gonza. “Help her, and the others, help us. Find these children, wherever in the world they might be, and call us. Pick up any telephone in the world and say simply, I . . . F. That’s IF, the Iapetitis Foundation. We treat them like little kings and queens. We never cause them any distress. By trideo they are in constant touch with their loved ones.” Suddenly, his voice rang. “The call you make may find the child who teaches us what we need to know. Your call—yours!—may find the cure for us.”

  He knelt and set the child gently on her feet. He knelt holding her hands, looking into her face. He said, “And whoever you are, wherever you might be, you doctors, researchers, students, teachers ... if anyone, anywhere, has an inkling, an idea, a way to help, any way at all—then call me. Call me now, call here—” He pointed upward and the block letters and figures of the local telephone floated over his head—”and tell me. I’ll answer you now, I’ll personally speak to anyone who can help. Help, oh, help.”

  The last word rang and rang in the air. The deep stage behind him slowly darkened, leaving the two figures, the kneeling man and the little golden girl, flooded with light. He released her hands and she turned away from him, smiling timidly, and crossed the wide stage. It seemed to take forever, and as she walked, very slightly she dragged her left foot.

  When she was gone, there was nothing left to look at but Heri Gonza. He had not moved, but the lights had changed, making of him a luminous silhouette against the endless black behind him . . . one kneeling man, a light in the universal dark . . . hope . . . slowly fading, but there, still there . . . no? Oh, there . . .

  A sound of singing, the palest of pale blue stains in deep center. The singing up, a powerful voice from the past, an ancient, all but forgotten tape of one of the most moving renditions the world has ever known, especially for such a moment as this: Mahalia Jackson singing The Lord’s Prayer, with the benefit of such audio as had not been dreamed of in her day . . . with a cool fresh scent, with inaudible quasi-hypnotic emanations, with a whispering chorus, a chorus that angels might learn from.

  Heri Gonza had not said, “Let us pray.” He would never do such a thing, not on a global network. There was just the kneeling dimness, and the blue glow far away in the black. And if at the very end the glow looked to some like the sign of the cross, it might have been only a shrouded figure raising its arms; and if this was benediction, surely it was in the eye of the beholder. Whatever it was, no one who saw it completely escaped its spell, or ever forgot it. Iris Barran, for one, exhausted to begin with, heart and mind full to bursting with the tragedy of iapetitis; Iris Barran was wrung out by the spectacle. All she could think of was the last spoken word: Help!

  She sprang to her phone and waved it active. With trembling fingers she dialed the number which floated in her mind as it had on the trideo wall, and to the composed young lady who appeared in her solido cave, saying, “Trideo, C. A. O. Good evening,” she gasped, “Heri Gonza —quickly.”

  “One moment, please,” said the vision, and disappeared, to be replaced instantly by another, even more composed, even lovelier, who said, “I.F. Telethon.”

  “Heri Gonza.”

  “Yes, of course. Your name?”

  “I-Iris Barran. Dr. Iris Barran.”

  The girl looked up sharply. “Not the—”

  “Yes, I won the Nobel prize. Please—let me speak to Heri Gonza.”

  “One moment, please.”

  The next one was a young man with curly hair, a belllike baritone, and an intensely interested face. He was Burcke of the network. He passed her to a jovial little fat man with shrewd eyes who was with Continuity Acceptance. Iris could have screamed out loud. But a worldwide appeal for calls would jam lines and channels for hours, and obviously a thorough screening process was essential. She was dimly aware that her name and face, only today in all the news, had already carried her to the top. Consciously, she thought of none of this; she held on and drove, wanting only to help . . . help ... A snatch of the conversation she had had with Dr. Otis drifted across her mind: I guess you’d trade it all for ... and then a heart-rending picture of Billy’s face, trying to smile with half a mouth. I’d trade it all for a reasonable hope . . . and suddenly she was staring into the face of Heri Gonza. Reflexively she glanced over her shoulder at the trideo wall; Heri Gonza was there too, with a solidophone pillar in center stage, its back to the audience so that only the comedian could see its cave. Light from it flickered on his face.

