The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack

by Isaac Asimov

  “Yes, Imperiality.” Axtant took a deep breath. “How shall we attend them? In the same manner as the guards?”

  “Select a suitable system.”

  The Grand Counsellor got stiffly to his feet. “As you command, Imperiality. But how did Your Imperiality and Your Imperiality’s friends discover Alderman’s plot?”

  “Oh, that.” I made a deprecating gesture. “The Bureaucracy dates only from the Spaceflight Era. The institution of the High Emperor is but a few centuries old, the Grand Council less than that. Neither has any real experience in intrigue and conspiracy and assassination.”

  “But you?”

  “Us?” Mara swept up to my side. “We have forty-nine centuries of experience to draw on. As for Alderman and his hirelings… ”

  “Your Imperiality, please!” It was the second gunman. He was on his knees, begging. “We can’t bring him back. Please, Your—”

  “You can die trying,” I said. I turned away, started to walk. “Come,” I said to my friends. “We’ve still got work to do.”

  Once clear of the guards, Grand Counsellors, and bystanders, I began to plan aloud: “My every word being taken literally has got to stop. Jon, wasn’t there some old formula kings used when speaking for the record? ‘I have spoken,’ or something like that? And Mara’s going to need some help with the guard for a while; maybe Quent and Rina. Then I think there are going to be some vacancies on the Grand Council. We’re going to get that reorganized, too. For all the mess it’s caused, I still need it.” I walked on, oblivious to those around me, to the vast room that spread in all directions. “It isn’t power that corrupts; it’s being beyond punishment. But there’s no sense worrying, is there, not when—”

  “Jad,” said Rina.

  “What?” I said. I stopped and the others eddied around me. I saw her then, face haggard but eyes dry now.

  “You’re in shock,” she said.

  “Nonsense,” I said. “I’m all right. It’s just—just—Oh, Rina, he’s dead. Beramis is—dead!”

  And I, My Imperiality, High Emperor Jad the First, wept at last.

  PLATO’S BASTARDS, by James C. Stewart

  The subject freaked out today.

  It happened in a plastic little restaurant tacked onto the back of one of those big box stores, the kind with the faux wood tables and uncomfortable orange-red seats that look as though they’ve been ripped off from some fast food franchise.

  At first calmly eating breakfast (the same breakfast he has everyday, what the menu calls The Standard: two eggs, three slices of bacon, potatoes, toast and coffee), he’d been making notes in a small purple book, scribbling lines about politics, disagreeing with this or that on some point of strategy.

  The place was Wednesday morning quiet; a couple of blue hairs nattering over tea, the subject, and me. The subject—John, I guess I’ll call him—became increasingly agitated. Eventually his head snapped up, glancing around with panicked eyes, pushing his plate away without finishing. At first I thought maybe he was suffering from some sort of gastric anomaly, but none of the gut-clenching or washroom-fleeing one normally associates with this kind of thing occurred. And John’s behavior became even more erratic. For an instant I thought maybe he’d realized the problem, saw the hole, the bleed…

  He slapped a few bucks down on the table, hurriedly making for the exit, scurrying into the store proper.

  Seemingly unnoticed I followed, the subtle restaurant dim giving way to the store’s harsh overhead fluorescents. John seemed to be wandering without purpose, without examining the store’s plethora of products, muttering to himself under his breath. I was concerned a passerby might think he was a lunatic and call the police, or at the very least, store security.

  Behind me the store’s restaurant construct dammed, linear time ceasing. The waitress and the blue hairs statued, frozen into the moment when the dam hit. John remained blissfully ignorant, unaware of the happenings in his wake.

  A voice in my ear urged discretionary speed, listing the resources consumed to maintain the constant construct dam, reminding me John’s ignorance was necessary to the integrity of the experiment.

  John, looking like a bum in his ratty overcoat, meandered into a maze of shelves, momentarily lost in stacks packed with plastic toys, a distracting animated promo running on a twelve-inch screen angled overhead.

