Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  She flushed deeply, blew out the candles, and he heard her slip off her garment and get in with him. There was a long silence.

  Then: "Are ye not--"

  "Yes, fair one?" he muttered through his drowsiness.

  "Are ye not ... well, I am here and ye are here and--"

  "Fear not," he said. "I laid my sword between us. Sleep in peace."

  "I ... would be glad--ye have come to deliver--"

  "No, fair lady. No man of gentle breeding could so abuse his power. Goodnight." He leaned over, brushing his lips gently across hers, and lay down again.

  "Ye are ... I never thought man could be so noble," she whispered.

  Cappen mumbled something. As his soul spun into sleep, he chuckled. Those unresting days and nights on the sea had not left him fit for that kind of exercise. But, of course, if she wanted to think he was being magnanimous, it could be useful later--

  * * * * *

  He woke with a start and looked into the sputtering glare of a torch. Its light wove across the crags and gullies of the troll-wife's face and shimmered wetly off the great tusks in her mouth.

  "Good morning, mother," said Cappen politely.

  Hildigund thrust back a scream.

  "Come and be eaten," said the troll-wife.

  "No, thank you," said Cappen, regretfully but firmly. "'Twould be ill for my health. No, I will but trouble you for a firebrand and then the princess and I will be off."

  "If you think that stupid bit of silver will protect you, think again," she snapped. "Your three sentences were all that saved you last night. Now I hunger."

  "Silver," said Cappen didactically, "is a certain shield against all black magics. So the wizard told me, and he was such a nice white-bearded old man I am sure even his attendant devils never lied. Now please depart, mother, for modesty forbids me to dress before your eyes."

  The hideous face thrust close to his. He smiled dreamily and tweaked her nose--hard.

  She howled and flung the torch at him. Cappen caught it and stuffed it into her mouth. She choked and ran from the room.

  "A new sport--trollbaiting," said the bard gaily into the sudden darkness. "Come, shall we not venture out?"

  The girl trembled too much to move. He comforted her, absentmindedly, and dressed in the dark, swearing at the clumsy leggings. When he left, Hildigund put on her clothes and hurried after him.

  The troll-wife squatted by the fire and glared at them as they went by. Cappen hefted his sword and looked at her. "I do not love you," he said mildly, and hewed out.

  She backed away, shrieking as he slashed at her. In the end, she crouched at the mouth of a tunnel, raging futilely. Cappen pricked her with his blade.

  "It is not worth my time to follow you down underground," he said, "but if ever you trouble men again, I will hear of it and come and feed you to my dogs. A piece at a time--a very small piece--do you understand?"

  She snarled at him.

  "An _extremely_ small piece," said Cappen amiably. "Have you heard me?"

  Something broke in her. "Yes," she whimpered. He let her go, and she scuttled from him like a rat.

  He remembered the firewood and took an armful; on the way, he thoughtfully picked up a few jeweled rings which he didn't think she would be needing and stuck them in his pouch. Then he led the girl outside.

  The wind had laid itself, a clear frosty morning glittered on the sea and the longship was a distant sliver against white-capped blueness. The minstrel groaned. "What a distance to row! Oh, well--"

  * * * * *

  They were at sea before Hildigund spoke. Awe was in the eyes that watched him. "No man could be so brave," she murmured. "Are ye a god?"

  "Not quite," said Cappen. "No, most beautiful one, modesty grips my tongue. 'Twas but that I had the silver and was therefore proof against her sorcery."

  "But the silver was no help!" she cried.

  Cappen's oar caught a crab. "What?" he yelled.

  "No--no--why, she told ye so her own self--"

  "I thought she lied. I _know_ the silver guards against--"

  "But she used no magic! Trolls have but their own strength!"

  Cappen sagged in his seat. For a moment he thought he was going to faint. Then only his lack of fear had armored him; and if he had known the truth, that would not have lasted a minute.

  He laughed shakily. Another score for his doubts about the overall value of truth!

