Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  Madame Hollia moved majestically toward the steps.

  “Very pleasant to see you, my dear,” she said over one well-padded shoulder. “Enjoy your stay. My regards to Omerie and Klia. Mr. Wilson-” she nodded toward the walk. “A word with you.”

  Oliver followed her down toward the street. Madame Hollia paused halfway there and touched his arm.

  “One word of advice,” she said huskily. “You say you sleep here? Move out, young man. Move out before tonight.”

  Oliver was searching in a half-desultory fashion for the hiding place Sue had found for the mysterious silver cube, when the first sounds from above began to drift down the stairwell toward him. Kleph had closed her door, but the house was old, and strange qualities in the noise overhead seemed to seep through the woodwork like an almost visible stain.

  It was music, in a way. But much more than music. And it was a terrible sound, the sounds of calamity and of all human reaction to calamity, everything from hysteria to heartbreak, from irrational joy to rationalized acceptance.

  The calamity was-single. The music did not attempt to correlate all human sorrows; it focused sharply upon one and followed the ramifications out and out. Oliver recognized these basics to the sounds in a very brief moment. They were essentials, and they seemed to beat into his brain with the first strains of the music which was so much more than music.

  But when he lifted his head to listen he lost all grasp upon the meaning of the noise and it was sheer medley and confusion. To think of it was to blur it hopelessly in the mind, and he could not recapture that first instant of unreasoning acceptance.

  He went upstairs almost in a daze, hardly knowing what he was doing. He pushed Kleph’s door open. He looked inside- What he saw there he could not afterward remember except in a blurring as vague as the blurred ideas the music roused in his brain. Half the room had vanished behind a mist, and the mist was a three-dimensional screen upon which were projected- He had no words for them. He was not even sure if the projections were visual. The mist was spinning with motion and sound, but essentially it was neither sound nor motion that Oliver saw.

  This was a work of art. Oliver knew no name for it. It transcended all art-forms he knew, blended them, and out of the blend produced subtleties his mind could not begin to grasp. Basically, this was the attempt of a master composer to correlate every essential aspect of a vast human experience into something that could be conveyed in a few moments to every sense at once.

  The shifting visions on the screen were not pictures in themselves, but hints of pictures, subtly selected outlines that plucked at the mind and with one deft touch set whole chords ringing through the memory. Perhaps each beholder reacted differently, since it was in the eye and the mind of the beholder that the truth of the picture lay. No two would be aware of the same symphonic panorama, but each would see essentially the same terrible story unfold.

  Every sense was touched by that deft and merciless genius. Color and shape and motion flickered in the screen, hinting much, evoking unbearable memories deep in the mind; odors floated from the screen and touched the heart of the beholder more poignantly than anything visual could do. The skin crawled sometimes as if to a tangible cold hand laid upon it. The tongue curled with remembered bitterness and remembered sweet.

  It was outrageous. It violated the innermost privacies of a man’s mind, called up secret things long ago walled off behind mental scar tissue, forced its terrible message upon the beholder relentlessly though the mind might threaten to crack beneath the stress of it.

  And yet, in spite of all this vivid awareness, Oliver did not know what calamity the screen portrayed. That it was real, vast, overwhelmingly dreadful he could not doubt. That it had once happened was unmistakable. He caught flashing glimpses of human faces distorted with grief and disease and death-real faces, faces that had once lived and were seen now in the instant of dying. He saw men and women in rich clothing superimposed in panorama upon reeling thousands of ragged folk, great throngs of them swept past the sight in an instant, and he saw that death made no distinction among them.

  He saw lovely women laugh and shake their curls, and the laughter shriek into hysteria and the hysteria into music. He saw one man’s face, over and over-a long, dark, saturnine face, deeply lined, sorrowful, the face of a powerful man wise in worldliness, urbane-and helpless. That face was for awhile a recurring motif, always more tortured, more helpless than before.

