Platinum Pohl - The Collected Best Stories

by Frederik Pohl

  Light and electrons: in hyperspace, they lied.

  Matter was still matter, he thought; the strange lights beyond the viewing pane were stars. And the subtler flow within his body was dependable enough, for he could hear as reliably as ever and if he touched something hot, the nerve ends would scream Burn! to his brain. But the messenger between the stars and the brain—the photons and electrons that conveyed the image—were aberrants; they followed curious Riemannian courses, and no brain bound by the strictures of three dimensions could sort them out.

  Just as now, thought the captain with detached amusement, I seem to be seeing old Groden here on the bridge. Ridiculous, but as plain as life. If I didn’t know he was asleep in the sick bay, I’d swear it was he.

  “Captain! Captain!” Ensign Lorch’s voice penetrated over the metronome-cadenced commands of the exec and the bustling noises of the bridge.

  The captain stared wonderingly at the phantasms of light. “Ensign Lorch?” he demanded. “But—”

  “Yes, sir! I’m really here and so is Groden.” Lorch’s voice went on as the captain peered into the chaos of shifting images. Lorch himself wasn’t visible—unless that sea-green inverted monstrosity with a head of fire was Lorch. But the voice was Lorch’s voice, and the figure of Groden, complete with the white wrappings over the eyes, was shadowy but real. And the voices were saying—astonishing things.

  “You mean,” said the captain at last, “that Groden can pilot us home?”

  “That,” said Groden, in the first confident voice he had been able to use in days, “is just what he means.”

  Blind man’s buff. And what better player can there be than a blind man?

  Lieutenant Groden, eyeless and far-seeing, stood by the exec’s left hand and clipped out courses and directions. The exec marveled, and stared unbelievingly at the fantastic patterns outside the bridge, and followed orders.

  And presently Groden gave the order to stop all jets and drop back into normal space. In a moment, he was blind again—and the rest of the bridge complement found themselves staring at a reddish sun with a family of five planets, two of them Earthlike and green.

  “That’s not Sol!” barked the captain.

  “No,” said Groden wearily, “but it’s a place to land and cool the ship and replenish our air. You ran us close to the danger line, Captain.”

  Terra II came whistling down on to a broad, sandy plain, and lay quiet, its jet tubes smoking, while the Planetology section put out its feelers and reported:

  “Temperature, pressure, atmospheric analysis and radiation spectrum—all Earth normal. No poisons or biotic agents apparent on gross examination.”

  “There won’t be any on closer examination either,” said Groden. “This planet’s clean, captain.” He stood hanging on to a stanchion, pressed down by the gravity of the world he had found for them.

  The captain looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, but there were more important things to attend to.

  “Bleed in two pounds,” ordered the captain and the duty officer saluted and issued orders into the speaking tube.

  They had run close to the danger line, indeed; the ambient pressure inside Terra II’s hull had been bled down to a scant ten pounds, in order to use as much cooling effect from releasing gas as possible. Whether it was clean or not, no man could step out on to the surface of the new planet until the pressures had been brought back to normal.

  They stood at the view panel looking out on the world. They were near its equator, but the temperature was cool by Earth standards. Before them was a broad, gentle sea; behind them, a rim of green-clad hills.

  The captain made ready to send his first landing party on to a new and liveable planet.

  The scouting parties were back and the captain, for once, was smiling. “Wonderful!” he exulted. “A perfect planet for colonization—and we owe it all to you, Groden.”

  “That’s right,” said Groden. He was lying down on a ward-room bench—Broderick’s orders. Broderick had wanted to put him under sedation again, in fact, but that had brought Groden too close to mutiny.

  The captain glanced at his navigator. The swathed bandages hid Groden’s expression, and after a moment the captain decided to overlook the remark.

  He went on, “It’s a medal for you. You deserve it, Groden.”

  “He’ll need it, sir,” said Commander Broderick. “There won’t be any new eyes for Lieutenant Groden.” He looked old and sick and defeated. “The optic nerves are too far gone. New eyes wouldn’t help now; there’s nothing that would help. He’ll never have eyes again.”