  He stopped in front of a display shelf jammed with the newest action figure, a disturbing toy tagged Occupying Sam. It stood three feet high, replete with M-16 and desert fatigues. Some imaginative stock boy had twisted the moveable plastic parts into a combat stance. A nearby box claimed the thing “really speaks!”

  John gave a little chuckle, and felt for the switch. The toy’s voice came surprisingly clear and realistic, commanding; none of the scratchy G.I. Joe sounds from the past, “Do you have your papers? Let me see your papers.”

  John stared at it, no longer smiling, shaking his head. He placed the toy back on the shelf, mentally chalking it up as another in a long line of signposts on the declining road of western civilization.

  Overhead an echo crackled static, “Good morning, shoppers. There’s a red light special on torsine, torsine derivatives and synthetic torsites in the pharmaceutical section. Please have your insurance cards and government documents ready at the checkout counter. Thank you.”

  John continued muttering to himself, but started toward the red light special. I kept far enough back to avoid his wide-eyed, scattered gaze.

  We wandered through women’s lingerie and women’s shoes. We drifted into the electronics department. John stopped in front of a vast screen displaying grim scenes from the occupation. He faced it, silhouetted, gesturing at a black hooded form standing over a blindfolded, kneeling man. The dark figure flashed a long knife. John didn’t stick around to see how the scene played out.

  We strayed into the Homeland Security section. Above us yet another television prattled on about the various threats to the nation, God and our families, reminding everyone the Threat Level was now at Orange, just a click away from the Dread Red.

  I tried to remember a time when there hadn’t been a Threat Level.

  The shelves stocked duct tape (for sealing windows in case of chemical attack), freeze-dried goods and bottled water. A uniformed security guard wearing an American flag armband stood next to a counter displaying handguns and Pro-Life pamphlets.

  John kept glancing at him, talking madness, his hands batting at the air about his head. Thank God the dam hit before the hard-faced guard had a chance to call for back up.

  I took out my purple notebook and jotted a few lines regarding some of these intriguing mannerisms. John’s case was completely unique, and the bleed was producing several interesting effects. I read my earlier entry: Sept. 21. Breakfast at the Big Box Restaurant. The Standard. Eggs too runny. Ask for them over-easy they come like snot. Ask for them over-medium they come like rock—

  I kept ahead of the construct dam. The National Security section gave way to automotive parts. John made a weird little zag, zigging behind a shelf stocked with massive pistons, disappearing. I followed suit.

  Behind the shelf a hallway lined with large unopened boxes and lit by a wire-meshed bulb. The floor was gray concrete littered with old advertising flyers and flattened cardboard. I guessed it to be some sort of staff access passage. I spotted John about halfway down its length, his shadow elongating beneath the unnatural light. He headed for an orange swinging door, a door which looked as though it had been repeatedly battered by forklifts.

  The doors still swung when I reached them. The light dimmed considerably, bordering on dark.

  The space I entered was football field large. The floor, still dirty concrete, was cluttered with tables, around each a tightly packed group of silently working people.

  John had apparently vanished.

  I walked along an aisle, moving deeper into the warehouse, glimpsing the hospital masked workers and their labors. Some weaved designer shirts. So
me attached plastic soles to designer shoes. Some packed Bibles into boxes labeled in Arabic markings. Some assembled pistols and automatic weapons. Some sweated over crude dynamite bombs. I watched a man with missing fingers carefully attach a timer. White signs demanded ‘TOTAL SILENCE’ in big black letters. Still, I couldn’t find John.

  I passed a glass room, inside another table, radiation suits delicately piecing together a strange metallic device about the size of a television set. Their foreman, done in the spectacularly real guise of a so-called “gray alien”, drank cola and smoked a cigarette in a clearly marked No Smoking area. No one seemed to care.

  Finally I came to the back wall of the warehouse. Following its long length, I eventually spotted a closet-sized door hidden among a forest of acrylic Christmas trees.

