Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  The older hands, and the more sensible members of the band, tried their best to talk the new men into line. Some of the officers tried ordering them into line.

  But the talk was ignored. And as for the officers--well, the old United States Civil War tried a democratic army for a while, on both sides. Unfortunately, electing your officers is not an efficient way to run things. The most popular man makes the best officer about as often as the most popular man makes the best criminal-law judge. Or engineer, for that matter. War's not a democratic business.

  This one, however, seemed to be. Mass election of officers was one of the rules, along with the voting on staff decisions. The new men out-numbered the older hands. New officers were elected--and that stopped the orders.

  Hollerith was about two-thirds of the way out of his mind when the three days were up and the attack time came around. When night fell, the atmosphere around the cave was as tense as it could get without turning into actual lightning. It was a warm, still night; the single moon was quarter-full but it shed a lot more light than Earth's moon; we blacked ourselves and Hollerith went over the plans. We were still divided into two groups--ragged groups, but groups. The first wave was to come around on the depot from the left, attacking in full force with all armaments and some of that dynamite. When things were getting toward a peak in that direction, the second force was to come in from the right and set off its own fireworks. Result (Hollerith hoped): demolition, confusion, catastrophe.

  It was a good plan. Hollerith obviously wasn't sure of his own men any more--and neither would I have been, in his spot. But he had the advantage of surprise and superior arms; he was clearly hoping that would overbalance the lack of discipline, training and order in his force. Besides, there was nothing else he could do; he was outvoted, all the way down the line.

  * * * * *

  I set out, with hardly a qualm, along with the second attack group. We were under the command of a shy, tall man with spectacles who didn't look like much, he'd been a trapper before the war, though, and was one of the original guerrillas, for a wonder, and that meant he was probably a hell of a lot tougher and more knowledgeable than he seemed. Setting traps for Wohlen's animals, for instance, was emphatically not a job for the puny or the frightened. The first group was under Huey's command.

  Hollerith stayed with a small group of his own as a "reserve"; actually, he wanted to oversee the battle, and the men were perfectly willing to let him, having gotten one idea into their democratic heads: Hollerith was too valuable a man for the guerrillas to lose.

  But I wasn't, of course. I'd done my bit; I'd gotten the volunteers. Now I could go and die for glory like the rest of them.

  * * * * *

  The trouble was, I couldn't see any way out. I marched in the dimness with the rest, and we managed to make surprisingly little noise. Wohlen's animals were active and stirring, anyhow, and that helped.

  At last the depot showed up in the moonlight with the city some distance behind it. There was a wire fence, and a sentry, immediately in view behind him were square blocky buildings in a clearing. Beyond that there was another fence, then some more jungle, and then the city. Fifty yards from the fence, in the last screen of trees, we stopped and waited.

  The first group was off to the other side of the fence, and I couldn't see or hear them. The wait seemed to go on for hours; perhaps a minute and a half passed. Then the first heater went off.

  The sentry whirled and fired without really thinking. There wasn't any way for him to tell what he was shooting at. More heaters went off from the jungle, and then they started to come in. There was a lot of noise.

  The boys were yelling, swarming over the wire fence and through it, firing heaters wildly. There were lights in the buildings, now, and a picked group of men came out of one of them, swinging in single file; the heaters chopped them to pieces before they had much of a chance. A tower light went on and then the really big guns got going.

  The guerrillas started to get it, then. The big boys from the armaments tower charred holes in their line, and the noise got worse; men were screaming and cursing and dying and the heaters were still going off. I tore my eyes away and looked at the leader of our group. He was poised on the balls of his feet, leaning forward; he stayed that way, his head nodding very slowly up and down, for a full second. Then he shouted and lifted an arm and we followed him, a screaming mob heading down into hell.

  The big guns were swiveled the other way and for a couple of seconds we had no trouble. Our boys weren't playing with heaters too much; instead, the dynamite started to fly. Light the fuse, pick it up, heave--and then stand back and watch. Fireworks. Excitement. Well, it was what they wanted, wasn't it?

