Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  But her duty did not end there at all. Angelita nearly fainted with sudden insight. No, all the greater was the duty she owed to the heroically struggling guerrillas to contribute a son to the unending fight of the People for the boon of Justice. But greater by far was her duty--was it not?--to the country's embattled militia to fortify the national defense with a bright and shiny, handsome new sword. Todo por la Patria.

  Angelita did not want to live ... but she knew, of course, that she must have gone insane. To go crazy was to see giant flies and to hear them make intelligible speeches in an atmosphere of parliamentary decorum. The past month of unrelenting grief for Francisco--her beloved eternal optimist who had lived only to eradicate poverty, to fatten the decomposing bodies that now lay strewn all about her--had driven her to the edge of endurance. The events of this morning had tumbled her into the abyss. With profoundest pity, however, everyone would point out to her--her dead neighbors, the guerrillas, the soldiers, and the President--that she was not insane, that in fact she was only depressed--terribly and profoundly depressed. The diagnosis would be Post-Traumatic Shock Syndrome. The prognosis would be smilingly optimistic.

  Nearing the edge of the circle of stinking flesh, she could no longer hear distinct words from the gaggle of predators. Angelita now had before her an unobstructed view of the cornfield. A person walking could reach it in ten long strides. She looked up at the sky to see if a cloud might be wafting toward the moon, but the sky was clear and brilliant with stars and the moon aimed its beam directly upon her. Off to the left loomed the huge winged back of Balzvuv, and the brood of seething insects in front of him shifted about and flapped wings like jackals shrugging at a leash. Angelita clawed at the earth and heaved herself forward.

  Suddenly the invisible leash, the collar maintained by Balzvuv, snapped apart. In an instant the sky swarmed with whirring, buzzing, graceless bags of blackness, like a group of rowdies soaring out of a schoolroom at the bell.

  The drone in the sky now quickened into a manymouthed shriek, like the squeal of chalk on slate. A piercing cry cracked like lightning in the air just above her. At one moment the cornstalks stood over her in silver serenity, arching their welcoming leaves toward her painfully shuffling body. The next moment the cornfield was swiftly receding and spinning and lurching below her. Thorny talons cut into her waist through her thin cotton dress. A foul-smelling liquid oozed down on her forehead, and the body of her captor emitted a deep thrumming sound, like a hideous purr, shooting her through with vibrations. The wind knocked out of her, Angelita gasped for breath.

  Only seconds had elapsed when the empty air in front of her suddenly ballooned into the shape of a giant fly. The creature that clasped her and spun her wildly about could not shake its tenacious shadow, soar and swoop as it tried.

  "Set her down, Phlogistor!" commanded the enormous black insect.

  "I saw her first, Your Honor. She's mine, Sire! Leave me be!"

  About a dozen of the fascinated creatures now hove into view on all sides of Balzvuv, keeping a respectful distance. Phlogistor flopped her through the air like a ragdoll. The moonlit earth tumbled all around her. Two things alone remained steady for Angelita: the pains that shot up from her wrenched left leg, and the squadron of flies that enmeshed her. Skillfully, they defied every feint used by Phlogistor to evade them.

  "I have no wish to prevent you from feasting, Phlogistor. That is not why I mob you and demand the live female's release."

  "Your Eminence wishes to punish me by denying me my pleasure. I have worked as hard as any of my--"

  "Nonsense, Phlogistor! It's just that I catch you infringing the most ancient rule of the brotherhood. Since when do we ever directly take the life of a host? Our pride lies in inciting them to destroy each other."

  "Don't play innocent, Phlogistor!" scolded the land-baron voice of Anafidos, his dark head invisible behind the hummingbird blur of Balzvuv's ghostly wings. "At the fall of pagan Rome we were allcharter signatories to the Gehenna Convention. Time and dispersion have not weakened those solemn commitments."

  "In defying the Gehenna Convention, Phlogistor, you defy the Holy Creator Himself," added Balzvuv.