  “Sure,” said Groden casually. “I knew it before I brought you here, captain.”

  The captain frowned uncomprehendingly, but Broderick caught the meaning in an instant. “You mean you could have brought us back to Earth?” he demanded.

  “In two jumps,” Groden told him easily.

  “Then why didn’t you?” snapped the captain. “I have a responsibility to my crew—I can’t let a man go blind because of phony heroics!”

  Groden swung his feet down, sat up. “Who’s a hero? I just didn’t want to trade what I have now for what I used to have, that’s all.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Broderick.

  “It’s more than seeing. Want to know how many Sol-type systems there are within five thousand light-years of here? I can tell you. Want to know what the Universe looks like in hyperspace? I can tell you that, too, only I can’t describe it. It makes sense, captain! The whole thing is as orderly and chartable as our own space. And I could see it, all of it. And you offer me eyes!”

  “But why don’t I see it, Groden?” the captain puzzledly wanted to know. “Surely we’ve all closed our eyes for a moment in hyperspace—why didn’t we see it then?”

  “Sleep and death are alike, but they’re not the same. Neither is closing your eyes and being blind. I’m blind in normal space; you’re blind in hyperspace—that isn’t much of an answer, but the medics will work it out.”

  The surgeon looked piercingly at Groden’s bandaged face. “Then the odds are that any blind person can see in hyperspace?”

  “I think so,” Groden agreed. “In fact, I’m practically certain.”

  “Then,” said the captain, “it’s our duty to return to Earth and let them know. They can equip each mapmaking ship with a blind person.”

  Groden gave his head a shake. “Plenty of time for that, Skipper. We have a quadrant of hyperspace to chart. With me on hand to ‘see’ during the jumps, we’ll finish up fast. Then we can go back and tell them. But I think we should get on with the job we’ve been assigned.”

  “Right,” said the captain after a pause. “We’ll bring the ship to stand-by for takeoff.”

  The rockets thundered and Terra II split the atmosphere on its way to deeper space.

  As soon as they were clear, the ship readied for the jump and the captain said, “Good luck, Groden. It’s all yours—give us our course.”

  Groden felt the quiver of the generators, far below, and at once the Universe lay spread before him.

  No more darkness, no blind fumblings. An end to basket-weaving and the dreary time-passing fingering of Braille for Earth’s incurable blind. They would be the eyes of the proud new hyperspace fleet that was yet to come!

  “It’s all yours, Groden,” the captain repeated.

  Groden cleared his throat, issued his course vectors.

  Captain, you don’t know how right you are, he thought. Only it won’t be just mine—it’ll be the blind leading the sighted!

  Now there, he chuckled, was a switch. But he’d have to wait until he was back on Earth, among the blind, for it to be appreciated.

  SPENDING A DAY

  AT THE LOTTERY FAIR

  There are lots of lotteries these days. Time was, lotteries were something most Americans didn’t know about; they were something done in other countries—Ireland, Spain, elsewhere. But we’ve become quite used to lotteries now, along with other forms of
legal gambling, as well as the many illegal forms of gambling.

  The “Lottery Fair” of the title, however, is not quite what you might expect. Frederik Pohl could have laid all his cards on the table right at the start of the story, but then you wouldn’t have to discover the true nature of the Lottery Fair…and the story, for yourself.

  And that wouldn’t be nearly as challenging, or fun, as untangling the puzzle of this deceptively simple tale first published in 1983.

  They were the Baxter family, Randolph and Millicent the parents, with their three children, Emma and Simon and Louisa, who was the littlest; and they didn’t come to the fair in any old bus. No, they drove up in a taxi, all the way from their home clear on the other side of town, laughing and poking each other, and when they got out Randolph Baxter gave the driver a really big tip. It wasn’t that he could really afford it. It was just because he felt it was the right thing to do. When you took your whole family to the Lottery Fair, Baxter believed, you might as well do it in style. Besides, the fare was only money. Though Millicent Baxter pursed her lips when she saw the size of the tip, she certainly was not angry; her eyes sparkled as brightly as the children’s, and together they stared at the facade of the Lottery Fair.