  There was an explosion as a small bundle landed inside the fence, in a courtyard. Then another one, the flashes lighting up faces and bodies in motion. I found myself screaming with the rest of them.

  Then the big one went off.

  One of the dynamite bundles had hit the right spot. Ammunition went off with a dull boom that shook the ground, and the light was too bright to look into. I went flat and so did the others; I wondered about solid shells exploding and going wild, but there weren't any. The light faded, and then it began to grow again.

  I put my head up and saw flames. Then I got up and saw the others rising, too. I turned tail for the jungle. Some of them followed me, along with some of the first group; order was lost entirely and we were no more than pieces of a shrieking, delirious, victorious mob. I headed back for the base.

  Behind me the ammunition depot burned brightly. The raid was over.

  It had been an unqualified success, of course. The guerrillas had done the best job of their careers.

  So far.

  * * * * *

  Hollerith was back to the cave before me. Put it down to a short-cut, or just more practice in the jungle. When I came in he looked terrible, about a hundred and twelve years old and shrunken. But my appearance seemed to rouse him a little. He gestured and the others in the cave--three or four of them--went out. One stood at the entrance.

  There was a silence. Hollerith grimaced at me. "You're working for the Government," he said. It wasn't a question.

  I shook my head. "I--"

  "Keep it," he said. "James Carson from Ancarta is a cover identity, that's all. I tell you, I know."

  He didn't look ready to pull a heater. I waited a second. The silence got louder. Then I said: "All right. How do you know?"

  The grimace again, twisted and half-humorous. "Why, because you got me recruits," he said. "Because you got me armaments. Because you helped me."

  "Doesn't make sense," I said.

  "Doesn't it?" He turned away from me for a second. When he turned back he looked more like General Rawlinson Hollerith, and less like a corpse. "You got me fanatics, men who hated the Government."

  "Well?"

  "They don't think straight," he said. "There isn't room in their minds for any more than that hatred. And they're democratic, just like the rest of us. They vote."

  "You set that up," I said. "I had nothing to do with it."

  He nodded. "I know," he said. "There are places where democracy just doesn't work. Like an armed force. As long as most of the members think alike, you're all right. But when a new factor comes into the picture--why, nobody knows what he's voting for. It becomes a matter of personal preference--which is no way to run a war."

  "All right," I said. "But I got you the men and their arms--"

  "Sure you did," he said. "You got me everything I needed--to hang myself with." He raised a hand. "I'm not saying you worked against me. You didn't have to."

  "I got you everything you wanted," I said.

  "Sure," he said. "Did you ever hear of jujitsu?"

  "I--"

  "You used my strength against me," he said. "You got me what I wanted--and did it in such a way that it would ruin me."

  "But the attack was a success," I said.

  He shook his head. "How many men
are going to come back?" he said. "Fifty? Sixty? How many of them are going to get lost out there, return to the city, try to go up against New Didymus with a heater and nothing else? How many of them have had all the excitement they want? Those are going to head for home. A success--"

  He paused. I waited.

  "There was a general in Greece in the ancient days," he said. "A general named Pyrrhus. He won a battle once, and lost most of his men doing it. 'For my part,' he said, 'another victory like this and we are undone.' That's the kind of success we had."

  Hollerith had brains. "A Pyrrhic victory," I said.

  "And you know all about it," he said. "You planned it this way."

  I shrugged. "By doing what you wanted done," I said.

  He nodded, very slowly.

  "What now?" I said quietly.

  He acted, for a second, as if he didn't hear me. Then he spoke. "Now," he said, "we go back. Democracy--it's a limited tool, like anything else. No tool is so good that it can be used in every case, on every problem. We were wrong. We'd better admit it and go back."

  "But your men--"

  "The good ones know the truth now," he said, "just as I do. The others ... there's nothing else they can do, without me and without the rest of the force."

  I took a deep breath. It was all over.

  "And now," he said suddenly, "I want you to tell me just who you are."

