The Year's Best Science Fiction 11 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  “Lord almighty,” he whispered.

  Sidestepping the banana peel, he went quickly into the basement and turned up the heater. Then he charged back up the stairs, skipping completely the step on which the banana peel lay, and headed for the bathroom.

  “Where are you going in such a hurry?” said his wife, placidly, as he dashed through the kitchen.

  “Brush my teeth,” he mumbled.

  He closed the bathroom door behind him and clutched the razor frantically in both hands.

  “It’s true,” he whispered desperately. “It’s all true. My God, she is trying to kill me!”

  “Get a hold of yourself,” said the razor.

  “What should I do?” pleaded Filmore. “Elvira is trying to kill me!”

  “I’m glad you finally realized it,” the razor said.

  “I can’t go on dodging her forever. Tell me what to do.”

  “Well, I can’t tell you what she’s going to do next,” said the razor, “but seeing your life is in jeopardy, you have every right to remove the danger. Don’t you agree?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “As you have so perspicaciously pointed out,” said the razor, “you can’t go on eluding your wife’s little traps forever. Therefore, the wisest course of action would be to beat her to the punch.”

  A satanic gleam crept into Filmore’s eyes.

  “By thunder, you’re right,” he said. “You got any ideas?”

  “Does your wife drive?”

  “Yeah. So what? She has her car; I have my car.”

  “That’s fine,” said the razor. “Perhaps she’ll be driving to the market tomorrow?”

  “I suppose so. Why?”

  “There are devices, you know, that can be attached to the engine of a car such that when the car is started, it blows sky high.” The razor paused for a moment. “Isn’t that intriguing?” it said at last.

  “Beautiful,” said Filmore slowly. “I’ll be at the office when it happens. You know, I feel better already. Thank you.”

  “Nothing at all,” said the razor.

  Filmore did not come home for supper that evening. Mrs. Filmore absorbed this patiently. She had long ago learned to patiently endure Filmore’s many eccentricities.

  When he finally did arrive, there was a package clutched under one arm.

  “What do you have in the package?” his wife inquired.

  “Oh, just a little something to make life more pleasant around here,” he said cheerily. “Be patient. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  He hustled off to the bedroom.

  In the bedroom, Filmore stowed his package behind a number of parcels on the upper shelf of his clothes closet.

  I’ll hook it up later tonight while Elvira is watching her insipid television programs, he said to himself. Then deciding that a bath would be refreshing, he traded his clothes for a bathrobe, procured towel and washcloth from the linen closet and marched briskly into the bathroom. He flung his bathrobe into a corner, stepped boldly into the bathtub, inserted the stopper, put his right hand under the spigot, and with his left hand turned on the hot water.

  Scalding hot water tumbled out of the spigot onto Filmore’s right hand. There was little, if any, warming-up period. No one had touched the water heater since Filmore turned it up that morning.

  Electrified, Filmore leaped back, lost his balance, and fell. His head hit the porcelain with a resounding crack. The scalding hot water continued to tumble out of the spigot, and very soon it covered his naked body.

  The bathtub was nearly full when Mrs. Filmore knocked timidly on the bathroom door. She thought she would capitalize on Filmore’s good mood and ask him if he would save her a little hot Water. She got no response, of course.

  In what was perhaps the boldest action of her life, she opened the door and peeked in. Instantly she recoiled in horror. She had never before seen the corpse of a man who has drowned in the bathtub.

  Trembling with shock, she managed to enter the room and turn off the hot water. Then, pale and visibly shaken, she made her way slowly to the bedroom and sat down at her dressing table.

  She sat for some time trying to stop her limbs from shaking. A person tries and tries to accomplish something, and then it is accomplished for him, quite by accident, in some surprising fashion. Such surprises can be emotionally upsetting. Finally, Mrs. Filmore seemed to regain some measure of control over herself.

  “What should I do now?” she said to her hairbrush.

