by Anthology
I drew in a long breath, then blew it out again, slowly.
‘Don’t you think I’m merely guessing that,’ cried Mr. Strenberry, ‘because I’m not. I know. And I know because he told me. I don’t mean to say we talked. As a matter of fact, I did try shouting at him—asking him who he was and where he’d come from, and all that—but I don’t think he heard me, and if he did, he certainly didn’t understand. But don’t make any mistake—he saw me all right. He looked at me just as I looked at him. He made a sign or two, and might have made more if he hadn’t been so busy with those instruments and so desperately agitated. He didn’t shout at me, never opened his lips. But he thought at me. That’s the only way I can describe it. Messages from him arrived in my head, and turned themselves into my own words, and even little pictures. And it was horrible—horrible, I tell you. Everything was finished, and he was trying to escape. The only way he could do it was to try and jump back into the past, out of the way. There wasn’t much of the world left, fit to live in. Just one biggish island, not belonging to any of the continents we know—they’d all gone, long ago. I don’t know the date. That never came through, and if it had, I don’t suppose it would have told me much. But it was a long time ahead—perhaps twenty thousand years, perhaps fifty thousand, perhaps more—I don’t know. What I do know is that this man wasn’t anybody very important, just a sort of minor assistant in some kind of laboratory where they specialised in time experiments, quite a low-class fellow among his own kind, though he would have seemed a demigod to me and you. And I knew that while he was so terrified that he was frantic in his attempt to escape, at the same time he was ashamed of himself, too—felt he was a kind of dodger, you see. But even then, what was happening was so ghastly that he’d never hesitated at all. He had run to the laboratory or whatever it was, and just had time to jump back through the ages. He was in terror. He didn’t show it as we might, but I tell you—his mind was screaming. Some place—a city, I think it was—had been entirely destroyed and everything else was going too, everything that had once been human. No words came into my mind to describe what it was that was destroying everything and terrifying him. Perhaps I hadn’t any words that would fit in. All I got were some little pictures, very blurred, just like bits of a nightmare. There were great black things rolling about, just wiping everything out. Not like anything you’ve ever seen. You couldn’t give them a shape.’
Here Mr. Strenberry leaned further forward still, grasped my coat sleeve, and lowered his voice.
‘They weren’t beasts or huge insects even,’ he whispered. ‘They weren’t anything you could put a name to. I don’t believe they belonged to this world at all. And something he thought rather suggested that too. They came from some other place, from another planet perhaps. Don’t you see, it was all finished here. They were blotting it out, great rolling black things—oh, horrible! Just imagine what he felt, this man, who had just managed to escape from them, but now couldn’t get out, into this world and time of ours. Because he couldn’t, that was the awful thing. He tried and tried, but it couldn’t be done. And he hadn’t long to try either, I knew that. Because of what was happening at the other end, you see. I tell you, I stood there, looking at him, with his thoughts buzzing round my own head, and the sweat was streaming down my face. I was terrified too, in a panic. And then he was in an agony of fear, and so was I. It was all up. The inside of that column of air began revolving again, just as it had done when it first came, and then I couldn’t see him distinctly. Only his eyes. Just those eyes, staring out of the swirl. And then, I saw something. I swear I did. Something black. Just a glimpse. That’s all. A bit of one of those things, getting hold of him—the last man left. That’s what it must have been, though how I came to see it, I don’t quite know, but I’ve worked it out this way and that way, and it seems to me—’
‘A-ha, who have we here?’ cried a loud, cheerful voice. ‘How’s things, Mr. Strenberry?’
Two red-faced men had just entered the room. They grinned at my companion, then winked at one another.
‘A nasty day, Mr. Strenberry,’ said the other fellow. ‘What do you say?’
Mr. Strenberry, who appeared to have crumpled up at their approach, merely muttered something in reply. Then, giving me a hasty glance, in which shame and despair and scorn were mingled, he suddenly rose and shuffled out of the room.
The two newcomers looked at one another, laughed, and then settled into their corner. The landlady appeared with their drinks. I stood up and looked out of the window. The downpour had dwindled to a few scattered drops, brightening in the sunlight.
