Robert Silverberg The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964

by Robert Silverberg

  I bathed and changed, and then went prowling in the big multioutlet down the avenue. All those places are arranged pretty much alike, no matter what the local managers do to them. I went straight to the knives, and picked out three in graduated sizes, down to the size of my fingernail. Then I had to take my chances. I tried the furniture department, where I had had good luck once in a while, but this year all they were using was metal. I had to have seasoned wood.

  I knew where there was a big cache of cherry wood, in good-sized blocks, in a forgotten warehouse up north at a place called Kootenay. I could have carried some around with me— enough for years—but what for, when the world belonged to me?

  It didn’t take me long. Down in the workshop section, of all places, I found some antiques—tables and benches, all with wooden tops. While the dulls collected down at the other end of the room, pretending not to notice, I sawed off a good oblong chunk of the smallest bench, and made a base for it out of another.

  As long as I was there, it was a good place to work, and I could eat and sleep upstairs, so I stayed.

  I knew what I wanted to do. It was going to be a man, sitting, with his legs crossed and his forearms resting down along his calves. His head was going to be tilted back, and his eyes closed, as if he were turning his face up to the sun.

  In three days it was finished. The trunk and limbs had a shape that was not man and not wood, but something in between: something that hadn’t existed before I made it.

  Beauty. That was the old word.

  I had carved one of the figure’s hands hanging loosely, and the other one curled shut. There had to be a time to stop and say it was finished. I took the smallest knife, the one I had been using to scrape the wood smooth, and cut away the handle and ground down what was left of the shaft to a thin spike. Then I drilled a hole into the wood of the figurine’s hand, in the hollow between thumb and curled finger. I fitted the knife blade in there; in the small hand it was a sword.

  I cemented it in place. Then I took the sharp blade and stabbed my thumb and smeared the blade.

  I hunted most of that day and finally found the right place—a niche in an outcropping of striated brown rock, in a little triangular half-wild patch that had been left where two, roads forked. Nothing was permanent, of course, in a community like this one that might change its houses every five years or so, to follow the fashion, but this spot had been left to itself for a long time. It was the best I could do.

  I had the paper ready; it was one of a batch I had printed up a year ago. The paper was treated, and I knew it would stay legible~a long time. I hid a little photo capsule in the back of the niche and ran the control wire to a staple in the base of the figurine.

  I put the figurine down on top of the paper and anchored it lightly to the rock with two spots of all-cement. I had done it so often that it came naturally; I knew just how much cement would hold the figurine steady against a casual hand, but yield to one that really wanted to pull it down.

  Then I stepped back to look, and the power and the pity of it made my breath come short, and tears start to my eyes.

  Reflected light gleamed fitfully on the dark-stained blade that hung from his hand.

  He was sitting alone in that niche that closed him in like a coffin. His eyes were shut and his head tilted back, as if he were turning his face up to the sun.

  But only rock was over his head. There was no sun for him.

  Hunched on the cool bare ground under a pepper tree, I was looking down across the road at the shadowed niche where my figurine sat.

  I was all finished here. There was nothing more to keep me, and yet I couldn’t leave.

  People walked past now and then—not often. The community seemed half deserted, as if most of the people had flocked off to a surf party somewhere, or a contribution meeting, or to watch a new house being dug to replace the one I had wrecked. . . . There was a little wind blowing toward me, cool and lonesome in the leaves.

  Up the other side of the hollow there was a terrace, and on that terrace, half an hour ago, I had seen a brief flash of color—a boy’s head, with a red cap on it, moving past and out of sight.

  That was why I had to stay. I was thinking how that boy might come down from his terrace and into my road, and passing the little wild triangle of land, see my figurine. I was thinking he might not pass by indifferently, but stop and go closer to look, and pick up the wooden man and read what was written on the paper underneath.

  I believed that sometime it had to happen. I wanted it so hard that I ached.

  My carvings were all over the world, wherever I had wandered. There was one in Congo City, carved of ebony, dusty-black; one on Cyprus, of bone; one in New Bombay, of shell; one in Changteh, of jade.