  I opened the door and entered another dimly lit hallway, this one narrow. It cornered, spilling into a darkened, forgotten storage space. Mannequins sported faded fashions; outdated toys smiled though a child’s hand had never touched them; ancient advertisements beckoned with impossibly low prices. The place was a sort of time capsule, an odd collection of consumer nostalgia marooned in a dirty corner caught outside of time. Not even the construct dam could effect it—for all intents and purposes, the space had already been dammed.

  I searched for an exit, finally discovering one behind a garish shoe rack from the 1970s. The door was wider than the last, hard to push open. Something was blocking it on the other side. Again the voice in my ear, the miniature speaker cautioning…the reality tear was becoming unmanageable, the resources allocated extending beyond budgetary parameters. The voice advised the coordinates would be severed if the problem wasn’t soon dealt with…

  I put my shoulder against the door, pushing hard, forcing movement. A dusty beam of light bled through.

  A crowd, a cacophony of urgent voices. I wormed my way through the crack, joining the mob. The door closed behind me and became a shelf stocked with antacids.

  I was in the pharmaceutical section, packed in among a hundred or so individuals chaotically trying to take advantage of the red light torsine special. I spotted John, already in line, his ID vise-clutched in his hand. To the store’s credit the queue was moving relatively rapidly.

  The pharmacy was bright whites and hanging, banner-style adverts, some pushing trademarked Sailing Away brand torsine. To my right was a wall stacked floor to ceiling with tampons, and to my left, a triple-paned window into the cold and bleak. I couldn’t see outside though, the view was eclipsed by faces, gaunt faces, the huddled masses, stark and staring in at the products they couldn’t have. A hauntingly sad-eyed little girl caught my attention, not looking at the candy just out of reach, not looking at the riot, but looking at me. It was disconcerting. I turned away, turned to the overhead and ever-present television, to the soothing cathode fire. A news announcer spoke, his words barely heard over the din, a demented monologue riding the heedless, dissonant soundscape, “…and it was impossible to unfold to the people the conspiracy against church and country, to expose them to the secret doctrines—there would have been panic in the streets. It would have meant initiating the multitude, it would have meant lifting the veil of Isis. The only recourse was to find denouncers and false witnesses…easily done, of course. When the temporal, spiritual and political tyrannies unite to crush a victim they never want for serviceable instruments…”

  And then it was my turn at the counter, a mean-faced clerk wearing a sidearm and a blue cross on his government-issue ball cap asked for my ID. I passed it to him. He swiped my card through a scanner, the machine beeped its approval. He passed it back, sliding a pair of happy, colorfully stickered ampoules across the counter. His blank eyes looked through me, “Next.”

  I turned and was immediately swallowed by the crowd. Tossed, bounced and jostled, I was finally ejected into the adjoining books and magazines section. I thought I heard someone at my ear, a familiar voice, but then it was gone, replaced by a buzz, a fuzz—a fly perhaps.

  I browsed magazines not really seeing the pages. Eventually a young clerk approached, her cheeks cartoonishly rouged, gingerly touching my arm, “Is there something I can help you with, sir?”

  Her voice reminded me of Mickey Mouse. I found myself staring at a copy of Guns & Ammo, a concept I didn’t really grip until I put the magazine back on the shelf.

  “No. Thanks.”

  I walked out of the section.

  In my pocket the ampoules clinked a cadence. It occurred to me there’d been a time before Sailing Away, a time before the pharmaceutical corporations. You had to give it to them, they’d been clever…prescriptions for synth-torsine called anything but synth-torsine, kickbacks to doctors ensuring complicity. They’d given the shit a legion of names: Poxacet, Dracson, Eulliud, Semoral. They have at their disposal a population so distracted by the loud flashing noises they don’t even know what they’re taking. “Painkillers” for that broken leg. “Painkillers” for that back ache. “Painkillers” after that accident. “What? You’re all out of Tacaset and now you feel sick? Here’s another prescription…I’m sure it’ll help.”

  Smile. Touch the arm. Hey, trust your mechanic.

  There was that buzz at my ear again. Someone said, “Severed.” I turned to see who’d addressed me, turned to see…

  Nobody.