‘I seen you talking to Mr. Strenberry,’ the landlady said to me. ‘Least, I seen him talking to you. Got him going, too, you did. He’s a queer one, isn’t he? Didn’t I tell you he was a queer one? Telling you one of his tales, I’ll be bound. Take no notice of him, mister. You can’t believe a single word he says. We found that out long since. That’s why he doesn’t want to talk to us anymore. He knows we’ve got a pinch of salt ready, Mr. Strenberry does.’
MUNDANE LANE
Kevin J. Anderson
No one would have believed in the last years of the twentieth century that human affairs were being watched from the vast, dark reaches of space. No one even considered the possibility that alien minds immeasurably superior to our own might regard this Earth with plans to invade.
No one even considered such a crazy idea, because in the last years of the twentieth century the genre of imaginative fiction had been forgotten. The very idea of a space program had died away from lack of interest before the first man could be shot into orbit. The Soviets had tried to launch a satellite called Sputnik, but the rocket blew up on the Cosmodrome launch-pad; the Communist Party members who had advocated the appalling waste of money were sentenced to a gulag. No one in the US or USSR ever suggested the idea again. The people of Earth were far too busy with their own problems to waste time with silly flights of fancy.
Thus, when the giant alien motherships loomed above Earth’s cities, the members of the human race—certainly doomed—looked up at the astounding vessels and simply could not comprehend what was about to happen . . .
In his cramped basement office of a Washington think tank four blocks from the White House, Jimmy Andrews sat in his creaking government-issue chair. The walls were thick cinderblock painted a heavy sea-foam green, a shade that some bureaucrat had chosen as the perfect color for all civil servants to enjoy.
Jimmy nudged thick black-rimmed glasses up on his nose and carefully opened the brittle yellowing pages of another issue of Amazing Stories. Copies of the long-vanished science fiction magazines were increasingly hard to find; very few had been printed before paper shortages in World War II killed the magazines entirely.
As a sure sign of wasteful government spending, Jimmy was paid to read the absurd pulp magazines for “ideas,” a job that many considered ridiculous. Now he eagerly devoured yet another story about metal men, master-minds of Mars, and mole creatures that lived beneath the Earth’s crust. The prose was rather awkward (even a fan like Jimmy could admit that), but the ideas—ah, the ideas!
On his desk, the red phone rang. He was so startled he knocked the fragile issue of Amazing Stories off the desktop. The red phone? Jimmy stared while it rang a second time. Until now, he had thought the phone was a mere prop. He used it as a paperweight.
Jimmy grabbed the phone on the third ring. It wouldn’t do to let whoever called on the red phone think he was gossiping at the water cooler. “Hello? Um, I mean, Jimmy Andrews’s desk. Um, I mean, Office of Unlikely Possibilities. May I help you?”
“This is General Ashcroft,” a gruff voice said. “Get your sorry self to the Oval Office—and I mean now! President Dole wants to see you immediately.”
“P-P-President Dole?”
“My spy cameras better show you running over here instead of walking, Andrews!” On the other end of the line, the red phone went dead.
Jimmy bolted out of the of
fice. Panting and sweating, he scuttled down the sidewalk, bumping into pedestrians who seemed frozen into awestruck statues. Why wouldn’t they get out of the way? Then he glanced upward—and saw an enormous saucer hovering over the Capitol building, its shadow large enough to cover ten square blocks.
“The aliens really came!” he gasped. “The invasion fleet is really here.”
A police officer pointed to the sky. “What is that? Some new aircraft? Never seen anything like it.”
“Must be the Russians,” said another man on the sidewalk. “It’s gotta be the Russians.”
The cop scowled at him. “Of course it’s the Russians. Who else could it possibly be?”
Jimmy was about to explain the real alternative, when he remembered General Ashcroft’s impatience, and he began to run again.
The Oval Office was the stuff of legend, but not such imaginative legends as an invasion from space. Jimmy came to a halt, barely catching his breath. Today of all days he wished he had worn a suit and a tie, but he didn’t have a professional wardrobe like his fellow staff workers. His faded blue T-shirt was too tight over a potbelly that was the result of spending his lunch hours reading instead of jogging along the Potomac.