  “I’d know that face anywhere!” he said raspingly.

  “Oh,” she said faintly, “Mr. . . . uh . . .” and then remembered that one of his public affectations was never to permit anyone to call him Mister. She said, “Heri Gonza, I . . . I’m Iris B-Barran, and I—” She realized that her voice could not be heard over the trideo. She was grateful for that.

  He said, just as stridently, “I know who you are. I know the story of your life too.” Switching to a comic quack, he said, “So-o-o?”

  “You know I just won the Nobel award. M—uh, Heri Gonza, I want to help, more than anything in the world, I want to help. My brother has it. W-would you like me to give the award money to you ... I mean, to the Foundation?”

  She did not know what she expected in exchange for this stunning offer. She had not thought that far ahead. What she did not expect was . . .

  “You what?” he yelled, so loud she drew her head down, gracelessly, turtlelike. “Listen, you, I got along without you before and I can get along without you now. You’re getting from me, see, and I’m giving. What you got I don’t want. I’m not up here to do you no good. I tell you what you got, you got a wrong number, and you are, s-s-s-s-so,” he hissed in a hilarious flatulent stutter, “s-s-so long.” And before she could utter another sound he waved her off and her phone cave went black.

  Numb with shock, she slowly turned to the trideo wall, where Heri Gonza was striding downstage to the audience. His expressionless face, his gait, his posture, the inclination of his head, and his tone of voice all added to an amused indignation, with perhaps a shade more anger than mirth. He tossed a thumb at the phone and said, “Wits we got calling, can you imagine? At a time like this. We got dim wits, half wits, and—” exactly the right pause; there was one bleat of laughter somewhere in the audience and then a thousand voices to chorus with him—”horowitz!”

  Iris sank back in the phone chair and covered her face, pressing so hard against her tired eyes that she saw red speckles. For a time she was shocked completely beyond thought, but at last she was able to move. She rose heavily and went to the divan, arrested her hand as she was about to click off the trideo. Heri Gonza was back at the stage phone talking eagerly to someone, his voice honey and gentleness. “Oh, bless you, brother, and thank you. You may have an idea there, so I tell you what you do. You call the I.F. at Johannesburg and arrange a meeting with the doctors there. They’ll listen. . . . No, brother, collect of course. What’s-amatta, brother, you broke? I got news for you, for you-ee are-ee a-ee good-ee man-ee yes-ee indeedy-dee: you ain’ta broka no mo. A man like you? I got a boy on the way this very minute with a bag o’ gold for the likes of you, brother. . .. Oh now, don’t say thanks, you mak-a me mad. ‘By.”

  He waved off, and turned to the audience to intone, “A man with an idea—little one, big one, who knows? But it’s to help ... so bless him.”

  Thunderous applause. Iris let her hand finish the gesture and switched off.

  She went and washed her face, and that gave her strength enough to shower and change. After that she could think almost normally. How could he?

  She turned over impossible alternatives, explanations. His phone was a dummy: he couldn’t see her, didn’t know who was on the phone. Or: it was his way of being funny, and she was too tired to understand. Or ... or ... it was no use: it had really happened, he had known what he was doing, he had a reason.

  But what reason? Why? Why?

  In her mind she again heard that roar from the audien
ce: Horowitz. With difficulty, because it still stung, she pieced together the conversation and then, moving her forefinger toward her phone and the trideo, back and forth, puzzled out what had gone out over the air and what had not. Only then did she fully understand that Heri Gonza had done what he had done to make it seem that his first call was from Dr. Horowitz. But if he needed that particular gag at that time, why didn’t he fake it to a dead phone? Why actually converse with her, cut her down like that?

  And he hadn’t let her help. That was worse than any of the rudeness, the insult. He wouldn’t let her help.