  "Leave me be, Sire!" Phlogistor peeled off into another futile dive. Angelita screamed as a razor-sharp claw cut into her side. "The great Balzvuv claims to respect the ways of the provinces. Well, it's our custom to bend the rules a little when we see fit and no one'll know the difference.... Besides, this tidbit already has the smell of death upon it. As Your Honor can plainly see--"

  "You test my patience, you ignorant cateto! Have you not been hearing what I've taken such pains to explain to all your brothers?"

  Angelita remained conscious despite agonizing pain. She took no interest in the petty quibbling of the flies, but she knew she had become the focus of an explosive mid-air conflict. She wanted only to be let loose, dropped--no matter where or from what height. Phlogistor, unsuccessful in his aerial maneuvers, for the moment stilled his bone-cracking lurches and dives.

  "Obey His Eminence, pig!" roared Anafidos.

  "Think, Phlogistor, of the future," said Balzvuv, dramatically softening his tone. "This female's bulging abdomen is already planted with the coming generation. In a mere hundred years the fruit of her womb shall become in number equal to all that dead colony below, of whom most were so wastefully destroyed, as everyone agrees. Do not--"

  "Dios mio, let me go!" Angelita cried out as, defiantly, Phlogistor's barbs tore deeper into her flesh.

  "Do not thoughtlessly capitulate," Balzvuv calmly resumed, "to the mere impulse of the moment. Think of this creature, instead, as incubator of a bumper crop to come!"

  "But she'll be dead within twenty-four hours anyway!" Phlogistor whined. His great gut vibrated irregularly, like an engine threatening to stall, against Angelita's neck.

  "Leave that to me to decide!" boomed Balzvuv.

  Angelita's forehead burned where the liquid had dribbled from Phlogistor's slavering jaws. She understood, without amazement, that it was the first step in the process of being digested.

  "Let her go, you stubborn fool!" shouted Anafidos.

  "Just as you say," buzzed Phlogistor.

  And suddenly Angelita was falling....

  When she regained consciousness, she gazed up into the worried eyes of a man in a green smock. His craggy face was pitted from ancient acne, and his thinning hair curved stiffly back from his brow. A plastic tag on his pocket identified him as Doctor Morales. Behind him drooped the flaking yellow plaster of a rain-rotted wall and low ceiling.

  "A peasant picked you up unconscious along the road about twenty-five kilometers from here," he explained, anticipating her question. "He reported the whole unspeakable ... incident ... involving the village to the authorities. You're very lucky to have escaped a--a total massacre."

  Angelita shrugged her shoulders.

  "You're also lucky about your leg. In my judgment it will not need amputation."

  "I am unworthy of your skill, Doctor." Angelita brought her bandaged hands up to cover her stinging eyes. With her thumbs she felt her bandaged forehead.

  "You are covered with cuts and abrasions. Your forehead, however, seems to have suffered some sort of chemical burns. You must have gone through hell," murmured the doctor.

  "You seem very tired," said Angelita.

  "What?"

  "Tired. Like me," she whispered.

  "Tired? Of course you are tired!"

  Suddenly there appeared from over her left shoulder a neatly pressed, starched military uniform filled with a deeply tanned man with mustachios. His cheeks were shaved smooth and as plump as a cherub's. "Colonel Santiago, Señora," said the doctor.

  "Good evening, Señora," said the colonel.

  To Angelita another officer had looked equally dapper, the one who had roused the village by bullhorn. His uniform, too, had looked as crisp as fresh currency, the buttons gleaming like newly minted coins in the sun's first light. Unable to look into the colone
l's face, Angelita stared at a gold epaulet instead.

  "I'm terribly sorry for the tragedy you have endured."

  "I would like to be left alone," said Angelita.

  "I do not wish to upset you, my dear. I have only a few brief questions to ask you, and then I shall leave you to your rest."

  Angelita thrust an unbandaged finger into her protruding stomach, pressing it in as far as strength permitted. She had been feeling no movement in there. The corners of her lips flickered with the beginning of a smile.

  "Could you say, Señora, about how many guerrillas there were?" The colonel riffled a little notebook impatiently with his thumb.

  She answered reluctantly. "I don't know. Maybe fifty, sixty soldiers."

  "Guerrillas, you mean," said the colonel.

  The doctor nodded at her, prompting her in an exaggerated way.

  "Guerrillas," Angelita agreed. "Yes, guerrillas."