Fortunately, President Dole was too preoccupied to notice Jimmy’s clothes. Dole put his one good arm on the polished wood of the desk and leaned forward, beetling his heavy brows. “So, Mr. Andrews, I’m told you’re one of the only people left in the world who reads crazy sci-fi stuff. Now it’s time to earn back the salary that people said we were wasting on you. You’re part of a think tank, Mr. Andrews. I expect you to do some thinking for us.”
“Yes, Mr. President. How can I help? I’ve already seen the UFO.”
“UFO?” the President said. “Why do you call it that?”
“Unidentified Flying Object, sir,” said General Ashcroft, who stood stiffly at attention to one side of the President’s desk. “A term invented in a proposed Air Force project called Blue Book. We decided not to fund their investigations. It was pure silliness.”
Jimmy nearly choked. “Pure silliness? Excuse me, sir, but did I not notice a giant alien spacecraft overhead? Maybe if the Air Force had studied UFOs, we’d have had some warning!”
“That’s enough, gentlemen.” President Dole cut them off. “If anyone else read that science fiction stuff, we might have done some planning, but who in the world imagined there could be aliens out in space? Flying saucers that might want to invade the Earth? Inconceivable!”
“Actually, many people thought of it, Mr. President,” Jimmy said, standing proud. “A man named H.G. Wells wrote a book about an invasion from Mars back in 1898. It’s been long out of print, however. Even a century ago readers thought it was pure silliness.”
“The fact is, Mr. President,” General Ashcroft said, “we should have kept watching the skies. But no one ever thought.”
Jimmy sighed, “And now it’s too late to change the world.”
“It may not be too late,” President Dole said. “Not strictly speaking, anyway. You see, Mr. Andrews, you’re not the only crackpot we keep on the payroll. Another one of my pie-in-the-sky geniuses, a Dr. Hawking, claims to have concocted a time machine. His strange quantum theories, his speculations about time and wormholes, have made him a laughingstock among his peers—but if he says the time machine will work, then I’m willing to give it a shot.” Dole glanced toward the ceiling of the Oval Office. “Preferably before those aliens launch their weapons.”
“A time machine!” Jimmy could not keep the delight out of his voice. “And you want to send me back to . . . change history? Alter key events, do whatever I can to ensure that science fiction becomes popular? Yes, I see, we have to change our entire social mindset. Science fiction could inspire our scientists, give them new ideas. Yes, that would work!” He began to talk faster and faster. “If we can imagine the possibility of a threat from space, then it only follows that someone will imagine defenses against it. And the only way we can do that is by going back, oh . . . half a century, giving a few people the proper nudge. Editors, writers, fans, filmmakers. Science fiction can flourish instead of fade away!” He bowed. “And I understand why you’ve picked me to go, Mr. President. I’m the right man for the job.”
“And let’s not forget the fact,” Ashcroft interrupted, “that in our current crisis, you are completely expendable.”
It was 1961, and Jimmy Andrews promised to make it a different year than the one in which he had been born.
With his quantum time machine, Dr. Hawking had glimpsed other timelines, spotting what he called cruxpoints where the futures had changed. While Jimmy and the scientist hunched together in the government laboratory, plotting and planning, the aliens had issued a dire statement that sounded like a thunderbolt: Every human should prepare to die.
By that time, Jimmy and Dr. Hawking had identified three important cruxpoints. He looked into the scientist’s droopy eyes and thin skeletal face that had been wasted by ALS. Speaking through his voice synthesizer, Hawking pointed out, “You have to go before the invaders obliterate my time machine.”
Jimmy said, “These three points will have to be enough.” He gathered his notes, put together a disguise with frantic assistance from the White House, and then, feeling as if every cell in his body had turned into fizzing foam from a shaken can of warm soda pop, he had arrived back here. 1961.
Wearing a plaid sport coat and snappy Panama hat, he carried a case of catalogs and brochures in keeping with his persona as an auto parts salesman. He stood under the neon sign of a bar in downtown Manhattan known to be a frequent haunt of authors meeting their agents.