  They were like signs printed in red and green in a colorblind world. Only the one I was looking for would ever pick one of them up and read the message I knew by heart.

  TO YOU WHO CAN SEE, the first sentence said. I OFFER YOU A WORLD...

  There was a flash of color up on the terrace. I stiffened. A minute later, here it came again, from a different direction: it was the boy, clambering down the slope, brilliant against the green, with his red sharp-billed cap like a woodpecker’s head.

  I held my breath.

  He came toward me through the fluttering leaves, ticked off by pencils of sunlight as he passed. He was a brown boy, I could see at this distance, with a serious thin face. His’ ears stuck. out, flickering pink with the sun behind them, and his elbow and knee pads made him look knobby.

  He reached the fork in the road and chose the path on my side. I huddled into myself as he came nearer. Let him see it, let him not see me, I thought fiercely.

  My fingers closed around a stone.

  He was nearer, walking jerkily with his hands in his pockets, watching his feet mostly..

  When he was almost opposite me, I threw the stone.

  It rustled through the leaves below the niche in the rock. The boy’s head turned.

  He stopped, staring. I think he saw the figurine then: I’m sure he saw it.

  He took one step.

  “Risha!” came floating down from the terrace.

  And he looked up. “Here,” he piped.

  I saw the woman’s head, tiny at the top of the terrace. She called something I didn’t hear; I was standing up, squeezed tight with anger.

  Then the wind shifted. It blew from me to the boy. He whirled around, his eyes big, and clapped a hand to his nose.

  “Oh, what a stench!”

  .

  He turned to shout, “Corning!” and then he was gone, hurrying back up the road, into the unstable blur of green.

  My one chance, ruined. He would have seen the image, I knew, if it hadn’t been for that damned woman, and the wind shifting.. . . They were all against me, people, wind, and all.

  And the figurine still sat, blind eyes turned up to the rocky sky.

  There was something inside me that told me to take my disappointment and go away from there and not come back.

  I knew I would be sorry. I did it, anyway: took the image out of the niche, and the paper with it, and climbed the slope. At the top I heard his clear voice laughing.

  There was a thing that might have been an ornamental mound, or the camouflaged top of a buried’ house. I went around it, tripping over my own feet, and came upon the boy kneeling on the turf. He was playing with a brown-and-white puppy.

  He looked up, with the laughter going out of his face. There was no wind, and he could smell me. I knew it was bad. No wind, and the puppy to distract him—

  everything about it was wrong. But I went to him blindly, anyhow, and fell on one knee, and shoved the ‘figurine at his face.

  “Look—” I said.

  He went over backwards in his hurry; he couldn’t even have seen the image, except as a brown blur coming at him. He scrambled up, with the puppy whining and yapping around his heels, and ran for the mound.

  I was up after him, clawing up m
oist earth and grass as I rose. In the other hand I still had the image clutched, and the paper with it.

  A door popped open and swallowed him and popped shut again in my face. With the flat of my hand I beat the vines around it until I hit the doorplate by accident and the door opened. I dived in, shouting, “Wait,” and was in a spiral pas~ sage, lit pearl-gray, winding downward. Down I went, headlong, and came out at the wrong door—

  an underground conservatory, humid and hot under the yellow lights, with dripping rank leaves in long rows. I went down the aisle raging, overturning the tanks, until I came to a vestibule and an elevator.

  Down I went again to the third level and a labyrinth of guest rooms, all echoing, all empty. At last I found a ramp leading upward, p.ast the conservatory, and at the end of it voices.

  The door was clear vitrin, and I paused on the near side of it, looking and listening. There was the boy, and a woman old enough to be his mother, just—sister or cousin, more likely— and an elderly woman in a hard chair holding the puppy. The room was comfortable and tasteless, like other rooms.

  I saw the shock grow on their faces as I burst in; it was always the same; they knew I would like to kill them, but they never expected that I would come uninvited into a house. It was not done.