  The music broke off in the midst of a rising glide. The mist vanished and the room reappeared before him. The anguished dark face for an instant seemed to Oliver printed everywhere he looked, like after-vision on the eyelids. He knew that face. He had seen it before, not often, but he should know its name- “Oliver, Oliver-” Kleph’s sweet voice came out of a fog at him.

  He was leaning dizzily against the doorpost looking down into her eyes. She, too, had that dazed blankness he must show on his own face. The power of the dreadful symphony still held them both. But even in this confused moment Oliver saw that Kleph had been enjoying the experience.

  He felt sickened to the depths of his mind, dizzy with sickness and revulsion because of the superimposing of human miseries he had just beheld. But Kleph-only appreciation showed upon her face. To her it had been magnificence, and magnificence only.

  Irrelevantly Oliver remembered the nauseating candies she had enjoyed, the nauseating odors of strange food that drifted sometimes through the hail from her room.

  What was it she had said downstairs a little while ago? Connoisseur, that was it. Only a connoisseur could appreciate work as-as advanced-as the work of someone called Cenbe.

  A whiff of intoxicating sweetness curled past Oliver’s face. Something cool and smooth was pressed into his hand.

  “Oh, Oliver, I am so sorry,” Kleph’s voice murmured contritely. “Here, drink the euphoriac and you will feel better. Please drink!”

  The familiar fragrance of the hot sweet tea was on his tongue before he knew he had complied. Its relaxing fumes floated up through his brain and in a moment or two the world felt stable around him again. The room was as it had always been. And Kleph- Her eyes were very bright. Sympathy showed in them for him, but for herself she was still brimmed with the high elation of what she had just been experiencing.

  “Come and sit down,” she said gently, tugging at his arm. “I am so sorry-I should not have played that over, where you could hear it.

  I have no excuse, really. It was only that I forgot what the effect might be on one who had never heard Cenbe’s symphonies before. I was so impatient to see what he had done with. . . with his new subject. I am so very sorry, Oliver!”

  “What was it?” His voice sounded steadier than he had expected. The tea was responsible for that. He sipped again, glad of the consoling euphoria its fragrance brought.

  “A . . . a composite interpretation of . . . oh, Oliver, you know I must not answer questions!”

  “But-”

  “No-drink your tea and forget what it was you saw. Think of other things. Here, we will have music-another kind of music, something gay-”

  She reached for the wall beside the window, and as before, Oliver saw the broad framed picture of blue water above the bed ripple and grow pale. Through it another scene began to dawn like shapes rising beneath the surface of the sea.

  He had a glimpse of a dark-curtained stage upon which a man in a tight dark tunic and hose moved with a restless, sidelong pace, his hands and face startlingly pale against the black about him. He limped; he had a crooked back and he spoke familiar lines. Oliver had seen John Barryrnore once as the crook-backed Richard, and it seemed vaguely outrageous to him that any other actor should essay that difficult part. This one he had never seen before, but the man had a fascinatingly smooth manner and his interpretation of the Plantagenet king was quite new and something Shakespeare probably never dreamed of.

  “No,” Kleph said, “not this. Nothing gloomy.” And she put out her hand again. The nameless new Richard
faded and there was a swirl of changing pictures and changing voices, all blurred together, before the scene steadied upon a stageful of dancers in pastel ballet skirts, drifting effortlessly through some complicated pattern of motion. The music that went with it was light and effortless too. The room filled up with the clear, floating melody.

  Oliver set down his cup. He felt much surer of himself now, and he thought the euphoriac had done all it could for him. He didn’t want to blur again mentally. There were things he meant to learn about. Now. He considered how to begin.

  Kleph was watching him. “That Hollia,” she said suddenly. “She wants to buy the house?”

  Oliver nodded. “She’s offering a lot of money. Sue’s going to be awfully disappointed if-” He hesitated. Perhaps, after all, Sue would not be disappointed. He remembered the little silver cube with the enigmatic function and he wondered if he should mention it to Kleph. But the euphoriac had not reached that level of his brain, and he remembered his duty to Sue and was silent.