  The buzz continued, an odd bit of static with the slightest trace of an echo. I batted at the air around my head—anyone watching would’ve thought me a madman.

  I floated along one of the store’s main arteries, aiming myself toward the dreary plastic restaurant tacked onto the back.

  The place was quiet; a couple of old ladies and a man in an overcoat similar to mine. He openly stared.

  A human gnome in the store’s clashing colors served breakfast. The Standard. I took out my little purple book, noting the sorry state of the meal: Sept. 21. Breakfast at the Big Box Restaurant. The Standard. Eggs too runny. Ask for them over-easy they come like snot. Ask for them over-medium they come like rock—

  The buzz interrupted, startlingly loud this time, almost a voice but not quite. I pushed my plate away. I glanced around, panicked. The man in the overcoat similar to mine furrowed his brow in confusion. I fished in a pocket and left money on the table, the restaurant shrinking around me. I started to sweat, my shirt sticking to my skin. I wandered out of the restaurant’s subtle dim, back into the store’s harsh overhead fluorescents…

  And I couldn’t shake the feeling someone was following me.

  PEN PAL, by Milton Lesser

  The best that could be said for Matilda Penshaws was that she was something of a paradox. She was thirty-three years old, certainly not aged when you consider the fact that the female life expectancy is now up in the sixties, but the lines were beginning to etch their permanent paths across her face, and now she needed certain remedial undergarments at which she would have scoffed ten or even five years ago. Matilda was also looking for a husband.

  This, in itself, was not unusual—but Matilda was so completely wrapped up in the romantic fallacy of her day that she sought a Prince Charming, a faithful Don Juan, a man who had been everywhere and tasted of every worldly pleasure and who now wanted to sit on a porch and talk about it all to Matilda.

  The fact that in all probability such a man did not exist disturbed Matilda not in the least. She had been known to say that there are over a billion men in the world, a goodly percentage of whom are eligible bachelors, and that the right one would come along simply because she had been waiting for him.

  Matilda, you see, had patience.

  She also had a fetish. Matilda had received her A. B. from exclusive Ursula Johns College, and Radcliffe had yielded her Masters degree, yet Matilda was an avid follower of the pen-pal columns. She would read them carefully and then read them again, looking for the masculine names which, through a system known only to Matilda, had an affinity to her own. To the gentlemen to whom these names were affixed, Matilda would write, and she often told he
r mother, the widow Penshaws, that it was in this way she would find her husband. The widow Penshaws impatiently told her to go out and get dates.

  That particular night, Matilda pulled her battered old sedan into the garage and walked up the walk to the porch. The widow Penshaws was rocking on the glider, and Matilda said hello.

  The first thing the widow Penshaws did was to take Matilda’s left hand in her own and examine the next-to-the-last finger.

  “I thought so,” she said. “I knew this was coming when I saw that look in your eye at dinner. Where is Herman’s engagement ring?”

  Matilda smiled. “It wouldn’t have worked out, Ma. He was too darned stuffy. I gave him his ring and said thanks anyway, and he smiled politely and said he wished I had told him sooner because his fifteenth college reunion was this week end and he had already turned down the invitation.

  The widow Penshaws nodded regretfully. “That was thoughtful of Herman to hide his feelings.”

  “Hogwash!” said her daughter. “He has no true feelings. He’s sorry that he had to miss his college reunion. That’s all he has to hide. A stuffy Victorian prude and even less of a man than the others.”

  “But, Matilda, that’s your fifth broken engagement in three years. It ain’t that you ain’t popular, but you just don’t want to cooperate. You don’t fall in love, Matilda—no one does. Love osmoses into you slowly, without your even knowing, and it keeps growing all the time.”

  Matilda admired her mother’s use of the word “osmoses,” but she found nothing which was not objectionable about being unaware of the impact of love. She said good night and went upstairs, climbed out of her light summer dress, and took a cold shower.

  She began to hum to herself. She had not yet seen the pen-pal section of the current Literary Review, and because the subject matter of that magazine was somewhat high-brow and cosmopolitan, she could expect a gratifying selection of pen pals.