  "Very good. And how were they equipped? Do you remember?"

  "I don't know. First they ran us down with tanks, a lot of tanks, and then--"

  "Armored personnel carriers. Not tanks, Señora," the kindly colonel smiled patiently. "Our guerrillas do not own tanks."

  "Of course. Armored personnel carriers. Over a dozen." Angelita stared at the absurd little hump her stomach made in the center of the crisp, clean bedsheet. "And then they finished off the rest with machine guns."

  That was all she had to say. The colonel did not prod her for more. She watched as the satisfied colonel finished scribbling and slipped his pad back into his inner jacket pocket.

  "You are very lucky indeed," exclaimed the officer, stroking his superbly tended mustache. "And Doctor Morales tells me that your baby will also survive."

  Angelita looked in horror from uniform to uniform. Her throat went dry; her stomach contracted violently. She gagged repeatedly. Nothing came up.

  "I want an abortion," she said quietly. She said it on sudden impulse, but with a profound sense of conviction.

  "An abortion!" shrilled the doctor.

  "An abortion," she repeated. The ultimate meaning of all that suffering ... now it was all very clear to her.

  "Señora, this is a very Catholic country."

  "She is depressed," said the colonel.

  "You are depressed, Señora," said Doctor Morales.

  "Of course I am depressed."

  "Ah, you see?" said the doctor.

  "Because I was raped by a guerrilla. Six months ago. My husband and I were not planning to have children, you see, for quite some ... so I am carrying the seed of a devil."

  "But Señora..."

  "A guerrilla!" exclaimed the colonel.

  "Yes. A filthy, stinking, drunken pig of a guerrilla. Would you like a graphic description of my degradation, Colonel? Very well. He dragged me behind the house while his friends held my husb--"

  "Spare us the details, Señora," said the colonel, holding up his hand.

  "A guerrilla," mumbled the doctor, repeatedly shaking his head.

  "You heard what she said," grunted Colonel Santiago. "I see nothing contrary to the dictates of the Holy Church in aborting the spawn of a devil."

  "Yes, sir. But, sir, she is six months--"

  "The Holy Mother herself will be in your debt, Doctor Morales. I guarantee it."

  "Thank you, sir. I'm glad you think so, sir."

  "I personally authorize the operation, Doctor. We must not permit the fiends of hell to make hatcheries of our decent women!"

  "I fully agree," Doctor Morales nodded vigorously.

  "Thank you, Colonel. Thank you, Doctor. I knew you would understand."

  Angelita uttered a long, rasping sigh. She was sure that Francisco, whom she had loved more than her life, would also have understood. Would have understood infinitely better. And would approve. "What good is an expensive education," he would say, "that has no practical application?"

  © Daniel Pearlman 1995, 2001

  ROBERT SILVERBERG

  b. 1935

  Robert Silverberg has authored more than 100 science fiction works, over 60 nonfiction books, and edited or co-edited more than 60 anthologies. His productivity is almost superhuman, and his abrupt metamorphosis from a writer of standardized pulp fiction into a compelling prose artist was an accomplishment unparalleled in science fiction.

  Silverberg began publishing prolifically in 1956, winning a Hugo award in that year as Most Promising New Author, and continued to publish as part of the Ziff-Davis stable, producing wordage at assembly-line speed for the pulp magazines Amazing Stories, Science Fiction Adventuresand Super-Science Fiction. Among his most notable novels from this early period are Master of Life and Death (1957), a novel dealing with institutionalized measures to combat overpopulation, Invaders from Earth(1958), a drama of political corruption and the colonization of Ganymede, and Recalled to Life (1958), which investigates the social response to a method of reviving the newly dead.

  A new phase of Silberburg's career, in which he brought the full range of his artistic abilities to bear on writing science fiction, began in 1967 with Thorns, a stylized novel of alienation and psychic vampirism, followed in 1968 by Hawksbill Station, in which political exiles are sent back in time to a Cambrian prison camp. The Nebula award-winning A Time of Changes (1971) describes a society in which selfhood is a cardinal sin, while Dying Inside(1972) is a brilliant study of a telepath losing his power.