  Even before you got through the gates there was a carnival smell—buttered popcorn and cotton candy and tacos all together—and a carnival sound of merry-go-round organs and people screaming in the roller coaster, and bands and bagpipes from far away. A clown stalked on tall stilts through the fairgoers lining up at the ticket windows, bending down to chuck children under the chin and making believe to nibble the ears of teenage girls in bright summer shorts. Rainbow fountains splashed perfumy spray. People in cartoon-character costumes, Gus the Ghost and Mickey Mouse and Pac-Man, handed out free surprise packages to the kids: when Simon opened his it was a propeller beanie; a fan for Emma; for little Louisa, cardboard glasses with a Groucho Marx mustache. And crowded! You could hardly believe such crowds! Off to one side of the parking lot the tour buses were rolling in with their loads of foreign visitors, Chinese and Argentines and Swedes; they had special entrances and were waved through by special guards who greeted them, some of the time anyway, in their own native languages—“Willkommen!” and “Bonjour!” and “Ey there, mate!”—as long as they didn’t speak anything like Urdu or Serbo-Croatian, anyway. For the foreign tourists didn’t have to pay in the usual way; they bought their tickets in their country of origin, with valuable foreign exchange, and then everything was free for them.

  Of course it wasn’t like that for the regular American fairgoers. They had to pay. You could see each family group moving up toward the ticket windows. They would slow down as they got closer and finally stop, huddling together while they decided how to pay, and then one or two of them, or all of them, would move on to the window and reach into the admissions cuff for their tickets. Randolph Baxter had long before made up his mind that there would be no such wrangles on this day for his family. He said simply, “Wait here a minute,” and strode up to the window by himself. He put his arm into the cuff, smiled at the ticket attendant and said grandly, “I’ll take five, please.”

  The ticket seller looked at him admiringly. “You know,” she offered, “there aren’t that many daddies who’ll take all the little fellows in like that. Sometimes they make even tiny babies get their own tickets.” Baxter gave her a modest I-do-what-I-can shrug, though he could not help that his smile was a little strained until all five tickets clicked out of the roll. He bore them proudly back to his family and led them through the turnstiles.

  “My, what a crowd,” sighed Millicent Baxter happily as she gazed around. “Now, what shall we do first?”

  The response was immediate. “See the old automobiles,” yelled Simon, and, “No, the animals!” and, “No, the stiffs!” cried his sisters.

  Randolph Baxter spoke sharply to them—not angrily, but firmly. “There will be no fighting over what we do,” he commanded. “We’ll vote on what we do, the democratic way. No arguments, and no exceptions. Now,” he added, “the first thing we’re going to do is that you kids will stay right here while your mother and I get tickets for the job lottery.” The parents left the children arguing viciously among themselves and headed for the nearest lottery booth. Randolph Baxter could not help a tingle of excitement, and his wife’s eyes were gleaming, as they studied the prize list. The first prize was the management of a whole apartment building—twenty-five thousand dollars a year salary, and a free three-room condo thrown in!

  Millicent read his thoughts as they stood in line. “Don’t you just wish!” she whispered. “But personally I’d settle for any of the others. Look, there’s even a job for an English teacher!” Randolph shook his head wordlessly. It was just marvelous—five full-time jobs offered in this one raffle, and that not the biggest of the day. The last one, after the fireworks, always had the grandest of prizes. “Aren’t you glad we came?” Millicent asked, and her husband nodded.

  But in fact he wasn’t, altogether, at least until they safely got their tickets and were on their way back to the children, and then he was quickly disconcerted to see that the kids weren’t where they had been left. “Oh, hell,” groaned Randolph. It was early in the day for them to get lost.

