Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.

  "If you see this boy," said the ballerina, "do not—I repeat, do not—try to reason with him."

  There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.

  Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.

  George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have—for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. "That must be Harrison!"

  The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.

  When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.

  Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.

  "I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook.

  "Even as I stand here—" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened—I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!"

  Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.

  Harrison's scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.

  Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.

  He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.

  "I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the cowering people. "Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!"

  A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.

  Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all, he removed her mask.

  She was blindingly beautiful.

  "Now—" said Harrison, taking her hand, "shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!" he commanded.

  The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. "Play your best," he told them, "and I'll make you barons and dukes and earls."

  The music began. It was normal at first— cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.

  The music began again and was much improved.

  Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while—listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.

  They shifted their weights to their toes.

  Harrison placed his big hands on the girl's tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.

  And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!

  Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.

  They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.

  They leaped like deer on the moon.

  The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it.

  It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling.

  They kissed it.

  And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.

  It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

  Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.

  It was then that the Bergerons' television tube burned out.

  Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.

  George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. "You been crying?" he said to Hazel.

  "Yup," she said.

  "What about?" he said.

  "I forget," she said. "Something real sad on television."

  "What was it?" he said.

  "It's all kind of mixed up in my mind," said Hazel.

  "Forget sad things," said George.

  "I always do," said Hazel.

  "That's my girl," said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.

  "Gee—I could tell that one was a doozy," said Hazel.

  "You can say that again," said George.

  "Gee—" said Hazel, "I could tell that one was a doozy."

  WALTER M. MILLER

  Walter Michael Miller, Jr. (January 23, 1923 – January 9, 1996) was an American science fiction author. Today he is primarily known for A Canticle for Leibowitz, the only novel he published in his lifetime. Prior to its publication he was a prolific writer of short stories.

  Death of a Spaceman, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

  The manner in which a man has lived is often the key to the way he will die. Take old man Donegal, for example. Most of his adult life was spent in digging a hole through space to learn what was on the other side. Would he go out the same way?

  Old Donegal was dying. They had all known it was coming, and they watched it come--his haggard wife, his daughter, and now his grandson, home on emergency leave from the pre-astronautics academy. Old Donegal knew it too, and had known it from the beginning, when he had begun to lose control of his legs and was forced to walk with a cane. But most of the time, he pretended to let them keep the secret they shared with the doctors--that the operations had all been failures, and that the cancer that fed at his spine would gnaw its way brainward until the paralysis engulfed vital organs, and then Old Donegal would cease to be. It would be cruel to let them know that he knew. Once, weeks ago, he had joked about the approaching shadows.

  "Buy the plot back where people won't walk over it, Martha," he said. "Get it way back under the cedars--next to the fence. There aren't many graves back there yet. I want to be alone."

  "Don't talk that way, Donny!" his wife had choked. "You're not dying."

  His eyes twinkled maliciously. "Listen, Martha, I want to be buried face-down. I want to be buried with my back to space, understand? Don't let them lay me out like a lily."

  "Donny, please!"

  "They oughta face a man the way he's headed," Donegal grunted. "I been up--way up. Now I'm going straight down."

  Martha had fled from the room in tears. He had never done it again, except to the interns and nurses, who, while they insisted that he was going to get well, didn't mind joking with him about it.

  Martha can bear my death, he thought, can bear pre-knowledge of it. But she couldn't bear thinking that he might take it calmly. If he accepted death gracefully, it would be like deliberately leaving her, and Old Donegal had decided to help her believe whatever would be comforting to her in such a troublesome moment.

  "When'll they let me out of this bed again?" he complained.

  "Be patient, Donny," she sighed. "It won't be long. You'll be up and around before you know it."

  "Back on the moon-run, maybe?" he offered. "Listen, Martha, I been planet-bound too long. I'm not too old for the moon-run, am I? Sixty-three's not so old."

  That had been carrying things too far. She knew he was ho
axing, and dabbed at her eyes again. The dead must humor the mourners, he thought, and the sick must comfort the visitors. It was always so.

  But it was harder, now that the end was near. His eyes were hazy, and his thoughts unclear. He could move his arms a little, clumsily, but feeling was gone from them. The rest of his body was lost to him. Sometimes he seemed to feel his stomach and his hips, but the sensation was mostly an illusion offered by higher nervous centers, like the "ghost-arm" that an amputee continues to feel. The wires were down, and he was cut off from himself.