  The longship's oars bit water and approached him. Indignant voices asking why he had been so long on his errand faded when his passenger was seen. And Svearek the king wept as he took his daughter back into his arms.

  The hard brown face was still blurred with tears when he looked at the minstrel, but the return of his old self was there too. "What ye have done, Cappen Varra of Croy, is what no other man in the world could have done."

  "Aye--aye--" The rough northern voices held adoration as the warriors crowded around the slim red-haired figure.

  "Ye shall have her whom ye saved to wife," said Svearek, "and when I die ye shall rule all Norren."

  Cappen swayed and clutched the rail.

  Three nights later he slipped away from their shore camp and turned his face southward.

  Turning Point, by Poul Anderson

  Preface by Eric Flint

  Poul Anderson had a career that lasted as long as Robert Heinlein's, and overlapped it a great deal, allowing for a ten-year difference when they got started. The parallels are rather striking:

  Heinlein's first story was published in 1939, Anderson's in 1948. ("Life-Line" and "Genius," respectively.) Within a very short time, especially by the standards of the day, they were both published novelists. Heinlein's first novels, Methusaleh's Children and Beyond This Horizon, came out in 1941 and 1942—although the first, initially, only as a magazine serial. Anderson's first novels, Vault of the Ages and Brain Wave, came out just as quickly in his career—1952 and 1954.

  Their careers continued to parallel each other. Both men worked just as easily in short form and long form, publishing novels and short fiction constantly in the decades that followed. By the time they died, they'd each produced a massive body of work. Both of them also created their own vast future histories, in which a multitude of stories and novels fit like tiles in a mozaic. In the case of Heinlein, his famous "Future History"; in the case of Anderson, the "Technic History," which encompassed his many Nicholas Van Rijn and Dominic Flandry stories.

  Robert Heinlein died in 1988, after an immensely successful career that lasted half a century. He was still writing until the end—his last novel, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, came out in 1987. Poul Anderson died in 2001, after an immensely successful career that lasted half a century. He was still writing until the end—his last two original novels, Genesis and Mother of Kings, came out in 2000 and 2001.

  Both men won a multitude of awards:

  Both received the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Grand Master Award: Heinlein in 1975, the first year the award was given; Anderson in 1998. Both are in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Robert Heinlein won a Hugo award four times; Anderson, seven times. Heinlein never won a Nebula award, although he was nominated four times; Anderson did win an award, three times.

  And yet . . .

  Somehow people never look at them quite the same way. For all the great respect that Anderson had all his life, and continues to have since his death, he never occupied the central stature than Heinlein did. No one ever thought of Anderson as "the dean of science fiction."

  Why? Well, I can only give you my opinion. Anderson was one of those very rare people who do what they do supremely well, and do so in every aspect of their craft. But they never do any one thing better than anyone else. To give an example, Anderson wrote many fine novels, to be sure. None of them ever had the impact of Heinlein's Starship Troopers or Stranger in a Strange Land.

  Since I was a teenager, though, I've always had a clear picture in my head of where Poul Anderson fits in my own pan
theon of great science fiction writers.

  He's my Joe DiMaggio, who never did anything in baseball better than anyone else, but always did everything superbly well.

  And here he is again, coming to the plate . . .

  Please, mister, could I have a cracker for my oontatherium?"

  Not exactly the words you would expect at an instant when history changes course and the universe can never again be what it was. The die is cast; In this sign conquer; It is not fit that you should sit here any longer; We hold these truths to be self-evident; The Italian navigator has landed in the New World; Dear God, the thing works!—no man with any imagination can recall those, or others like them, and not have a coldness run along his spine. But as for what little Mierna first said to us, on that island half a thousand light-years from home . . .

  The star is catalogued AGC 4256836, a K2 dwarf in Cassiopeia. Our ship was making a standard preliminary survey of that region, and had come upon mystery enough—how easily Earthsiders forget that every planet is a complete world!—but nothing extraordinary in this fantastic cosmos. The Traders had noted places that seemed worth further investigation; so had the Federals; the lists were not quite identical.