  But they weren’t very far. His wife said sharply, “There they are. And look what they’re doing!” They were at a refreshment stand. And each one of them had a huge cone of frozen custard. “I told them not to make any purchases when we weren’t with them!” Millicent cried, but in fact it was worse than that. The children were talking to a pair of strange grown-ups, a lean, fair, elderly woman with a sharp, stern face, and a round, dark-skinned man with a bald head and immense tortoiseshell glasses.

  As the Baxters approached, the woman turned to them apologetically. “Oh, hullo,” she said, “you must be the parents. I do hope you’ll forgive us. Mr. Katsubishi and I seem to have lost our tour, and your children kindly helped us look for it.”

  “It’s all right, Dad,” Simon put in swiftly. “They’re on this foreign tour, see, and everything’s free for them anyway. Dad? Why can’t we get on a tour and have everything free?”

  “We’re Americans,” his father explained, smiling tentatively at the tall English-looking woman and the tubby, cheerful Japanese—he decided that they didn’t look like depraved child molesters. “You have to be an international tourist to get these unlimited tickets. And I bet they cost quite a lot of money, don’t they?” he appealed to the man, who smiled and shrugged and looked at the woman.

  “Mr. Katsubishi doesn’t speak English very well,” she apologized. “I’m Rachel Millay. Mrs. Millay, that is, although me dear husband left us some years ago.” She glanced about in humorous distress. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a tour leader carrying a green and violet flag with a cross of St. Andrew on it?”

  Since Randolph Baxter had no idea what a cross of St. Andrew looked like, it was hard to say. In any case, there were at least twenty tour parties in sight, each with its own individual pennant or standard, trudging in determined merriment toward the pavilions, the rides, or the refreshment stands. “I’m afraid not,” he began, and then paused as his wife clutched his arm. The P.A. system crackled, and the winners of the first drawing were announced.

  Neither of the Baxters were among them. “Well, there are six more drawings,” said Millicent bravely—not adding that there were also six more sets of raffle tickets to buy if they wanted any hope of winning one of them. Her husband smiled cheerfully at the children.

  “What’s it to be?” he asked generously. “The life exhibit? The concert—”

  “We already voted, Dad,” cried Emma, his elder daughter, “it’s the animals!”

  “No, the stiffs!” yelled her baby sister.

  “The old autos,” cried Simon. “Anyway, there won’t be any stiffs there until later, not to speak of!”

  Baxter smiled indulgently at the foreigners. “Children,” he explained. “Well, I do hope y
ou find your group.” And he led the way to the first democratically selected adventure of the day, the space exhibit.

  Baxter had always had a nostalgic fondness for space, and this was a pretty fine exhibit, harking back to olden, golden days when human beings could spare enough energy and resources to send their people and probes out toward the distant worlds. Even the kids liked it. It was lavish with animated 3-D displays showing a human being walking around on the surface of the Moon, and a spacecraft slipping through the rings of Saturn, and even a probe, though not an American one, hustling after Halley’s Comet to take its picture.

  But Randolph Baxter had some difficulty in concentrating on the pleasure of the display at first because, as they were getting their tickets, the tall, smiling black man just ahead of him in line put his arm into the admissions cuff, looked startled, withdrew his arm, started to speak and fell over on the ground, his eyes open, and staring, it seemed, right into Randolph Baxter’s.

  When you have a wife and three kids and no job, living on welfare, never thinking about tomorrow because you know there isn’t going to be anything in tomorrow worth thinking about, then a day’s outing for the whole family is an event to be treasured. No matter what the price—especially if the price isn’t in money. So the Baxter family did it all. They visited six national pavilions, even the Paraguayan. They lunched grandly in the dining room at the summit of the fair’s great central theme structure, the Cenotaph. And they did the rides, all the rides, from the Slosh-a-Slide water chutes through the immense Ferris wheel with the wind howling through the open car and Simon threatening to spit down on the crowds below, to the screaming, shattering roller coaster that made little Louisa wet her pants. Fortunately her mother had brought clean underwear for the child. When she sent the little girl off with her sister to change in the ladies’ room, she followed them anxiously with her eyes until they were safely past the ticket collector, and then said, “Rand, honey. You paid for all those rides yourself.”