  "I--"

  "Not James Carson," he said. "And not from Ancarta. Not even from Wohlen."

  "How do you know?" I said.

  "Nobody on this planet," he said, "would do this job in just this way. I'm familiar enough with the top men to be sure of that. You're from the Comity."

  "That's right," I said.

  "But ... who are you? What force? What army?"

  "No army," I said. "You might call me a teacher; my corps is made up of teachers. We give lessons--where lessons are needed."

  "A teacher," he said quietly. A long time passed. "Well," he asked, "do I pass the course?"

  "You pass," I told him. "You pass--with high marks, General."

  * * * * *

  I was off-planet within twenty-four hours. Not that Santa Claus didn't want me to stay longer, when I told him what had happened. Hell, he wanted to throw a banquet and sixteen speeches in my honor. I was a holy Idol all over again. I was superhuman.

  I was glad to get away. What makes them think a man's special, just because he uses his brain once in a while?

  THE END

  MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

  Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley (June 3, 1930 – September 25, 1999) was an American author of fantasy novels such as The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series. Many critics have noted a feminist perspective in her writing. Her first child, David R. Bradley, and her brother, Paul Edwin Zimmer were also published science fiction and fantasy authors in their own right.

  Year of the Big Thaw, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Mr. Emmett did his duty by the visitor from another world—never doubting the right of it.

  You say that Matthew is your own son, Mr. Emmett?

  Yes, Rev'rend Doane, and a better boy never stepped, if I do say it as shouldn't. I've trusted him to drive team for me since he was eleven, and you can't say more than that for a farm boy. Way back when he was a little shaver so high, when the war came on, he was bounden he was going to sail with this Admiral Farragut. You know boys that age—like runaway colts. I couldn't see no good in his being cabin boy on some tarnation Navy ship and I told him so. If he'd wanted to sail out on a whaling ship, I 'low I'd have let him go. But Marthy—that's the boy's Ma—took on so that Matt stayed home. Yes, he's a good boy and a good son.

  We'll miss him a powerful lot if he gets this scholarship thing. But I 'low it'll be good for the boy to get some learnin' besides what he gets in the school here. It's right kind of you, Rev'rend, to look over this application thing for me.

  Well, if he is your own son, Mr. Emmett, why did you write 'birthplace unknown' on the line here?

  Rev'rend Doane, I'm glad you asked me that question. I've been turnin' it over in my mind and I've jest about come to the conclusion it wouldn't be nohow fair to hold it back. I didn't lie when I said Matt was my son, because he's been a good son to me and Marthy. But I'm not his Pa and Marthy ain't his Ma, so could be I stretched the truth jest a mite. Rev'rend Doane, it's a tarnal funny yarn but I'll walk into the meetin' house and swear to it on a stack o'Bibles as thick as a cord of wood.

  You know I've been farming the old Corning place these past seven year? It's good flat Connecticut bottom-land, but it isn't like our land up in Hampshire where I was born and raised. My Pa called it the Hampshire Grants and all that was King's land when his Pa came in there and started farming at the foot of Scuttock Mountain. That's Injun for fires, folks say, because the Injuns used to build fires up there in the spring for some of their heathen doodads. Anyhow, up there in the mountains we see a tarnal power of quare things.

  You call to mind the year we had the big thaw, about twelve years before the war? You mind the blizzard that year? I heard tell it spread down most to York. And at Fort Orange, the place they call Albany now, the Hudson froze right over, so they say. But those York folks do a sight of exaggerating, I'm told.

  Anyhow, when the ice went out there was an almighty good thaw all over, and when the snow run off Scuttock mountain there was a good-sized hunk of farmland in our valley went under water. The crick on my farm flowed over the bank and there was a foot of water in the cowshed, and down in the swimmin' hole in the back pasture wasn't nothing but a big gully fifty foot and more across, rushing through the pasture, deep as a lake and brown as the old cow. You know freshet-floods? Full up with sticks and stones and old dead trees and somebody's old shed floatin' down the middle. And I swear to goodness, Parson, that stream was running along so fast I saw four-inch cobblestones floating and bumping along.