  What to do? Making the gesture she had made had not been hard; having it refused was more than she could bear. She must help; she would help. Now of all times, with all this useless money coming to her; she didn’t need it, and it might, it just might somehow help, and bring Billy back home.

  Well then, expose Heri Gonza. Give him back some of his own humiliation. Call in the newsmen, make a statement. Tell them what she had offered, tell them just who was on the line. He’d have to take the money, and apologize to boot.

  She stood up; she sat down again. No. He had known what he was doing. He had known who she was; he must have a telltale on his phone to get information on his callers from that screening committee. She knew a lot about Heri Gonza. He seemed so wild, so impulsive; he was not. He ran his many enterprises with a steel fist; he took care of his own money, his own bookings. He did not make mistakes nor take chances. He had refused her and the Foundation would refuse her: the Foundation was Heri Gonza. He had his reasons, and if she had any defense at all against “ what he had done, he would not have done it.

  She wasn’t allowed to help.

  Unless—

  She suddenly ran to the phone. She dialed 5, and the cave lit up with the floating word DIRECTORY. She dialed H, O, R, and touched the Slow button until she had the Horowitzes. There were pathetically few of them. Almost everyone named Horowitz had filed unlisted numbers: many had gone so far as to change their names.

  George Rehoboth Horowitz, she remembered.

  He wasn’t listed.

  She dialed Information and asked. The girl gave her a pitying smile and told her the line was unlisted. And of course it would be. If Dr. Horowitz wasn’t the most hated man on earth, he was the next thing to it. A listed phone would be useless to him, never silent.

  “Has he screening service?” Iris asked suddenly.

  “He has,” said the girl, company-polite as always, but now utterly cold. Anyone who knew that creature to speak to . . . “Your name, please?”

  Iris told her, and added, “Please tell him it’s very important.”

  The cave went dark but for the slowly rotating symbol of the phone company, indicating that the operator was doing her job. Then a man’s head appeared and looked her over for a moment, and then said, “Dr. Barran?”

  “Dr. Horowitz.”

  She had not been aware of having formed any idea of the famous (infamous?) Horowitz; yet she must have. His face seemed too gentle to have issued those harsh rejoinders which the news attributed to him; yet perhaps it was gentle enough to be taken for the fumbler, the fool so many people thought he was. His eyes, in some inexplicable way, assured her that his could not be clumsy hands. He wore old-fashioned exterior spectacles; he was losing his hair; he was younger than she had thought, and he was ugly. Crags are ugly, tree-trunks, the hawk’s pounce, the bear’s foot, if beauty to you is all straight lines and silk. Iris Barran was not repulsed by this kind of ugliness. She said bluntly, “Are you doing any good with the disease?” She did not specify: today, there was only one disease.

  He said, in an odd way as if he had known her for a long time and could judge how much she would understand, “I have it all from the top down to the middle, and from the bottom up to about a third. In between—nothing, and no way to get anything.”

  “Can you go any further?”

  “I don’t know,” he said candidly. “I can go on trying to find ways to go further, and if I find a way, I can try to move along on it.”

  “Would some money help?”

  “It depends on whose it is.”

  “Mine.”

  He did not speak, but tilted his head a little to one side and looked at her.

  She said, “I won ... I have some money coming in. A good deal of it.”

  “I heard,” he said, and smiled. He seemed to have very strong teeth, not white, not even, just spotless and perfect “It’s a good deal out of my field, your theoretical physics, and I don’t understand it. I’m glad you got it. I really am. You earned it.”

  She shook her head, denying it, and said, “I was surprised.”

  “You shouldn’t have been. After ninety years of rather frightening confusion, you’ve restored the concept of parity to science—” he chuckled—”though hardly in the way anyone anticipated.”