  Nebulas also went to the short stories "Passengers" (1968), about people who temporarily lose control of their bodies to alien invaders, "Good News from the Vatican" (1970), about the election of the first robot pope, and the brilliant novella "Born with the Dead" (1974), about relationships between the living and the beneficiaries of a scientific technique guaranteeing life after death.

  Beginning in the 1980s, Silverberg's work took on a more relaxed style, in contrast to the psychological intensity of his earlier work. Works from this time include the Nebula award-winning Sailing to Byzantium (1985), and The Secret Sharer (1988), a science-fictionalization of Joseph Conrad's 1912 story of the same title. Silverberg also won Hugo awards in this period for the novella "Gilgamesh in the Outback" (1986) and the novelette "Enter a Soldier. Later, Enter Another" (1989).

  Silverberg remains one of the most imaginative and versatile writers ever to have been involved with science fiction.

  Postmark Ganymede, by Robert Silverberg

  Consider the poor mailman of the future. To "sleet and snow and dead of night"--things that must not keep him from his appointed rounds--will be added, sub-zero void, meteors, and planets that won't stay put. Maybe he'll decide that for six cents an ounce it just ain't worth it.

  "I'm washed up," Preston growled bitterly. "They made a postman out of me. Me--a postman!"

  He crumpled the assignment memo into a small, hard ball and hurled it at the bristly image of himself in the bar mirror. He hadn't shaved in three days--which was how long it had been since he had been notified of his removal from Space Patrol Service and his transfer to Postal Delivery.

  Suddenly, Preston felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and saw a man in the trim gray of a Patrolman's uniform.

  "What do you want, Dawes?"

  "Chief's been looking for you, Preston. It's time for you to get going on your run."

  Preston scowled. "Time to go deliver the mail, eh?" He spat. "Don't they have anything better to do with good spacemen than make letter carriers out of them?"

  * * * * *

  The other man shook his head. "You won't get anywhere grousing about it, Preston. Your papers don't specify which branch you're assigned to, and if they want to make you carry the mail--that's it." His voice became suddenly gentle. "Come on, Pres. One last drink, and then let's go. You don't want to spoil a good record, do you?"

  "No," Preston said reflectively. He gulped his drink and stood up. "Okay. I'm ready. Neither snow nor rain shall stay me from my appointed rounds, or however the damned thing goes."

  "That's a smart attit
ude, Preston. Come on--I'll walk you over to Administration."

  * * * * *

  Savagely, Preston ripped away the hand that the other had put around his shoulders. "I can get there myself. At least give me credit for that!"

  "Okay," Dawes said, shrugging. "Well--good luck, Preston."

  "Yeah. Thanks. Thanks real lots."

  He pushed his way past the man in Space Grays and shouldered past a couple of barflies as he left. He pushed open the door of the bar and stood outside for a moment.

  It was near midnight, and the sky over Nome Spaceport was bright with stars. Preston's trained eye picked out Mars, Jupiter, Uranus. There they were--waiting. But he would spend the rest of his days ferrying letters on the Ganymede run.

  He sucked in the cold night air of summertime Alaska and squared his shoulders.

  * * * * *

  Two hours later, Preston sat at the controls of a one-man patrol ship just as he had in the old days. Only the control panel was bare where the firing studs for the heavy guns was found in regular patrol ships. And in the cargo hold instead of crates of spare ammo there were three bulging sacks of mail destined for the colony on Ganymede.

  Slight difference, Preston thought, as he set up his blasting pattern.

  "Okay, Preston," came the voice from the tower. "You've got clearance."

  "Cheers," Preston said, and yanked the blast-lever. The ship jolted upward, and for a second he felt a little of the old thrill--until he remembered.

  He took the ship out in space, saw the blackness in the viewplate. The radio crackled.

  "Come in, Postal Ship. Come in, Postal Ship."

  "I'm in. What do you want?"

  "We're your convoy," a hard voice said. "Patrol Ship 08756, Lieutenant Mellors, above you. Down at three o'clock, Patrol Ship 10732, Lieutenant Gunderson. We'll take you through the Pirate Belt."

  Preston felt his face go hot with shame. Mellors! Gunderson! They would stick two of his old sidekicks on the job of guarding him.