The Year's Best Science Fiction 10 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  Artificial lighting, both exterior and interior, has been discontinued for reasons of esthetics and morale—early to bed and early to rise! Rumor to the contrary, this wise economy is in no way connected with the fact that robots have no need of light in the visible octave, since they see by their own radar.

  Nor do the thick gray fogs result in any way from robot resentment of the faculty of vision in flesh-and-blood creatures. Do not believe any libels you hear to that effect! As well see evil intent in the melting down of ships, bridges, guns and farm equipment for their metal, or in the burning of forests for their valuable ash. No, the Coal Soupers, as I sometimes call them, are merely a healing, soothing, rust-inhibiting oil—noninjurious in small quantities to humans—which the robots find increasingly necessary to their comfortable operation. (But I advise sealing your windows against the fogs. To each his taste.)

  You ask, “Should I lock my door at night?” I answer Yes, to feel more secure, and No, to avoid door-breakage. Compromise by locking your bedroom door.

  As for your urge to laugh and babble wildly, I want you to know it is shared—as this letter perhaps makes apparent from time to time.

  But as for your deepest fear, dear Senior Citizen, I can assure you that God indeed exists—here and now on this planet! I have watched His brain rise story by story to the clouds. He is Warm—fans enough to air-condition a tropical city are required to cool him! And He is Personal —His sensors and effectors extend everywhere—They are the fairy ivy you have noticed creeping into your home. Be not afraid!

  Cordially,

  Josh B. Smiley, Director-in-Chief

  * * * *

  Accidentally affixed by an errant drop of metal glue to the bottom of the last aluminum sheet, was the envelope of Miss Fennerghast’s letter to the Bureau. Scribbled in slack spidery characters below her return address was this note:

  “Dear Minnie, I’m going to put on my gas mask and go out on the sky-deck and watch the gray fog roll. Turn things over to Binnie or Tinnie and then, if you please, put on your foam-rubber gloves and come along and hold my hand. But first, send this indestructible old girl our End-of-the-World Letter.”

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  * * * *

  Frankly, the Great Evolution Upset has made me nervous, and I hesitate to say, in print, anything so problematic as “scientific opinion is . . .” or “biologists agree . . .” Chances are by now the biologists are in radical disagreement, but the last time I noticed, most of them seemed to think that what killed the dodo and the dinosaur—what causes the devolution of any species—is overspecialization.

  It is an appealing concept—if only because it is a concept, and provides at last something like an informative synonym for “decadence.” (Perhaps even closer is Theodore Sturgeon’s definition of “perversion”: anything you do to the exclusion of everything else.)

  Art, music, literature, then, become decadent when they lose contact with the living body of work, by overspecializing to an extreme degree. Is this, perhaps, the basis for our subjective evaluation? When the emphasis on any one value or set of values (in the arts, the scientific disciplines, public morality, or anything else) becomes so intense as to lose contact with the frame of reference provided by other values customary to the form, we react immediately with, “Decadence!”

  (And of course, in any highly experimental or path-breaking effort, the connection with the frame of reference may be so tenuous, or so subtle—but still so significant—that only another adept in the same discipline will recognize it—thus providing the frequent distinction between critical and popular success.)

  If this is a true measuring stick, it should be applicable to all areas of human behavior: not only to the comparatively well-understood rules of the “disciplines” (in art, science, etiquette, communications, for instance), but to those “games” we are least conscious of “playing,” and which evoke the greatest emotional stress—nation, family, religion, property rights, for example; or the even deeper-rooted codes and moralities related to those “inalienable” rights—life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.

  * * * *

  IT COULD BE YOU

  Frank Roberts

  Erl Kramer awoke from a bad dream which had twin origins in too much Instant Vigor late at night and a World War II movie on television. In the film he had seen people killed in the mass in the most gruesome ways, and with his and millions of other families he had thanked Heaven it was history, and from a barbarous age.

  Lying in bed half-awake, Kramer wondered how the present times would look to the viewers of future years, when perhaps all atavistic elements had been drained from the race.

  “Hey, what time is it?” he asked his wife.

  “Nearly seven. Better switch on.”

  He did, and there was the usual picture of Hip Jones sprawled on his desk, sleeping to soft music. The music quickened, and Mr Invig appeared on the screen, with his usual leer at Hip Jones, and the world. “What a night he must have had,” Mr Invig said. “What a night you must have had! Never mind, what a lovely day it’s going to be in a few moments, thanks to Instant Vigor. Got your tablets ready?”

  He put one yellow tablet into Hip Jones’s mouth while four bubble dancers crossed in front singing the Invig song. The instant he’d swallowed, Hip Jones sprang up and looked a hundred years younger.

  “Are you with me?” he called brightly. “All together then, swallow!”

  Erl Kramer and Melanie popped the tablets in their mouths, and took the surge lying down. That was when Hip Jones on the screen cried, “Well, who’s it going to be today, good people?” Then, as one of the outside cameras zoomed through a bedroom window and caught a man yawning, Hip’s voice called, “It could be you, Mr Joe Barratt of King Vale! But don’t worry, it isn’t. We were just seeing if you were awake.”

