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

by Edited By Judith Merril

  He jumped.

  “That’s a heck of a thing to say, . . .” he began.

  “Not me,” she said, her voice rising. She pointed, and said, “him!”

  He turned, and looked over his shoulder, and then roared, “Mr. Christian, come here!”

  Mr. Christian, age two years and six months, scrambled to his feet, and stood carefully in front of the scribbles on the wall. He smiled engagingly.

  “Well, Sir? Explain yourself.”

  The boy recognized the tone that meant, “I’ll fix it later, Brat, but right now you better show your mother that you’re sorry!” and he launched himself into a complicated explanation in which only about one word in three was decipherable. The general drift appeared to be that it wasn’t really his fault, it was two other little boys that did it, and anyway, he was sorry, and was he gonna get a s’ankin’?

  “Don’t tempt me,” his father growled. “Isn’t it time for him to go to bed?”

  “Past time.”

  “I thought so. All right, Microwatt. Go to bed. Go directly to bed. Do not pass Go. Do not collect Two Hundred Dollars.”

  “No!” said Mr. Christian.

  His father put down his paper.

  “I no s’eepy!” said Mr. Christian, and he retreated a step.

  His father stood up.

  “I hungee!” wailed Mr. Christian, his voice rising, and he trotted to the hallway.

  His father glowered at him, and took a step in his direction.

  The boy howled miserably, and tried the ultimate delaying tactic.

  “I gotta go potty!”

  “No you don’t,” his mother said positively. “You go right to bed.”

  Mr. Christian’s bright little face vanished from the hall doorway like a blown-out candle. They heard him giggle as he shuffled his sleeper slippers down the hall.

  “Really, darling. You’ve got to be firm with that little stinker. He plays you like his wind-up teddy bear.”

  “I am firm. You saw the way he took off for bed?”

  “After I yelled at him.”

  “He was going anyway,” the father said, as he settled down and picked up his paper. “Now, please tell me what The Morrison said.”

  Then little Chris, elaborately casual, trotted back into the living room. His father’s eyebrows rose as he watched the boy sit down by his toys, obviously prepared for a long, happy stay.

  He cleared his throat, and with exaggerated patience, asked, “And, uh, what, pray tell, are you doing back in here?”

  “I no s’eep.”

  “That’s true,” his father mused.

  “An’ no light my room.”

  “Ah.”

  “An’ a mon’ser my bed, Daddy.”

  “A monster in your bed? Oh, dear me.”

  Christian nodded absently. He was busy with his toys.

  “All right, Private. On your feet. Let’s go. Hup! Two, three, four! Move! I’ll go fight off your monster, and turn on the nightlight. Come on, O pestiferous One.”

  The boy got up dutifully, kissed his mother good-night and followed his father down the hall into his room.

  “See, Daddy? Dark!”

  “So it is, o’l buddy. I’ll just turn on the lamp, like this, and then you’ll see that there ain’t no Mon . . . yke!”

  “See, Daddy? Mon’ser!”

  And a monster there was. A reeking, wobbling, flaccid horror that grinned, toothily, and gibbering like a madwoman, eased itself from under the bolster, and scrabbled awkwardly across the bed toward him. Christian’s mother looked up from her sewing as her husband stepped stiffly back into the living room.

  “The brat in bed?” she asked.

  He nodded, jerkily.

  “There was a monster in his bed.”

  “What?”

  “A great, ugly, black thing.”

  “Now really, darling. You’re as bad as that boy.”

  “No, dammit! It was there!”

  She tapped her teeth with a fingernail, and looked reflective.

  “I guess he could be starting now. I was three when I started. A great big, soft-nosed pony, Mother said. I guess he could be starting early for his age. Remember, he walked early, too.”

  “Horrible damn thing. What has that kid been watching on TV anyway?”

  “Just his regular kiddie programs in the morning,” she said.

  “I wish I would have taken my camera in there,” he said thoughtfully. “Old Houseman, and his five-year-old. He claims she can fly now. Wait ‘till he hears about this.”

  “And he always was a fast child. He was on table food a lot earlier than the other little ones on the block.” She carried on, with her thought uninterrupted. “And your mother, on her last visitation, said something about you starting early, too. Hung a huge fireball in the living room when your father’s boss came to call.”

  “Scorched his mustache, too,” he replied. He stepped to the wall, and inspected the scribbles his son had made. “Does dots, a long squiggle, and four curved lines have any particular significance to you?”

  “That child will never be a Michelangelo,” she sighed heavily. “Is he asleep now?”

  “Yeah. I put his ‘mon’ser’ away, and he was almost asleep when I left the room,” he answered, and frowned at the marks on the wall. They slowly faded.

  “You left a little bit, down there, in the corner,” his wife said.

  <>

  * * * *

  Communication—its importance, its modes, its failures, its variety of meanings—has been a major theme throughout this volume. Except for a literal handful of stories, every selection here is vitally concerned either with a problem resulting from inadequate communication—a puzzle involving some means of communication—the result of an experiment with communication—or the uses and usages of those areas of modern living which we call “Communications.”

  The last two selections have focused on the potentialities of man for immediate, direct contact with (and influence over) the physical environment. “The Red Egg” reverses the field, and examines the capacity for perception and (in a slightly different sense) communication by the (biological, this time) environment.

  José Maria Gironella is a Spanish author best known for his trilogy about the Spanish Civil War, The Cypresses Believe in God. This story is from a collection of short works, subtitled Journeys to the Improbable, in which the author recorded a period of what he called “psychic experience”—hallucinations, weird images and insights, obsessive imaginings, which haunted him for two years.