  “Call the police and tell them there’s been a terrible accident,” the brush replied.

  * * * *

  “The Plot” is my first published story, Herzog says. The basic idea came straight from an Ann Landers column. A wife wrote in to ask Ann’s advice about her husband. It seems that he wouldn’t eat her food because, he claimed, she was trying to poison him. He was tipped off to her scheme by his electric razor ... As I recall, Ann advised the woman to send her husband to a psychiatrist . . .

  Which simply would not do.

  Tom Herzog Is a graduate student of psychology at the University of Michigan: Professionally, my goal Is to teach psychology and to do research at the university level. My broad area of interest is perception and cognition, and I like to play with neural models of behavior. I am currently engaged in research on the uses of kinesthetic aftereffect In the Investigation of personality through perception. As a psychologist,. I have been heavily Influenced by the writings of D. O. Hebb. I only mention that because there an factions in modern psychology . . .

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  * * * *

  One quick query, and a remarkable seven-page reply later, I not only understood something of the faction lines in modern psychology, and a little bit about kinesthetic aftereffect, but I could see why a “Neo-Hebbian” (“an inveterate neural mechanistic theorist”) had to find a way around a trip to the headshrinker. (“Personality theorists” —-and that includes virtually all schools of psychiatry—”are mechanists, but not neural mechanists.”)

  Not even Herzog’s letter, with its inspired three-dimensional (areas, schools and “father-Images”) analysis of the many-mansioned structure of contemporary psychology, leaves me exactly sure where the Bidwell sisters would fit—although I may be checking the wrong catalog. Possibly religion? Communications? Maybe cartography . . .

  David Bunch, investigator of the Bidwells, is a most unlikely young man from Missouri who spends his days making maps for the Air Force, and (judging by output) every other minute turning out a unique brand of—well. Warren Miller, writing in Paperback Review, said: “He has the new eyes and new mouth we now demand of writers,” and perhaps that is as close as one comes to classifying the terrible lessons of Little Brother and Little Sister (“The Monsters” in Husk 1965, or “Training Talk” in the 10th Annual), or the flesh-and-metal people of tortured Moderan (“The Walking, Talking, I-Don’t-Care Man” in Amazing), or the gay-sad old people of “The Time Battler” in The Smith, and the “Bidwell Endeavors.”

  A collection of Mr. Bunch’s work. Good Luck, Good Hanging and Good Kicking, will be published shortly by Windfall Press.

  * * * *

  INVESTIGATING THE BIDWELL ENDEAVORS

  DAVID R. BUNCH

  Actually, for two crazy people, I thought they had a pretty good service, when I first heard about it. Not that I set too much store by it, naturally, being the way I am, scientific and realistic, but I regarded it as pleasant, thoughtful of others, unselfish, very very unusual, harmless and probably something to be entirely avoided by any sane normal person wherever he might be. But my curiosity was such that I couldn’t leave it alone. I had to see, had to investigate. And now that I’m back from seeing, I’m not so sure that any of my first, hearsay impressions of this business were valid, or even accurate.

  You see the Bidwell twins, sisters, were the ones operating this little service. And when I say twins, sisters, I know you surely are going to get right down to thinking of cute little twin siste
rs you’ve known, as alike probably as two little twin China dolls might be, waiting all dressed up for a party or tripping down morning-glory paths toward school buses. But don’t think of anything like that. Think of the Bidwell sisters, old, wrinkled, spinsterish, gray, faded, one short, one about a foot taller than any woman ever should be—that kind of twins. And while you’re thinking of that kind of twins, think of them standing side by side looking like some great gaunt bird and its shrunken hairy egg, dressed in starchy white, on the clean white porch of their clean white mansion in a clean little mid-America mid-twentieth-century town. (No, they’ll not be taking a break from their self-appointed professional duties. Not exactly. They’ll be waiting for the mail.) And while you’re about it, don’t forget to think of their eyes, clear blue, like the blue of a December sky looking down on snow. Real evangel eyes, you’ll think at first, but on second guess you won’t know what to guess, probably, so you’ll just stall for time and think of other matters.

