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

by Edited By Judith Merril

  “I like ‘em.” He buttoned his coat. “Good night, Dr. Barran. Please accept my apologies again, and don’t think too badly of me.”

  “I don’t,” she said smiling, and gave him her hand.

  “But why do you like kids that much?” asked Horowitz.

  Heri Gonza shrugged easily and laughed his deadpan laugh. “Never had none,” he chuckled. He went to the door and stopped, facing it, suddenly immobile. His shoulders trembled. He whirled suddenly, and the famous carven face was wet, twisted, the mouth tortured and crooked. “Never can,” he whispered, and literally ran out of the room.

  * * * *

  The weeks went by, the months. Iapetitis cases underwent some strange undulations, and a hope arose that the off-world virus was losing its strength. Some of the older cases actually improved, and a blessing that was, too; for although overall growth was arrested, there was a tendency for the mobile side to grow faster than the other, and during the improvement phase, the sides seemed to equalize. Then, tragically the improvement would slow; and stop.

  Incidence of the disease seemed to be slackening as well. At the last, there had been only three new cases in a year, though they caused a bad flurry, occurring as they did simultaneously in a Belgian village which had had no hint of the disease before.

  Heri Gonza still did his weekly stint (less vacation) and still amazed his gigantic audiences with his versatility, acting, singing, dancing, clowning. Sometimes he would make quiet appearances, opening and closing the show and turning it over to a theater or ballet group. During the Old Timer’s Celebration he learned to fly a perfect duplicate of a century-old light aircraft with an internal combustion engine, and daringly took his first solo during the show, with a trideo camera occupying the instructor’s seat.

  At other times he might take up the entire time-segment alone, usually with orchestra and props, once—possibly his most successful show—dressed in sloppy practice clothes on a bare stage, without so much as a chair, and with no assistance but lights and cameras and an occasional invisible touch from the hypnos and the scent generators. Single-handedly he was a parade, a primary schoolroom, a zoo in an earthquake, and an old lady telling three children, ages five, ten, and fifteen, about sex, all at the same time.

  And in between (and sometimes during) his shows, he faithfully maintained I.F. He visited his children regularly, every single one of the more than four hundred. He thrilled with their improvements, cheered them in their inevitable relapses. The only time he did not make one of his scheduled shows at all was the time the three cases appeared in Belgium, and then the slot was filled with news-items about the terrifying resurgence, and a world tour of I.F. clinics. He was a great man, a great comic, no question about it, right up to his very last show.

  He didn’t know it was his last show, which in its way was a pity, because with that knowledge he would have been more than good; he’d have been great. He was that kind of performer.

  However, he was good, and was in and out of a vastly amusing variety show, using his old trick of standing offstage and singing with perfect mimicry while top vocalists stood center stage and mouthed the words. He turned out to be one of the Japanese girls who built body-pyramids on their bicycles, and, powered by a spring device under the water, joined a succession of porpoises leaping to take fish out of a keeper’s hand.

  He played, as he preferred to do, in a large studio without an audience, but playing to the audience-response sound supplied to him. He made his cues well, filled in smoothly with ad-libs when a girl singer ran a chorus short on her arrangement, and did his easy stand-up comedy monologue to close. A pity he didn’t smile on that show. When the on-the-airs went out and the worklights came on, he threw a sweatshirt around his shoulder and ambled into the wings, where, as usual, the network man, Burcke, waited for him.

  “How’d it look, Burckee ol’ turkey?”

  “Like never before,” said Burcke.

  “Aw, you’re cute yourself,” said the comedian. “Let’s have a look.” One of his greatest delights—and one reason for his fantastic polish—was the relaxed run-through afterward, where he lounged in the projection room and looked at the show he had just finished from beginning to end. He and Burcke and a few interested cast-members, backstage people, and privileged strangers got arranged in the projection room. Beer was passed around and the small-talk used up. As usual they all deferred to Heri Gonza, and when he waved a negligent hand everybody shut up and the projectionist threw the switch.