  * * * * *

  He lay wheezing on the hospital bed, in his own room, in his own rented flat. Gaunt and unshaven, gray as winter twilight, he lay staring at the white net curtains that billowed gently in the breeze from the open window. There was no sound in the room but the sound of breathing and the loud ticking of an alarm clock. Occasionally he heard a chair scraping on the stone terrace next door, and the low mutter of voices, sometimes laughter, as the servants of the Keith mansion arranged the terrace for late afternoon guests.

  With considerable effort, he rolled his head toward Martha who sat beside the bed, pinch-faced and weary.

  "You ought to get some sleep," he said.

  "I slept yesterday. Don't talk, Donny. It tires you."

  "You ought to get more sleep. You never sleep enough. Are you afraid I'll get up and run away if you go to sleep for a while?"

  She managed a brittle smile. "There'll be plenty of time for sleep when ... when you're well again." The brittle smile fled and she swallowed hard, like swallowing a fish-bone. He glanced down, and noticed that she was squeezing his hand spasmodically.

  There wasn't much left of the hand, he thought. Bones and ugly tight-stretched hide spotted with brown. Bulging knuckles with yellow cigaret stains. My hand. He tried to tighten it, tried to squeeze Martha's thin one in return. He watched it open and contract a little, but it was like operating a remote-control mechanism. Goodbye, hand, you're leaving me the way my legs did, he told it. I'll see you again in hell. How hammy can you get, Old Donegal? You maudlin ass.

  "Requiescat," he muttered over the hand, and let it lie in peace.

  Perhaps she heard him. "Donny," she whispered, leaning closer, "won't you let me call the priest now? Please."

  He rattled a sigh and rolled his head toward the window again. "Are the Keiths having a party today?" he asked. "Sounds like they're moving chairs out on the terrace."

  "Please, Donny, the priest?"

  He let his head roll aside and closed his eyes, as if asleep. The bed shook slightly as she quickly caught at his wrist to feel for a pulse.

  "If I'm not dying, I don't need a priest," he said sleepily.

  "That's not right," she scolded softly. "You know that's not right, Donny. You know better."

  Maybe I'm being too rough on her? he wondered. He hadn't minded getting baptized her way, and married her way, and occasionally priest-handled the way she wanted him to when he was home from a space-run, but when it came to dying, Old Donegal wanted to do it his own way.

  * * * * *

  He opened his eyes at the sound of a bench being dragged across the stone terrace. "Martha, what kind of a party are the Keiths having today?"

  "I wouldn't know," she said stiffly. "You'd think they'd have a little more respect. You'd think they'd put it off a few days."

  "Until--?"

  "Until you feel better."

  "I feel fine, Martha. I like parties. I'm glad they're having one. Pour me a drink, will you? I can't reach the bottle anymore."

  "It's empty."

  "No, it isn't, Martha, it's still a quarter full. I know. I've been watching it."

  "You shouldn't have it, Donny. Please don't."

  "But this is a party, Martha. Besides, the doctor says I can have whatever I want. Whatever I want, you hear? That means I'm getting well, doesn't it?"

  "Sure, Donny, sure. Getting well."

  "The whiskey, Martha. Just a finger in a tumbler, no more. I want to feel like it's a party."

  Her throat was rigid as she poured it. She helped him get the tumbler to his mouth. The liquor seared his throat, and he gagged a little as the fumes clogged his nose. Good whiskey, the best--but he couldn't take it any more. He eyed the green stamp on the neck of the bottle on the bed-table and grinned. He hadn't had whiskey like that since his space-days. Couldn't afford it now, not on a blastman's pension.

  * * * * *

  He remembered how he and Caid used to smuggle a couple of fifths aboard for the moon-run. If they caught you, it meant suspension, but there was no harm in it, not for the blastroom men who had nothing much to do from the time the ship acquired enough velocity for the long, long coaster ride until they started the rockets again for Lunar landing. You could drink a fifth, jettison the bottle through the trash lock, and sober up before you were needed again. It was the only way to pass the time in the cramped cubicle, unless you ruined your eyes trying to read by the glow-lamps. Old Donegal chuckled. If he and Caid had stayed on the run, Earth would have a ring by now, like Saturn--a ring of Old Granddad bottles.

  "You said it, Donny-boy," said the misty man by the billowing curtains. "Who else knows the gegenschein is broken glass?"