  After a year, vessel and men were equally jaded. We needed a set-down, to spend a few weeks refitting and recuperating before the long swing homeward. There is an art to finding such a spot. You visit whatever nearby suns look suitable. If you come on a planet whose gross physical characteristics are terrestroid, you check the biological details—very, very carefully, but since the operation is largely automated it goes pretty fast—and make contact with the autochthones, if any. Primitives are preferred. That's not because of military danger, as some think. The Federals insist that the natives have no objection to strangers camping on their land, while the Traders don't see how anyone, civilized or not, that hasn't discovered atomic energy can be a menace. It's only that primitives are less apt to ask complicated questions and otherwise make a nuisance of themselves. Spacemen rejoice that worlds with machine civilizations are rare.

  Well, Joril looked ideal. The second planet of that sun, with more water than Earth, it offered a mild climate everywhere. The biochemistry was so like our own that we could eat native foods, and there didn't seem to be any germs that UX-2 couldn't handle. Seas, forests, meadows made us feel right at home, yet the countless differences from Earth lent a fairyland glamour. The indigenes were savages, that is, they depended on hunting, fishing, and gathering for their whole food supply. So we assumed there were thousands of little cultures and picked the one that appeared most advanced: not that aerial observation indicated much difference.

  Those people lived in neat, exquisitely decorated villages along the western seaboard of the largest continent, with woods and hills behind them. Contact went smoothly. Our semanticians had a good deal of trouble with the language, but the villagers started picking up English right away. Their hospitality was lavish whenever we called on them, but they stayed out of our camp except for the conducted tours we gave and other such invitations. With one vast, happy sigh, we settled down.

  But from the first there were certain disturbing symptoms. Granted they had humanlike throats and palates, we hadn't expected the autochthones to speak flawless English within a couple of weeks. Every one of them. Obviously they could have learned still faster if we'd taught them systematically. We followed the usual practice and christened the planet "Joril" after what we thought was the local word for "earth"—and then found that "Joril" meant "Earth," capitalized, and the people had an excellent heliocentric astronomy. Though they were too polite to press themselves on us, they weren't merely accepting us as something inexplicable; curiosity was afire in them, and given half a chance they did ask the most complicated questions.

  Once the initial rush of establishing ourselves was over and we had time to think, it became plain that we'd stumbled on something worth much further study. First we needed to check on some other areas and make sure this Dannicar culture wasn't a freak. After all, the Neolithic Mayas had been good astronomers; the ferro-agricultural Greeks had developed a high and sophisticated philosophy. Looking over the maps we'd made from orbit, Captain Barlow chose a large island about 700 kilometers due west. A gravboat was outfitted and five men went aboard.

  Pilot: Jacques Lejeune. Engineer: me. Federal militechnic representative: Commander Ernest Baldinger, Space Force of the Solar Peace Authority. Federal civil government representative: Walter Vaughan. Trader agent: Don Haraszthy. He and Vaughan were the principals, but the rest of us were skilled in the multiple jobs of planetography. You have to be, on a foreign world months from home or help.

  We made the aerial crossing soon after sunrise, so we'd have a full eighteen hours of daylight. I remember how beautiful the ocean looked below us, like one great bowl of metal, silver where the sun struck, cobalt and green copper beyond. Then the island came over the world's edge, darkly forested, crimson-splashed by stands of gigantic red blossoms. Lejeune picked out an open spot in the woods, about two kilometers from a village that stood on a wide bay, and landed us with a whoop and a holler. He's a fireball pilot.

  "Well—" Haraszthy rose to his sheer two meters and stretched till his joints cracked. He was burly to match that height, and his hook-nosed face carried the marks of old battles. Most Traders are tough, pragmatic extroverts; they have to be, just as Federal civils have to be the opposite. It makes for conflict, though. "Let's hike."

  "Not so fast," Vaughan said: a thin young man with an intense gaze. "That tribe has never seen or heard of our kind. If they noticed us land, they may be in a panic."