  “Will you look at the look on the poor boob’s face?” said Erl, laughing with everyone else at Joe Barratt of King Vale.

  “Well, how would you feel?” Melanie said. “It can be anyone, anywhere, any time. I think I’d drop dead with sheer fright if they sprang a camera at me.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Erl said grimly, and Melanie reached out and gripped his arm, and they stared at one another a second while Hip Jones shouted, “This is the Invig Show, a day-long adventure brought to you by the Invig Corporation, your hosts for that loving-to-be-alive kind of living.”

  Then the camera showed a door, and tracked along a passage, and Hip Jones’s voice asked, “Who’s it gonna be?” And then as he said “It could be you ...” they pulled the switch on him and took the cameras into the studio and focused on Hip Jones, who yelled in not altogether mock surprise, “Mr Hip Jones, care of the Invig Corporation. Hey fellers, that’s me!”

  Melanie and Erl laughed with the other million viewers, and Hip cried, “Oh no, not old Hip. All you lovely people out there, you wouldn’t want that, would you? They’re only kidding—I think.”

  “He doesn’t sound too sure,” Erl said, laughing. “Wouldn’t it be a joke if it did turn out to be him some time? If his rating fell, for instance.”

  “Here we go again,” Hip cried. “It could be you, Mrs Zella Ignacio of Moonstone. But it isn’t. No, I’ve been authorized to say it’s a man today. That makes the odds 987,000 to one for you men, or something even more astronomical.”

  “They had a woman yesterday,” Melanie said.

  “Did you watch?”

  “You know I never do. Only until they give the name, and I’m sure it isn’t you, or someone I know.”

  She had breakfast ready when he came out dressed for work. And Hip Jones on the morning-room screen cried, “It could be you, Mr Logan Ross of Satin Plains,” The cameras zoomed to a middle-aged man alighting from an inter-urban Hovercraft. He stopped in midstride and almost fell over. Hip Jones said, “Remember, the prize all this week is £100,000. Is it Mr Ross, now? Is it? No,” he said, “it isn’t, because the man today never wears a hat. Of course, he might go out and buy
one as soon as the stores open. We can’t stop him doing that, can we?”

  Erl already had taken his I.C.B.Y. book of statistics from his pocket, and Melanie looked over his shoulder. “Three hundred and thirteen thousand men usually hatless,” he reported, and Melanie said, “Will Central Stores ever sell a few hats this morning!”

  Erl laughed and said, “I’m glad I’m not in hats. I haven’t got over the rush to get rid of grey suits last week. We sent over 3000 to the dumps, and all the other stores likewise. Hey, remember the time it was a cat-lover, and they all threw their cats out into the streets?”

  Melanie remembered.

  “You’ve got to hand it to them,” Erl said. “I.C.B.Y. shifts goods. It must have been a genius who started the show even in its original form, way back there. And I’d better get to work.” He tested his portable, kissed Melanie good-bye, and hurried to the transit station. He was not alone. There were plenty of hatless men on the station and more in the car when it arrived.

  He listened to the Invig News and the World Hit Parade on the way in, leaving the video off so that he could read yesterday’s main story in the morning papers. The next I.C.B.Y. clue was due at nine o’clock, but sometimes they inserted one unexpectedly.

  Hip Jones was there, even larger than life, on the Central Stores screens when Erl arrived at work. Hip had just selected the winner of the daily Invig Holiday, a heavyweight woman who had won a trip to Spain, and a free course of Inslim.

  “There’s something happening all the time on the Invig Show,” Hip proclaimed. “And now for the next clue in our day-long adventure, ‘It Could Be You!’”

  At Central Stores the door has been opened, and hatless men were streaming into the store as Hip said, “ ‘It Could Be You’ with eyes of blue. And according to my little data book, that brings us down to 90,000 possibilities. That’s still a lot, but keep looking in.” By this time most of the hatless had turned and walked out of the store. They had brown eyes, or carried coloured lenses for eye-colour days.

  “Well, we’re part of the chosen band so far,” Erl said to his best friend Steve.

  “Are we? Yes, I suppose we are. I never take much notice, I’ve been in the last thousand or so, dozens of times.”

  “Lately? I didn’t think ...”

  “No, when I was in the Force. They had a long run on outdoor workers at one stage, and it was often a cop or a postie.”

  Hip cried, “It could be you, Mr Wu,” and on the screen was a Chinese shelling shrimp, and grinning at the cameras. “Mr Wu scents a blue,” Hip remarked. “A blue-eyed Chinaman? Well, hardly. No, we just threw him in for luck and he wasn’t a bit worried, was he? Lovely. Keep watching. More cluey coming up, chop chop.”

  “Aren’t there really any blue-eyed Chinese?” Erl asked, and Steve shook his head.

  Hip was handed a slip of paper, and cried, “He has black hair.” And the cameras roved a crowd and hovered over a bald head.

  “It certainly couldn’t be him,” Erl chuckled. Invig made everyone good humoured in the mornings. Both Erl and Steve had black hair.

  “Thirty-two thousand, now,” Steve read from the statistics. “I’ll split the prize with you.”