He looked around in the dim light, smelled cigarette smoke and old beer. Two men sat on stools pulled up to the dark wood of the bar; the meeting seemed somber, not celebratory. The one with the large, bushy beard was immediately recognizable; the other, unfamiliar man had a full tumbler of Scotch in his hand, which he sipped vigorously.
Jimmy came close enough to eavesdrop as the man with the Scotch said consolingly, “I tell you, Frank, we’ve tried everywhere. Twenty rejection letters. Nobody understands what you’re trying to do. And sci-fi novels can’t be more than sixty thousand words long. Nobody will read something as massive as what you’ve written—four hundred pages!”
“But this novel is my masterpiece, Lurton. Do you know how many years I’ve worked on it?”
“Nobody said it isn’t impressive, Frank.” Lurton sipped his Scotch again. “In fact, you’re a genius. Even I don’t understand half of what you put in that book, all those strange words. One editor said that nobody could read through the first hundred pages without getting confused and annoyed.”
“James Joyce probably had the same problems with Finnegans Wake,” the bearded man grumbled. “I absolutely believe people will read an imaginative and thought-provoking book, if anybody has the guts to publish it.”
“Remember your audience, Frank. There are few enough readers for sci-fi as it is, and most of them are twelve- to fifteen-year-old boys.”
“That’s why Paul Atreides is a fifteen-year-old boy.” Frank was clearly starting to get angry.
“But a desert planet with giant sandworms and some sort of addictive drug? Drugs, Frank? And what is all this religious guff? Give us bug-eyed monsters and scantily clad women. Your female character doesn’t even scream when she sees a sandworm! Nobody’ll believe that.”
“I believe in this book, Lurton. Bev believes in it, too, and if you can’t support what I want to do, then you don’t have any business being my agent.”
It was time for Jimmy to barge in before things got out of hand. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Are you by any chance Frank Herbert, the author?”
The bearded man looked surprised. “You’ve heard of me?”
“Certainly! I loved your first novel, The Dragon in the Sea. I certainly hope you’re working on something new. It’s been quite some time.”
“And I have quite a novel . . . but no publ
isher.” His large beard swallowed up his downturned lips.
“We’ve exhausted all the possibilities,” Lurton said—Lurton Blasingame, the agent. “As I was just explaining to my client, every possible publisher has turned down the manuscript. It’s time to move on.”
Jimmy swung his sample case up onto the bar. “Could I offer an idea? I’m an auto parts salesman. Have you heard of Chilton Books? They print auto-repair manuals, the best in the business. You could send Mr. Herbert’s manuscript there.”
Lurton finished his Scotch. “It would be nonsense to send a huge sci-fi novel to a publisher of auto-repair manuals. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.”
Jimmy pressed the issue. “Wait a minute, it may not be such a strange possibility. At our recent conference, the Chilton editor, Sterling Lanier, told me he’s a science fiction fan. He said that he wanted to publish something unusual, and not just the same old manuals.”
Frank Herbert had a gleam in his eyes. “Why not give it a try, Lurton? Maybe we could change the title to How to Repair Your Ornithopter.”
“You realize, Frank, this is the longest of long shots.”
“Maybe this man Lanier won’t be constrained by the rigid thinking of his fiction house peers,” Frank said. “Maybe he can market it to an audience other than twelve-year-old boys. I’m sure it’ll be a big seller.”
Lurton remained skeptical. “All right, but I warn you, Frank, this is the last time. If Chilton Books doesn’t go for it, I don’t think Dune World will ever be published.”
Frank extended his hand to shake Jimmy’s. “I appreciate the thought, mister. Could we buy you a drink?”
Jimmy desperately wanted to stay, but he shook his head. “I’m very sorry. I don’t have the time.”
Attendance at the 1968 World Science Fiction Convention was abysmally low, the smallest turnout yet for one of the annual gatherings. Originally scheduled for the posh Claremont Hotel in Oakland, California, the venue had been changed to the Rodeo Motel in downtown Emeryville. In Jimmy’s timeline, this would be the last such gathering before fandom collapsed as an organized entity. In his day there were no longer any science fiction conventions at all.