  "So we go jolly them out of it," Haraszthy shrugged.

  "Our whole party? Are you serious?" Commander Baldinger asked. He reflected a bit. "Yes, I suppose you are. But I'm responsible now. Lejeune and Cathcart, stand by here. We others will proceed to the village."

  "Just like that?" Vaughan protested.

  "You know a better way?" Haraszthy answered.

  "As a matter of fact—" But nobody listened. The government operates on some elaborate theories, and Vaughan was still too new in Survey to understand how often theory has to give way. We were impatient to go outside, and I regretted not being sent along to town. Of course, someone had to stay, ready to pull out our emissaries if serious trouble developed.

  We emerged into long grass and a breeze that smelled of nothing so much as cinnamon. Trees rustled overhead, against a deep blue sky; the reddish sunlight spilled across purple wildflowers and bronze-colored insect wings. I drew a savoring breath before going around with Lejeune to make sure our landing gear was properly set. We were all lightly clad; Baldinger carried a blast rifle and Haraszthy a radiocom big enough to contact Dannicar, but both seemed ludicrously inappropriate.

  "I envy the Jorillians," I remarked.

  "In a way," Lejeune said. "Though perhaps their environment is too good. What stimulus have they to advance further?"

  "Why should they want to?"

  "They don't, consciously, my old. But every intelligent race is descended from animals that once had a hard struggle to survive, so hard they were forced to evolve brains. There is an instinct for adventure, even in the gentlest herbivorous beings, and sooner or later it must find expression—"

  "Holy jumping Judas!"

  Haraszthy's yell brought Lejeune and me bounding back to that side of the ship. For a moment my reason wobbled. Then I decided the sight wasn't really so strange . . . here.

  A girl was emerging from the woods. She was about the equivalent of a Terrestrial five-year-old, I estimated. Less than a meter tall (the Jorillians average more short and slender than we), she had the big head of her species to make her look still more elfin. Long blondish hair, round ears, delicate features that were quite humanoid except for the high forehead and huge violet eyes added to the charm. Her brown-skinned body was clad only in a white loincloth. One four-fingered hand waved cheerily at us. The other carried a leash. And at the opposite end of tha
t leash was a grasshopper the size of a hippopotamus.

  No, not a grasshopper, I saw as she danced toward us. The head looked similar, but the four walking legs were short and stout, the several others mere boneless appendages. The gaudy hide was skin, not chitin. I saw that the creature breathed with lungs, too. Nonetheless it was a startling monster; and it drooled.

  "Insular genus," Vaughan said. "Undoubtedly harmless, or she wouldn't— But a child, coming so casually—!"

  Baldinger grinned and lowered his rifle. "What the hell," he said, "to a kid everything's equally wonderful. This is a break for our side. She'll give us a good recommendation to her elders."

  The little girl (damn it, I will call her that) walked to within a meter of Haraszthy, turned those big eyes up and up till they met his piratical face, and trilled with an irresistible smile:

  "Please, mister, could I have a cracker for my oontatherium?"

  * * *

  I don't quite remember the next few minutes. They were confused. Eventually we found ourselves, the whole five, walking down a sun-speckled woodland path. The girl skipped beside us, chattering like a xylophone. The monster lumbered behind, chewing messily on what we had given it. When the light struck those compound eyes I thought of a jewel chest.

  "My name is Mierna," the girl said, "and my father makes things out of wood, I don't know what that's called in English, please tell me, oh, carpentry, thank you, you're a nice man. My father thinks a lot. My mother makes songs. They are very pretty songs. She sent me out to get some sweet grass for a borning couch, because her assistant wife is going to born a baby soon, but when I saw you come down just the way Pengwil told, I knew I should say hello instead and take you to Taori. That's our village. We have twenty-five houses. And sheds and a Thinking Hall that's bigger than the one in Riru. Pengwil said crackers are awful tasty. Could I have one too?"