  Kleph shook her head, her eyes upon his warm with-was it sympathy?

  “Believe me,” she said, “you will not find that-important-after all. I promise you, Oliver.”

  He stared at her. “I wish you’d explain.”

  Kleph laughed on a note more sorrowful than amused. But it occurred to Oliver suddenly that there was no longer condescension in her voice. Imperceptibly that air of delicate amusement had vanished from her manner toward him. The cool detachment that still marked Omerie’s attitude, and Klia’s, was not in Kleph’s any more. It was a subtlety he did not think she could assume. It had to come spontaneously or not at all. And for no reason he was willing to examine, it became suddenly very important to Oliver that Kleph should not condescend to him, that she should feel toward him as he felt toward her. He would not think of it.

  He looked down at his cup, rose-quartz, exhaling a thin plume of steam from its crescent-slit opening. This time, he thought, maybe he could make the tea work for him. For he remembered how it loosened the tongue, and there was a great deal he needed to know. The idea that had come to him on the porch in the instant of silent rivalry between Kleph and Sue seemed now too fantastic to entertain. But some answer there must be.

  Kleph herself gave him the opening.

  “I must not take too much euphoriac this afternoon,” she said, smiling at him over her pink cup. “It will make me drowsy, and we are going out this evening with friends.”

  “More friends?” Oliver asked. “From your country?”

  Kleph nodded. “Very dear friends we have expected all this week.”

  “I wish you’d tell me,” Oliver said bluntly, “where it is you come from. It isn’t from here. Your culture is too different from ours- even your names-” He broke off as Kleph shook her head.

  “I wish I could tell you. But that is against all the rules. It is even against the rules for me to be here talking to you now.”

  “What rules?”

  She made a helpless gesture. “You must not ask me, Oliver.” She leaned back on the chaise longue, which adjusted itself luxuriously to the motion, and smiled very sweetly at him. “We must not talk about things like that. Forget it, listen to the music, enjoy yourself if you can-” She closed her eyes and laid her head back against the cushions. Oliver saw the round tanned throat swell as she began to hum a tune. Eyes still closed, she sang again the words she had sung upon the stairs. “Come hider, love, to me-”

  A memory clicked over suddenly in Oliver’s mind. He had never heard the queer, lagging tune before, but he thought he knew the words. He remembered what Hollia’s husband had said when he heard that line of song, and he leaned forward. She would not answer a direct question, but perhaps- “Was the weather this warm in Canterbury?” he asked, and held his breath. Kleph hummed another line of the song and shook her head, eyes still closed.

  “It was autumn there,” she said. “But bright, wonderfully bright. Even their clothing, you know . . . everyone was singing that new song, and I can’t get it out of my head.” She sang another line, and the words were almost unintelligible-English, yet not an English Oliver could understand.

  He stood up. “Wait,” he said. “I want to find something. Back in a minute.”

  She opened her eyes and smiled mistily at him, still humming. He went downstairs as fast as he could-the stairway swayed a little, though his head was nearly clear now-and into the library. The book he wanted was old and battered, interlined with the penciled notes of his college days. He did not remember very clearly where the passage he wanted was, but he thumbed fast through the columns and by sheer luck found it within a few minutes. Then he went back upstairs, feeling a strange emptiness in his stomach because of what he almost believed now.

  “Kleph,” he said firmly, “I know that song. I know the year it was new.”

  Her lids rose slowly; she looked at him through a mist of euphoriac. He was not sure she had understood. For a long moment she held him with her gaze. Then she put out one downy-sleeved arm and spread her tanned fingers toward him. She laughed deep in her throat.

  “Come hider, love, to me,” she said.

  He crossed the room slowly, took her hand. The fingers closed warmly about his. She pulled him down so that he had to kneel beside her. Her other arm lifted. Again she laughed, very softly, and closed her eyes, lifting her face to his.