  “Oh, sure. Me too.” Erl could see three customers approaching. “I suppose you’ve worked out what you’d do with it.”

  “Many times,” Steve said. “And also if it was me.”

  Erl hadn’t. He’d never been among even the last 100,000 before. But now he had no time to think about it because suddenly there seemed to be a rush on suits. It was more than an hour before he and Steve could exchange a word again.

  “I missed a couple of the clues,” Erl said. “I got the early thirties one, and the business suit.”

  “You only missed one then, man. Sun-tanned complexion. They’re clever, the way they string it out. It’s still only down to 8000.”

  “And we’re still in,” Erl said. “But 8000 is a lot.”

  Steve shrugged. He was watching two women who were pretending to examine a suit special, but were covertly looking at Erl and him. It had started. “Yes, we’re still among the 8000,” Steve said, loud enough for them to hear. But quietly he said, “I have a damn feeling.”

  Erl walked over to the women and said to the nearest, “Can I help you, madam?”

  “We’re just looking,” the other one said. They wandered away, but did not leave the level.

  On the screen Mr Invig appeared again to see that Hip Jones and everyone else took their midday booster tablet. It made Hip hilarious, and after the bubble dancers had finished the Invig Song he produced a huge pin and threatened to burst their bubbles.

  Then Hip sobered up, and said, “Let’s see what’s going on outside. Ah yes, it could be you, Mr Darrell Darling, down in Dent Street.” The cameras zoomed to a man struggling with three youths while other people were running towards them. Darling was punching and kicking and shouting, “Let me alone.” One of the youths fell down.

  “Hey, there’s some excitement down in Dent Street,” Hip said coolly. “But it isn’t Mr Darling. No siree. He’s left-handed, and you’re looking for a right-handed man.”

  Darling must have heard it from a set near by, because he rushed at the youths and banged two of their heads together. Other people kicked and punched at them, and they turned and ran for their lives.

  “It doesn’t do to be impetuous,” Hip cried. “There’s some way to go yet. We’ve only narrowed the number down to 6803. But from here on, watch any man with black hair, blue eyes, early thirties, business suit, sun-tanned complexion, and—here comes another clue—he works right in the heart of the city. How about that?”

  Steve said, “Hey, that’s a big cut, down to 3200.”

  “Right in the city,” Hip cried, “and he’s worth maybe £100,000 to you or you or you. Oh, I can see you rushing in by the thousands, now—all you ladies from the suburbs. And I’ll tell you this. If you don’t get your man you will get value in the city. If you don’t win you’ll certainly save.”

  Erl said, “The city stores must have bought participation today. But the rush shouldn’t trouble us much. They won’t be buying suits.”

  And Steve growled, “They’ll buy anything, if they think he’s close. And I tell you, I’ve got a feeling.”

  Erl felt his spine prickle. Steve was a lot bigger and harder than he. Erl played it cool, shrugged and said, “The more we sell, the more bonus. I’m going to circulate. It’s no use hiding.”

  “See you,” Steve said, and almost put out his hand, but changed the direction and put it in his pocket and turned away.

  Those two women were moving back towards suits, and more people were arriving by escalator. In no time Erl was in the centre of a crowd, selling suits like hot cakes, with two men from other departments sent in to help him. But by the grapevine he learned it was the same in socks, shoes, underwear, and sports goods. People in the crowd had to rely on intuition, and many who looked at Erl rejected him and went to another department, or to other stores.

  There was a hush as the screens showed Hip Jones about to give another clue, and suddenly then Melanie slipped through the tight circle of bodies and reached Erl’s side.

  “We’re all in the city now,” Hip Jones cried. “And it could be you, Arthur Lonigan of Lonigan and Sons.” This was a killer, and the crowd shrieked with laughter. Even Erl laughed. The cameras had gone smashing through a window into an office where the boss was being held by his staff, ten people evidently willing to share the prize. Lonigan was shouting, “I’ll fire every last one of you.”

  And Hip cried, “You do that, Mr Lonigan, because it isn’t you. Our man today never wears glasses, and I see a pair on your desk.” There was an instant melee in Lonigan’s office, and the cameras dwelt on it just long enough for laughs and then cut away.

  “They were taking a silly risk, weren’t they?” Hip cried. “For we still have 2500 candidates, or so. There’s plenty of time. Hey, I’ve got something here, wouldn’t you
like to have?” And he showed the back of a photograph. “That’s right, I’ve got his picture here.”

  “Erl, I’m so afraid,” Melanie said.

  “You shouldn’t be here. Please go home. There’s nothing you could do.”

  “Steve’s still in it too, isn’t he?”

  He was most upset because she was there. “Steve’s used to it,” he said. “He’s been close before. Do go home.”

  “Make way for Insur!” a man called at the back of the crowd, and Erl saw the opportunity. “I won’t sign unless you go,” he said.

  “All right, dear, you know best.” Melanie stepped back and went into the parting the Insur man had made in the crowd, but she did not get far, although everyone was very nice. Some of the women patted her, and others took out their handkerchiefs and dabbed.