  Donegal laughed. Then he wondered what the man was doing there. The man was lounging against the window, and his unzipped space rig draped about him in an old familiar way. Loose plug-in connections and hose-ends dangled about his lean body. He was freckled and grinning.

  "Caid," Old Donegal breathed softly.

  "What did you say, Donny?" Martha answered.

  Old Donegal blinked hard and shook his head. Something let go with a soggy snap, and the misty man was gone. I'd better take it easy on the whiskey, he thought. You got to wait, Donegal, old lush, until Nora and Ken get here. You can't get drunk until they're gone, or you might get them mixed up with memories like Caid's.

  Car doors slammed in the street below. Martha glanced toward the window.

  "Think it's them? I wish they'd get here. I wish they'd hurry."

  Martha arose and tiptoed to the window. She peered down toward the sidewalk, put on a sharp frown. He heard a distant mutter of voices and occasional laughter, with group-footsteps milling about on the sidewalk. Martha murmured her disapproval and closed the window.

  "Leave it open," he said.

  "But the Keiths' guests are starting to come. There'll be such a racket." She looked at him hopefully, the way she did when she prompted his manners before company came.

  Maybe it wasn't decent to listen in on a party when you were dying, he thought. But that wasn't the reason. Donegal, your chamber-pressure's dropping off. Your brains are in your butt-end, where a spacer's brains belong, but your butt-end died last month. She wants the window closed for her own sake, not yours.

  "Leave it closed," he grunted. "But open it again before the moon-run blasts off. I want to listen."

  She smiled and nodded, glancing at the clock. "It'll be an hour and a half yet. I'll watch the time."

  "I hate that clock. I wish you'd throw it out. It's loud."

  "It's your medicine-clock, Donny." She came back to sit down at his bedside again. She sat in silence. The clock filled the room with its clicking pulse.

  "What time are they coming?" he asked.

  "Nora and Ken? They'll be here soon. Don't fret."

  "Why should I fret?" He chuckled. "That boy--he'll be a good spacer, won't he, Martha?"

  Martha said nothing, fanned at a fly that crawled across his pillow. The fly buzzed up in an angry spiral and alighted on the ceiling. Donegal watched it for a time. The fly had natural-born space-legs. I know your tricks, he told it with a smile, and I learned to walk on the bottomside of things before you were a maggot. You stand there with your magnasoles hanging to the hull, and the rest of you's in free fall. You jerk a sole loose, and your knee flies up to your belly, and reaction spins you half-around and near throws your other hip out of joint if you don't jam the foot down fast and je
rk up the other. It's worse'n trying to run through knee-deep mud with snow-shoes, and a man'll go nuts trying to keep his arms and legs from taking off in odd directions. I know your tricks, fly. But the fly was born with his magnasoles, and he trotted across the ceiling like Donegal never could.

  "That boy Ken--he ought to make a damn good space-engineer," wheezed the old man.

  Her silence was long, and he rolled his head toward her again. Her lips tight, she stared down at the palm of his hand, unfolded his bony fingers, felt the cracked calluses that still welted the shrunken skin, calluses worn there by the linings of space gauntlets and the handles of fuel valves, and the rungs of get-about ladders during free fall.

  "I don't know if I should tell you," she said.

  "Tell me what, Martha?"

  She looked up slowly, scrutinizing his face. "Ken's changed his mind, Nora says. Ken doesn't like the academy. She says he wants to go to medical school."

  Old Donegal thought it over, nodded absently. "That's fine. Space-medics get good pay." He watched her carefully.

  She lowered her eyes, rubbed at his calluses again. She shook her head slowly. "He doesn't want to go to space."

  The clock clicked loudly in the closed room.

  "I thought I ought to tell you, so you won't say anything to him about it," she added.

  Old Donegal looked grayer than before. After a long silence, he rolled his head away and looked toward the limp curtains.

  "Open the window, Martha," he said.

  Her tongue clucked faintly as she started to protest, but she said nothing. After frozen seconds, she sighed and went to open it. The curtains billowed, and a babble of conversation blew in from the terrace of the Keith mansion. With the sound came the occasional brassy discord of a musician tuning his instrument. She clutched the window-sash as if she wished to slam it closed again.

  "Well! Music!" grunted Old Donegal. "That's good. This is some shebang. Good whiskey and good music and you." He chuckled, but it choked off into a fit of coughing.