  There was that boy, so close I could touch him, but the shock of all of them was quivering in the air, smothering, like a blanket that would deaden my voice. I felt I had to shout.

  “Everything they tell you is lies!” I said. “See here—here, this is the truth!” I had the figurine in front of his eyes, but he didn’t see.

  “Risha, go below,” said the young woman quietly. He turned to obey, quick as a ferret.

  I got in front of him again. “Stay,” I said, breathing hard. “Look—”.

  “Remember, Risha, don’t speak,” said the woman.

  I couldn’t stand any more. Where the boy went I don’t know; I ceased to see him.

  With the image in one hand and the paper with it, I leaped at the woman. I was almost quick enough; I almost reached her, but the buzzing took me in the middle of a step, louder, louder, like the end of the world.

  It was the second time that week. When I came to, I was sick and too faint to move for a long time.

  The house was silent. They had gone, of course . . . the house had been defiled, having me in it. They wouldn’t live here again, but would build elsewhere.

  My eyes blurred. After a while I stood up and looked around ‘at the room. The walls were hung with a gray close-woven cloth that looked as if it would tear, and I thought of ripping it down in strips, breaking furniture, stuffing carpets and bedding into the oubliette. . . . But I didn’t have the heart for it. I was too tired.

  At last I stooped and picked up the figurine and the paper that was supposed to go under it—crumpled now, with the forlorn look of a message that someone has thrown away unread.

  I smoothed it out and read the last part.

  YOU CAN SHARE THE WORLD WITH ME. THEY

  CAN’T STOP YOU. STRIKE NOW—PICK UP A SHARP

  THING AND STAB, OR A HEAVY THING AND CRUSH.

  THAT’S ALL. THAT WILL MAKE YOU FREE. ANYONE CAN DO IT.

  Anyone. Anyone.

  PROGRESS REPORT

  by Daniel Keyes

  First published in 1959

  progris riport 1—martch 5, 1965

  Dr. Strauss says I shud rite down what I think and evrey thing that happins to me from now on. I dont know why but he says its importint so they will see if they will use me. I hope they use me. Miss Kinnian says maybe they can make me smart. I want to be smart. My name is Charlie Gordon. I am 37 years old and 2 weeks ago was my birthday. I have nuthing more to rite now so I will close for today.

  progris riport 2—martch 6

  I had a test today. I think I faled it. and I think that maybe now they wont use me.

  What happind is a nice young man was in the room and he had some white cards with ink spillled all over them. He sed Charlie what do you see on this card. I was very skared even tho I had my rabits foot in my pockit because when I was a kid I always faled tests in school and I spillled ink to.

  I told him I saw a inkblot. He said yes and it made me feel good. I That that was all but when I got up to go he stopped me. He said now sit down Charlie we are not thru yet. Then I don't remember so good but he wantid me to say what was in the ink.

  I dint see nuthing in the ink but he said there was picturs there other pepul saw some picturs. couldn't see any picturs. I reely tryed to see. I held the card close up and then far away. Then I said if I had my glases I coud see better usally only ware my glases in the movies or TV but I said they are in the closit in the hall. I got them. Then I said let me see that card agen

  I bet I’ll find it now.

  I tryed hard but I still coudnt find the pictures I only saw the ink. I told him maybe I need new glases. He rote somthing down on a paper and I got skared of faling the test. I told him it was a very nice inkblot with little points all around the edges. He looked very sad so that wasnt it. I said please let me try agen. Ill get it in a few minits becaus Im not so fast somtimes. Im a slow reeder too in Miss Kinnians class for slow adults but Im trying very hard.

  He gave me a chance with another card that had 2 kinds of ink spillled on it red and blue.

  He was very nice and talked slow like Miss Kinnian does and he explaned it to me that it was a raw shok. He said pepul see things in the ink. I said show me where. He said think. I told him I think a inkblot but that wasnt rite eather. He said what does it remind you—pretend something. I closd my eyes for a long time to pretend. I told him I pretned a fowntan pen with ink leeking all over a table cloth. Then he got up and went out.