  She had not known that this was her accomplishment; she had never thought of it in those terms. Her demonstration of gravitic flux was a subtle matter to be communicated with wordless symbols, quite past speech. Even to herself she had never made a conversational analogue of it; this man had, though, not only easily, but quite accurately.

  She thought, if this isn’t his field, and he grasps it like that—just how good must he be in his own? She said, “Can you use the money? Will it help?”

  “God,” he said devoutly, “can I use it. . . . As to whether it will help, Doctor, I can’t answer that. It would help me go on. It may not make me arrive. Why did you think of me?”

  Would it hurt him to know? she asked herself, and answered, it would hurt him if I were not honest. She said, “I offered it—to the Foundation. They wouldn’t touch it. I don’t know why.”

  “I do,” he said, and instantly held up his hand. “Not now,” he said, checking her question. He reached somewhere off-transmission and came up with a card, on which was lettered, AUDIO TAPPED.

  “Who—”

  “The world,” he overrode her, “is full of clever amateurs. Tell me, why are you willing to make such a sacrifice?”

  “Oh—the money. It isn’t a sacrifice. I have enough: I don’t need it. And—my baby brother. He has it.”

  “I didn’t know,” he said, with compassion. He made a motion with his hands. She did not understand. “What?”

  He shook his head, touched his lips, and repeated the motion, beckoning, at himself and the room behind him. Oh. Come where I am.

  She nodded, but said only, “It’s been a great pleasure talking with you. Perhaps I’ll see you soon.”

  He turned over his card; obviously he had used it many times before. It was a map of a section of the city. She recognized it readily, followed his pointing finger, and nodded eagerly. He said, “I hope it is soon.”

  She nodded again and rose, to indicate that she was on her way. He smiled and waved off.

  * * * *

  It was like a deserted city, or a decimated one; almost everyone was off the streets, watching the telethon. The few people who were about all hurried, as if they were out against their wills and anxious to get back and miss as little as possible. It was known that he intended to go on for at least thirty-six hours, and still they didn’t want to miss a minute of him. Wonderful, wonderful, she thought, amazed (not for the first time) at people—just people. Someone had once told her that she was in mathematics because she was so apart from, amazed at, people. It was possible. She was, she knew, very unskilled with people, and she preferred the company of mathematics, which tried so hard to be reasonable, and to say what was really meant. . . .

  She easily found the sporting-goods store he had pointed out on his map, and stepped into the darkened entrance. She looked carefully around and saw no one, then tried the door. It was locked, and she experienced a flash of disappointment of an intensity that surprised her. But even as she felt it, she heard a faint click, tried the door again, and felt it open. She slid inside and closed it, and was gratified to hear it lock again behind her.r />
  Straight ahead a dim, concealed light flickered, enough to show her that there was a clear aisle straight back through the store. When she was almost to the rear wall, the light flickered again, to show her a door at her right, deep in an ell. It clicked as she approached, and opened without trouble. She mounted two flights of stairs, and on the top landing stood Horowitz, his hands out. She took them gladly, and for a wordless moment they stood like that, laughing silently, until he released one of her hands and drew her into his place. He closed the door carefully and then turned and leaned against it.

  “Well!” he said. “I’m sorry about the cloak and dagger business.”

  “It was very exciting.” She smiled. “Quite like a mystery story.”

  “Come in, sit down,” he said, leading the way. “You’ll have to excuse the place. I have to do my own housekeeping, and I just don’t.” He took a test-tube rack and a cracked bunsen tube from an easy chair and nodded her into it. He had to make two circuits of the room before he found somewhere to put them down. “Price of fame,” he said sardonically, and sat down on a rope-tied stack of papers bearing the flapping label Proceedings of the Pan-American Microbiological Society. “Where that clown makes a joke of Horowitz, other fashionable people make a game of Horowitz. A challenge. Track down Horowitz. Well, if they did, through tapping my phone or following me home, that would satisfy them. Then I would be another kind of challenge. Bother Horowitz. Break in and stir up his lab with a stick. You know.”