  The kiss was warm and long. He caught something of her own euphoria from the fragrance of the tea breathed into his face. And he was startled at the end of the kiss, when the clasp of her arms loosened about his neck, to feel the sudden rush of her breath against his cheek. There were tears on her face, and the sound she made was a sob.

  He held her off and looked down in amazement. She sobbed once more, caught a deep breath, and said, “Oh, Oliver, Oliver-” Then she shook her head and pulled free, turning away to hide her face. “I ... I am sorry,” she said unevenly. “Please forgive me. It does not matter. . . I know it does not matter. . . but-”

  “What’s wrong? What doesn’t matter?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. . . please forget it. Nothing at all.” She got a handkerchief from the table and blew her nose, smiling at him with an effect of radiance through the tears.

  Suddenly he was very angry. He had heard enough evasions and mystifying half-truths. He said roughly, “Do you think I’m crazy? I know enough now to-”

  “Oliver, please!” She held up her own cup, steaming fragrantly. “Please, no more questions. Here, euphoria is what you need, Oliver. Euphoria, not answers.”

  “What year was it when you heard that song in Canterbury?” he demanded, pushing the cup aside.

  She blinked at him, tears bright on her lashes. “Why . . . what year do you think?”

  “I know,” Oliver told her grimly. “I know the year that song was popular. I know you just came from Canterbury-Hollia’s husband said so. It’s May now, but it was autumn in Canterbury, and you just came from there, so lately the song you heard is still running through your head. Chaucer’s Pardoner sang that song some time around the end of the fourteenth century. Did you see Chaucer, Kleph? What was it like in England that long ago?”

  Kleph’s eyes fixed his for a silent moment. Then her shoulders drooped and her whole body went limp with resignation beneath the soft blue robe. “I am a fool,” she said gently. “It must have been easy to trap me. You really believe what you say?”

  Oliver nodded.

  She said in a low voice, “Few people do believe it. That is one of our maxims, when we travel. We are safe from much suspicion because people before The Travel began will not believe.”

  The emptiness in Oliver’s stomach suddenly doubled in volume. For an instant the bottom dropped out of time itself and the universe was unsteady about him. He felt sick. He felt naked and helpless. There was a buzzing in his ears and the room dimmed before him.

  He had not really believed-not until this instant. He had expected some rational explanation from her that would tidy all h
is wild half-thoughts and suspicions into something a man could accept as believable. Not this.

  Kleph dabbed at her eyes with the pale-blue handkerchief and smiled tremulously.

  “I know,” she said. “It must be a terrible thing to accept. To have all your concepts turned upside down- We know it from childhood, of course, but for you . . . here, Oliver. The euphoriac will make it easier.”

  He took the cup, the faint stain of her lip rouge still on the crescent opening. He drank, feeling the dizzy sweetness spiral through his head, and his brain turned a little in his skull as the volatile fragrance took effect. With that turning, focus shifted and all his values with it.

  He began to feel better. The flesh settled on his bones again, and the warm clothing of temporal assurance settled upon his flesh, and he was no longer naked and in the vortex of unstable time.

  “The story is very simple, really,” Kleph said. “We-travel. Our own time is not terribly far ahead of yours. No. I must not say how far. But we still remember your songs and poets and some of your great actors. We are a people of much leisure, and we cultivate the art of enjoying ourselves.

  “This is a tour we are making-a tour of a year’s seasons. Vintage seasons. That autumn in Canterbury was the most magnificent autumn our researchers could discover anywhere. We rode in a pilgrimage to the shrine-it was a wonderful experience, though the clothing was a little hard to manage.

  “Now this month of May is almost over-the loveliest May in recorded times. A perfect May in a wonderful period. You have no way of knowing what a good, gay period you live in, Oliver. The very feeling in the air of the cities-that wonderful national confidence and happiness-everything going as smoothly as a dream. There were other Mays with fine weather, but each of them had a war or a famine, or something else wrong.” She hesitated, grimaced and went on rapidly. “In a few days we are to meet at a coronation in Rome,” she said. “I think the year will be 800-Christmastime. We-”