  * * * *

  Title and credits with moving cloud-blanket background. Credits fade, camera zooms toward clouds, which thin to show mountain range. Down through clouds, hover over huge misty lake. Water begins to heave, to be turbulent, suddenly shores rush together and water squirts high through the clouds in a thick column. Empty lake rises up out of clouds, is discovered to be Heri Gonza’s open mouth. Pull back to show full face. Puzzled expression. Hand up, into mouth, extracts live goldfish.

  Gonza: Welcome to the Heri Gonza show, this week “As you lake it.” (beat) Which is all you can expect when you open with a punorama. What ho is (beat) What ho is yonder? A mountain. What ho is on the mountain? A mountain goat. What ho is the goat mountain? Why, another moun— Fellers, keep the lens on me, things are gettin’ a little blue off camera. Now hear ye, Tom, now hear ye, Dick, now hear ye, hairy Harry, Heri’s here. Hee hee, ho ho, here comes the show.

  Soft focus and go to black. Long beat.

  * * * *

  Heri took his beer away from his mouth and glared at the wall. “God’s sake, you send all that black?”

  “Sure did,” said Burcke equably.

  “Man, you don’t do that for anything but the second coming. What you think they expect with all that black? It sucks ‘em in, but boy, you got to pay off.”

  “We paid off,” said Burcke. “Here it comes.”

  “The horse act, right?”

  “Wrong,” said Burcke.

  * * * *

  Dark stage. Desk, pool of light. Zoom in, Burcke, jaw clamped. In a face as sincere and interested as that, the clamped jaw is pretty grim.

  Burcke: Tonight the Heri Gonza show brings you a true story. Although the parts are played by professional actors, and certain scenes are shortened for reasons of time, you may be assured that these are real events and can be proved in every detail.

  * * * *

  “What the hell is this?” roared Heri Gonza. “Did you air this? Is this what went out when I was knocking myself out with that horse act?”

  “Sit down,” said Burcke.

  Heri Gonza sat down dazedly.

  * * * *

  Burcke at desk. Lifts book and raps it.

  Burcke: This is a ship’s rough log, the log of the Fafnir 203. How it comes to be on this desk, on your wall, is, I must warn you, a shocking story. The Fafnir is a twelve-cabin luxury cruiser with a crew of twelve, including stewards and the galley crew. So was the 203, before it was rebuilt. It was redesigned to sleep four with no room over, with two cabins rebuilt as a small-materials shop and a biological laboratory, and all the rest taken up with power-plant, fuel and stores. The ship’s complement was Dr. Iris Barran, mathematician—

  Fade in foredeck of Fafnir, girl standing by computer.

  Dr. George Rehoboth Horowitz, microbiologist—

  Bespectacled man enters, crosses to girl, who smiles.

  Yeager Kearsarge, pilot first class—

  Kearsarge is a midget with a long, bony, hardbitten face. He enters from black foreground and goes to control console’.

  Sam Flannel, supercargo.

  Widen lighting to pass cabin bulkhead, discovering large man strapped in acceleration couch, asleep or unconscious.

  * * * *

  “I got it,” said Heri Gonza in the projection room. “A rib. It’s a rib. Pretty good, fellers.”

  “It isn’t a rib, Heri Gonza,” said Burcke. “Sit down, now.”

  “It’s got to be a rib,” said Heri Gonza i
n a low voice. “Slip me a beer, I should relax and enjoy the altogether funny joke.”

  “Here. Now shush.”

  * * * *

  Burcke : . . . mission totally contrary to law and regulation. Destination: Iapetus. Purpose: collection of the virus, or spores, of the dreaded children’s affliction iapetitis, on the theory that examination of these in their natural habitat will reveal their exact internal structure and lead to a cure, or at the very least an immunization. Shipowner and director of mission: (long beat) Heri Gonza.