  Like a first floor room all littered with papers, you’ll think of that. And a postman toiling hard up the street, leading with both hands a big postal bag on a cart, bringing the Bidwell mail, more dailies than the rest of the town all put together takes. Then if you look around back, in the backyard, you’ll see the mountains and foothills of stacked newspapers and the neat, wired bundles of clippings, all waiting for the Boy Scouts to come and haul them away. After a while, just looking at these tall hillocks and big peaks of paper, you’ll begin to get a little of the feel of the enormity of the Bidwell undertaking.

  Then from a vantage point in the backyard, on top of a Mt. McKinley of old news, maybe, you’ll look at the Bidwell house, really look at it, especially the roof. And you’ll see that the roof on top of that three-story house, a mansion by the standards of small-town turn-of-the-century America, bristles with metal crosses and wires and gray speaker cones. Then if you think of money and expense, you’ll wonder why-in-the-world-did-they-do-it. But ... remember the stories ... and how old Bidwell, the elder, did have money, much money, as well as two odd-size daughters ... and some eccentric dreams ...

  Three stories down from a roof that clamors and talks you go up the white marble steps, up to a porch and a white door marked patients enter here, and you tell whoever answers the doorbell, lying as you go, that you have been sent by the state to investigate Bidwell Endeavors, just a routine check, naturally. And you flash a false badge and a name and you push on in to the first floor room that reminds you vaguely of operating rooms you have seen. It is hard to know just why it does that, exactly, except maybe for the neatness and the white, and the evidence of much cutting and severing. Many shiny shears and other cutting edges are prominently to be seen in that big room. But the newspapers spread on the operating tables throw the picture all out of perspective in your mind. But really now—just your being here—doesn’t that deny that you really hoped for anything to stay in normal perspective in your mind?

  Suddenly you are aware of one salient fact: you are standing alone in a big white paper-littered room with Miss Angela Bidwell. And for all that you are over half a foot more than six feet tall, she in her flat-heel nursing shoes is looking straight into your eyes, on the level. Only it isn’t really a straight-in steady look; it’s all wrong to claim that it is. This is more like being hit in the eyes with pulsations of cold blue water, you somehow think, and yet her eyes seem very dry. You finally settle for thinking about blue pieces of ice flailing into your eyeballs, and you stand there afraid that you are going to shake. Why doesn’t she speak? You have given a name, stated your business, and you have shown her the false badge. And it looks authentic enough, doesn’t it?

  When finally she does start to speak, you see her mouth open and close with the words, but the sounds have that eerie quality of coming from somewhere farther removed, down from some greater height, like maybe out of the ceiling. “Mr. Frine,” she says, dry, like a fingernail file on a bone, “the world is full of sickness, and we are all physicians. Or should be. As Father always said. Likewise, we are all patients, Mr. Frine. Or should be. As Father always said.—I hope you understand.” I nodded, and held my eyes against the smiting pieces of cold.

  When she spoke again she seemed apologetic. “I am sorry you did not come in proper form to be admitted, Mr. Frine. You seek help. We all seek help. And some of us seek to help.—But perhaps you did not understand. You’ll have to get regular, Mr. Frine.”

  “I came to investigate your hospital,” I shouted. “I’m from the state,” I lied. “It’s routine. I’m not sick!”