  I dont think I passd the raw shok test.

  progris report 3—martch 7

  Dr Strauss and Dr Nemur say it dont matter about the inkblots. I told them I dint spill the ink on the cards and I coudnt see anything in the ink. They said that maybe they will still use me. I said Miss Kinnian never gave me tests like that one only spelling and reading. They said Miss Kinnian told that I was her bestist pupil in the adult nite scool becaus I tryed the hardist and I reely wantid to lern. They said how come you went to the adult nite scool all by yourself Charlie. How did you find it. I said I askd pepul and sumbody told me where I shud go to lern to read and spell good.

  They said why did you want to. I told them becaus all my life I wantid to be smart and not dumb. But its very hard to be smart. They said you know it will probly be tempirery. I said Ves. Miss Kinnian told me. I dont care if it herts.

  Later I had more crazy tests today. The nice lady who gave it me told me the name and I asked her how do you spellit so I can rite it in my progris riport. thematic apperception test. I dont know the frist 2 words but I know what test means. You got to pass it or you get bad marks. This test lookd easy becaus I coud see the picturs.

  Only this joie she dint want me to tell her the picturs. That mixd me up. I said "e man yesterday said I shoud tell him what I saw in the ink she said that dont make no difrence. She said make up storys about the pepul jn the picturs.

  I told her how can you tell storys about pepul you never met. I said why shud I make up lies. I never tell lies any more becaus I always get caut.

  She told me this test and the other one the raw-shok was for getting personalty. I laffed so hard. I said how can you get that thing from inkblots and fotos. She got sore and put her picturs away. I dont care. It was sily. I gess I faled that test too.

  Later some men in white coats took me to a difemt part of the hospitil and gave me a game to play. It was like a race with a white mouse. They called the mouse Algernon. Algernon was in a box with a lot of twists and turns like all kinds of walls and they gave me a pencil and a paper with lines and lots of boxes. On one side it said start and on the other end it said finish. They said it was amazed and that Algernon and me had the same amazed to do. I dint see how we could have the same amazed if Algernon had a box and
I had a paper but I dint say nothing. Anyway there wasnt time because the race started.

  One of the men had a watch he was trying to hide so I woudnt see it so I tryed not to look and that made me nervus.

  Anyway that test made me feel worser than all the others because they did it over 10 times with difernt amazeds and Algernon won every time. I dint know that mice were so smart. Maybe mats because Algernon is a white mouse. Maybe white mice are smarter then other mice.

  progris riport 4—Mar 8

  Their going to use me! Im so exited I can hardly write. Dr Nemur and Dr Strauss had a argament about it first. Dr Nemur was in the office when Dr Strauss brot me in, Dr Nemur was worryed about using me but Dr Strauss told him Miss Kinnian rekemmended me the best from all the people who was teaching. I like Miss Kinnian becaus she's a very smart teacher. And she said Charlie your going to have a second chance. If you volenteer for this experament you mite get smart. They dont know if it will be perminint but theirs a chance. Thats why I said ok even when I was scared because she said it was an operashun. She said don be scared Charlie you done so much with so little I think you deserv i most of all.

  So I got scaird when Dr Nemur and Dr Strauss argud about it- ^ Strauss said I had something that was very good. He said I had a g° motor-vation. I never even knew I had that. I felt proud when he say that not every body with an eye-q of 68 had that thing. I dont know what it is or where I got it but he said Algernon had it too.

  Algernons motor-vation is the cheese they put in his box. But it cant be that because I didn't eat any cheese this week.

  Then he told Dr Nemur something I dint understand so while they were talking I wrote down some of the words.

  He said Dr Nemur I know Charlie is not what you had in mind as the first of your new brede of intelek** (coudnt get the word) superman. But most people of his low ment** are host** and uncoop** they are usualy dull apath** and hard to reach. He has a good natcher hes intr- isted and eager to please.