  Fourteen hours out. . .

  Fade Burcke and desk and take out. Dolly in to foredeck.

  Horowitz crosses to side cabin, looks in on Flannel. Touches Flannel’s face. Returns to computer and Iris.

  Horowitz: He’s still out cold. The tough boy is no spaceman.

  Iris: I can’t get over his being here at all. Why ever did Heri want him along?

  Horowitz: Maybe he’ll tell us.

  Small explosion. High whine.

  Kearsarge: A rock! a rock!

  Iris: (frightened) What’s a rock?

  Kearsarge waddles rapidly to friction hooks on bulkhead, snatches off helmets, throws two to Horowitz and Iris, sprints with two more into cabin. Gets one on Flannel’s lolling head, adjusts oxygen valve. Puts on his own. Returns to assist Iris, then Horowitz.

  Iris: What is it?

  Kearsarge: Nothing to worry you, lady. Meteorite. Just a little one. I’ll get it patched.

  From control console, sudden sharp hiss and cloud of vapor.

  Iris: Oh! And what’s that?

  Kearsarge: Now you got me.

  Kearsarge goes to console, kneels, peers underneath. Grunts, fumbles.

  Horowitz: What is it?

  Kearsarge: Ain’t regulation, ‘sall I know.

  Horowitz kneels beside him and peers.

  Horowitz: What’s this?

  Kearsarge: Bottom of main firing lever. Wire tied to it, pulled that pin when we blasted off.

  Horowitz: Started this timing mechanism. . . . What time did it pop?

  Kearsarge: Just about 14:30 after blastoff.

  Horowitz: Think you can get it off there? I’d like to test for what was in it.

  Kearsarge gets the device off, gives it to Horowitz, who takes it into lab.

  Cut to cabin, closeup of Flannel’s helmeted face. He opens his eyes, stares blankly. He is very sick, pale, insane with dormant fear. Suddenly fear no longer dormant. With great difficulty raises head, raises strapped-down wrist enough to see watch. Suddenly begins to scream and thrash around. The releases are right by his hands but he can’t find them. Iris and Kearsarge run in. Kearsarge stops to take in the situation, then reaches out and pulls releases. Straps fall away; Flannel, howling, leaps for the door, knocking the midget flat and slamming Iris up against edge of door. She screams. Kearsarge scrambles to his feet, takes off after Flannel like a Boston terrier after a bull. Flannel skids to a stop by the lifeboat blister, starts tugging at it.

  Kearsarge: What the hell are you doing?

  Flannel (blubbering): 14:30 . . . 14:30 ... I gotta get out, gotta get out . . . (screams)

  Kearsarge: Don’t pull on that, y’damn fool! That’s not the hatch, it’s the release! We got spin on for gravity—y’ll pitch the boat a hundred miles off!

  Flannel: Oh, lemme out, it’s too late!

  Kearsarge punches upward with both hands so unexpectedly that Flannel’s grip is broken and he pitches over backward. Kearsarge leaps on him, twists his oxygen valve, and scuttles back out of the way. Flannel lumbers to his feet, staggers over to the boat blister, gets his hands on the wrong lever again, but his knees buckle. Inside the helmet, his face is purpling. Horowitz comes running out of the lab. Kearsarge puts out an arm and holds him back, and together they watch Flannel sag down, fall, roll, writhe. He puts both hands on helmet, tugs at it weakly.

  Horowitz: Don’t for God’s sake let him take off that helmet!

  Kearsarge: Don’t worry. He can’t.

  Flannel slumps and lies still. Kearsarge goes to him and opens valve a little. He beckons Horowitz and together they drag him back to the cabin and with some difficulty get him on the couch and strapped down.

  Horowitz: What happened? I had my hands full of reagents in there.

  Kearsarge: Space nutty. They get like that sometimes after blackout. He wanted out. Tried to take the boat.

  Horowitz: He say anything?