  My shout brought the short sister pounding up from the basement, and after a silence a strange clamor had started in new, upstairs. I noticed as she came bouncing up that she had a box of electrical fuses in one hand. She smote me with dry blue eyes, cold, very much like her sister’s, and she spoke as though my being there was the most natural-normal thing in the world. “Right in the middle of alleviation for Mr. Bent and all the rest, it goes,” she panted. “The electric goes off. I’m scared. I’m thinking ho, no! Not those expensive installation men again. I fly down to the basement. Luckily it is just a fuse. I replace it. And now Mr. Bent and all his fellow sufferers can just go ahead and be alleviated. I’m so happy for Mr. Bent and all his fellow sufferers in the ward. In the ward and in the world!” Then she looked at me as if seeing me for the real first time. Her mouth opened and closed twice without sound and finally she said to her tall icily staring sister, “Why, what in the world!? He can’t be admitted into this room in this form. What would dear dead sainted Father say? Why has he come here?—Oh, we do wish to help, but—”

  “I’m not a patient,” I yelled. “I’m not sick. I’m an investigator. From the state.”

  “Oh, but we’re all patients,” the tall icily staring sister cut in, “all ill. That’s what makes it so worthwhile—and wonderful—that we’re all with the power of physician. All sick and all physicians. What a wonderful Power ... to have planned it so. As Father always said.” And her eyes became glittering points for a little instant.

  A sound outside, on the porch, of some ponderous bundle going into a box startled both of the sisters to life and made their eyes dance away from me and shine with cold lights. “The new patients are arriving,” Miss Angela said. And Miss Angia said, “Oh, yes! such a big bundle of them this morning. How lucky they are to be here. How lucky we are to be here to help them. What a wonderful Power—” Then both sisters rushed outside to heave and pull at the patients until they had them all inside the white room that was—and I hadn’t been wrong here—the operating room. I watched Miss Angela and Miss Angia select with a show of pleasure the sharpest blades and the shiniest shears, and when they became absorbed with the searching out of the patients, I slipped away.

  I went upstairs to the second floor, toward where a clamor was, where, I supposed, Mr. Bent and the rest were having their alleviations. I was prepared for something eccentric, but thinking of it in bars now, or in my room late at night when the lumps in the bed are big and gnaw at me and I cannot sleep, or when the rains all day rain down on the blue-Sunday windows, I cannot tell myself that I was really prepared. Is one ever really fully prepared for anything, though? Aren’t we always in the state of preparing? Or, as Miss Angela said, “All are patients.”

  There had one time been six huge rooms upstairs on the second floor of the Bidwell mansion. But now the partitions were down and what had once been six was now one, one mammoth room of white beds, rows of them arranged as in a hospital. By each hospital-sheeted bed was an apparatus of wires and speaker cones and a tape recorder playing—softly, soothingly, playing the Bidwell prayers to what looked to me like empty beds. My mind groped for something tangible out of the soothing sounds of the prayers and all this eerie scene, and I thought of Mr. Bent. Look for Mr. Bent, that was the thing to do! Miss Angia had as good as said he was up here—Mr. Bent.

  So I, a fake state investigator, motivated by more curiosity than ever has been good for m
e, went up and down the white rows of the beds, looking among the beds and the wires and the prayers for a Mr. Bent. When I found him, or I mean found his bed, he wasn’t there! The Bidwell prayers were spewing their soft urgency at an empty bed, or so it seemed to me. I looked at the fever chart on the end of the bed. It indicated that Mr. Bent was still in need of much much help. Oh, he was in a bad shape according to his chart. “Mr. Bent,” I cried and there wasn’t any answer, though the prayers went on undiminished. “Mr. Bent, in your shape you shouldn’t be out of bed, Mr. Bent.” In desperation I flung the covers back. And there was Mr. Bent! Taped to his bed! He was smiling. A man of about forty, he had killed his wife and his kids, all six of the little Bents. And then he had run away with his beauteous luscious mistress. Or so some news-hawk had said.—Oh no, Mr. Bent. No! No! Mr. Bent.

  And upon closer looking, I saw that the other beds were not empty either. Not by a handful of paper. Terrible humanity was in them. Some had pictures, and all had descriptions, descriptions of foul deeds in them. Oh, Mr. Bent! No! And all the Mr. Bents! No!