  I tied the cow and the calf and Kate—she was our white mare; you mind she went lame last year and I had to shoot her, but she was just a young mare then and skittish as all get-out—but she was a good little mare.

  Anyhow, I tied the whole kit and caboodle of them in the woodshed up behind the house, where they'd be dry, then I started to get the milkpail. Right then I heard the gosh-awfullest screech I ever heard in my life. Sounded like thunder and a freshet and a forest-fire all at once. I dropped the milkpail as I heard Marthy scream inside the house, and I run outside. Marthy was already there in the yard and she points up in the sky and yelled, "Look up yander!"

  We stood looking up at the sky over Shattuck mountain where there was a great big—shoot now, I d'no as I can call its name but it was like a trail of fire in the sky, and it was makin' the dangdest racket you ever heard, Rev'rend. Looked kind of like one of them Fourth-of-July skyrockets, but it was big as a house. Marthy was screaming and she grabbed me and hollered, "Hez! Hez, what in tunket is it?" And when Marthy cusses like that, Rev'rend, she don't know what she's saying, she's so scared.

  I was plumb scared myself. I heard Liza—that's our young-un, Liza Grace, that got married to the Taylor boy. I heard her crying on the stoop, and she came flying out with her pinny all black and hollered to Marthy that the pea soup was burning. Marthy let out another screech and ran for the house. That's a woman for you. So I quietened Liza down some and I went in and told Marthy it weren't no more than one of them shooting stars. Then I went and did the milking.

  But you know, while we were sitting down to supper there came the most awful grinding, screeching, pounding crash I ever heard. Sounded if it were in the back pasture but the house shook as if somethin' had hit it.

  Marthy jumped a mile and I never saw such a look on her face.

  "Hez, what was that?" she asked.

  "Shoot, now, nothing but the freshet," I told her.

  But she kept on about it. "You reckon that shooting star fell in our back pasture, Hez?"

  "Well, now, I don't 'low it did nothing like that," I told her. But sh
e was jittery as an old hen and it weren't like her nohow. She said it sounded like trouble and I finally quietened her down by saying I'd saddle Kate up and go have a look. I kind of thought, though I didn't tell Marthy, that somebody's house had floated away in the freshet and run aground in our back pasture.

  So I saddled up Kate and told Marthy to get some hot rum ready in case there was some poor soul run aground back there. And I rode Kate back to the back pasture.

  It was mostly uphill because the top of the pasture is on high ground, and it sloped down to the crick on the other side of the rise.

  Well, I reached the top of the hill and looked down. The crick were a regular river now, rushing along like Niagary. On the other side of it was a stand of timber, then the slope of Shattuck mountain. And I saw right away the long streak where all the timber had been cut out in a big scoop with roots standing up in the air and a big slide of rocks down to the water.

  It was still raining a mite and the ground was sloshy and squanchy under foot. Kate scrunched her hooves and got real balky, not likin' it a bit. When we got to the top of the pasture she started to whine and whicker and stamp, and no matter how loud I whoa-ed she kept on a-stamping and I was plumb scared she'd pitch me off in the mud. Then I started to smell a funny smell, like somethin' burning. Now, don't ask me how anything could burn in all that water, because I don't know.

  When we came up on the rise I saw the contraption.

  Rev'rend, it was the most tarnal crazy contraption I ever saw in my life. It was bigger nor my cowshed and it was long and thin and as shiny as Marthy's old pewter pitcher her Ma brought from England. It had a pair of red rods sticking out behind and a crazy globe fitted up where the top ought to be. It was stuck in the mud, turned halfway over on the little slide of roots and rocks, and I could see what had happened, all right.

  The thing must have been—now, Rev'rend, you can say what you like but that thing must have flew across Shattuck and landed on the slope in the trees, then turned over and slid down the hill. That must have been the crash we heard. The rods weren't just red, they were red-hot. I could hear them sizzle as the rain hit 'em.