  Kearsarge: Buncha junk. Said, 14:30, 14:30. Said it was too late, had to get out.

  Horowitz: That snivvy under the console popped at 14:30. He knew about it.

  Kearsarge: Did he now. What was it?

  Horowitz: Cyanide gas. If we hadn’t been holed and forced to put the helmets on, we’d’ve had it.

  Kearsarge: Except him. He figured to be up an’ around lookin’ at his watch, and when she popped, he’d be in the boat headed home and we’d keep blasting till the pile run dry, som’res out t’ords Algol.

  Horowitz: Can you fix those releases so he can’t reach them?

  Kearsarge: Oh, sure.

  Fade. Light picks up Burcke at the side.

  Burcke (as narrator): They got an explanation out of Flannel, and it satisfied none of them. He said he knew nothing of any cyanide. He said that Heri, knowing he was a bad spaceman, had told him that if it got so bad he couldn’t stand it, he could always come back in the lifeboat. But if he did that, he’d have to do it before 14:30 after blastoff or there wouldn’t be fuel enough to decelerate, start back, and maneuver a landing. He insisted that that was all there was to it. He would not say what he was doing aboard, except to state that Heri Gonza wanted him to look out for Heri’s interests.

  No amount of discussion made anything clearer. Heri certainly could not have wanted the expedition to fail, nor his ship hurled away from the solar system. They reluctantly concluded that some enemy of Heri Gonza’s must have sabotaged them—someone they simply didn’t know.

  The weeks went by—not easy ones, by any means, in those close quarters, without any event except Iris Barran’s puzzling discovery that the ship required no astrogator after all: what the veteran Kearsarge couldn’t handle in his head was easily treated in the computer. Why, then, had Heri Gonza insisted on her cramming on astrogation?

  Zoom in to Saturn until it fills a quadrant. String out the moons.

  * * * *

  Heri Gonza watched the bridge sequence, as Saturn swept close and the moons rolled by like broken beads, and little Iapetus swam close. Iapetus is not a moon like most, round or oblate, but a rock, a drifting mountain some 500 miles in diameter. And before them was the solution to the mystery of the changing moonlight. Some unknown cataclysm has cloven Iapetus, so that it has one sheer face, nearly four hundred square miles of flat plain (or cliff, depending on how you look at it) made of pale gray basaltic material. Since Iapetus always maintains one face to Saturn, it always appears brighter as it rounds the eastern limb, and dimmer as it goes west, the albedo of the flat face being much higher than the craggy ruin of the rest of its surface.

  “Burckee, Burckee, Burckee ol’ turkey,” murmured the comedian in accents of wonder, “who the hell writes your stuff? Who writes your lousy, lousy stuff?”

  * * * *

  Stock shot, Fafnir putting down tail-first on rocky plain, horizon washed out and black space brought down close. Rocks sharp-cornered, uneroded. Long shot, stabilizing jacks extending widest. Ladder out. Two suited figures ride it down, the other two climb down.

  Closeup, all four at tail-base.

  Horowitz: (filter mike) Check your radios. Read me?

  All : Check. Read you fine.

  Horowitz: Each take a fin. Walk straight out with the fin as a guide, and when you’ve passed our scorch area, get a rock scraping every five feet or so until you’re far enough away that the horizon’s a third of the way up the hull. Got that? No farther. (Beat) And I can almost tell you now, we aren’t going to find one blessed thing. No virus, no spore, no nothing. My
God, it’s no more than twelve, thirteen degrees K in the shadows here. Anyway ... let’s go.

  Burcke: (off) Scratch and hop, scratch and hop. In this gravity, you don’t move fast or push hard, or you’ll soar away and take minutes to come down again. Shuffle and scratch, scratch and sweep, scratch and hop. It took them hours.

  Closeup, Kearsarge, looking down.

  Kearsarge: Here’s something.

  Closeups, each of the other three, looking up, turning head at the sound of Kearsarge’s voice.