  * * * *

  THE RED EGG

  José Maria Gironella

  The malignant tumor, cancer, flew over the rooftops of the city. It had the shape of an egg. Its flight was slow and solemn. The birds noticed something strange in its proximity and moved away from it, coasting in silence. It was a young cancer, red in color, with bluish bands. It was three years old. It had been born in an experimental laboratory, in the skin of a mouse, near a pit-coal mine. Its destiny—to die with the mouse—had seemed a small glory and it had decided to escape. This it did, breaking away and flying off through a window. Scarcely free, it soaked up the mine’s atmosphere and then allowed itself to be touched by the ultraviolet rays of sunlight. It noticed itself becoming more robust, thriving. It went on molding itself with art, changing position in relation to those rays, until it attained an oval form. Its highest aspiration was to be like an egg, since this would guarantee its fecundity. Once it reached its objective, it gave itself over to the whims of the wind, up and down, seeing landscapes it would never have known in the laboratory. Until it came upon the industrial city.

  The Red Egg, three years old, gifted with one large and sensitive eye, understood that the city held in its breast all that appealed to him—paraffin, smoke, etc.—and he breathed with satisfaction. At each inhalation, a band of quills or antennae erupted around his belly, which then contracted when he exhaled. He looked at the cathedral clock: two minutes be
fore noon. Vaguely he remembered that, in the laboratory where he was captive, every morning on the stroke of twelve a bell rang, and first a nurse entered, bringing them food, and immediately afterward came men dressed in white, protected by lead aprons.

  Midday in the city was even more spectacular. The sirens of all the factories shrilled, and instantly the streets were crowded. Men and women headed for their respective homes, where there were quick kisses all around and where the babies were lifted into the air like flags. The Red Egg smiled. In the laboratory he’d fled from, he had never heard speak of love.

  The passing parade of the city’s inhabitants permitted the cancer to take a look at the bodies, especially those that had passed the age of thirty-five. He immediately observed that his brothers, the tumors, had carried out an intensive labor. In fact, there were already a considerable number of people who carried cancer incrusted in some part of their organism, in the stomach, in the bladder, in the larynx, etc. Some of these people already moved without vigor, coughed repeatedly and had sharpened noses. Others were completely ignorant of the presence of the intruder and seated themselves at the table, unfolding their napkins with good humor. The magnitude of this labor, which had even reached children, and in one case a fetus!, did not surprise the Red Egg, since it was evident that in that city there were abundant accomplices, gestators or transmitters of cancer, such as tobacco tars, anthracite. . . . The Red Egg recognized accomplices of its malignancy even in the jars of beauty products and in the analines that colored certain foods.

  The Red Egg, three years old, understood that that city combined in its breast all that was appetizing to him. He could nourish himself indefinitely with the gas tank alone and he could add to that the extreme temperatures of the iron works, alcohol and neon tubes.

  Unhurriedly, he roved over the rooftops, asking himself, “Whom shall I attack?” Oh, yes, he must select a victim! The situation was a routine one for his race, but not for him. He breathed voluptuously. Which organism, he asked, would he choose from among so many thousands? Of course, it had to be a human organism, a man or a woman. He could not understand why many of his brothers preferred to adhere to trees, to mushrooms, to fish or to butterflies. And which part would he abide in? The skin and mouth were imprudent. With radio therapy or with a scalpel they could attack him in any surgery. The lungs offered more security and so did the digestive apparatus, whose remote cloisters, yet unknown, constituted a guarantee of impunity. And he must not forget the brain! The Red Egg philosophized in his fashion on the subject. Curious, yes, curious and flattering to be gnawing at the mind, at the faculty to speak and coordinate, to be eating metaphysics, to assassinate the noble potentialities of the being, little by little.

  Unexpectedly—the municipal clock pointed to one— something occurred that stunned the Red Egg: as though obedient to an imaginary baton, all the bells of the city began to ring, undoubtedly announcing a forthcoming festivity. The impact of the sound waves hit the cancer point blank, especially those of the cathedral bells that rolled at his side. The fact that these waves were gay and basically contrary to death gave him indescribable anguish. The circle of quills and antennae sprang out round his belly with fulminating aggressiveness but it did not cure him of the nausea he felt. Irritated, he leapt away with decision, toward the west, where it was clear, where there were no steeples. There he recovered. He saw two women hanging out clothes on a roof top. One of them had a carcinoma on one knee! In spite of which she laughed and gestured as though she were eternal. Suddenly, on the outskirts of the city, beyond the ball field, an immense sea of crosses and tombs surged before his green eye. This sight brought back his self-confidence, confidence in his power. A cemetery! It was the first time he had had direct contact with one. In his three years of life he had only seen two cadavers, both of them white mice. It was obvious that many drops in that sea of crosses were due to the action of his brothers. The graveyard constituted, then, a victorious summary, a living testimony of the power and inheritance of his stock.

  * * * *

  Certain people in the city discovered that strange presence over their roofs. So strange was it that “a slow oval object” should be seen floating on its own between the steeples, that terror overtook each of these observers, although for the moment none of them dared communicate the news to anyone else. They tried to ascertain if the phenomenon was real, provable. The binoculars sealed their doubts! A red and oval object, gliding smoothly, like certain birds. Occasionally turning upon itself.

  The first warning came from the Air Base. Nothing registered on the radar, but the observer on watch, a veteran of the war, discovered the Red Egg. At the same instant that he was focusing his fieldglasses to make sure it was not an hallucination, an old paralytic at the other end of the city, who spent his semi-death close to a balcony, looked up on high and exclaimed to himself, “What’s that?” Whereupon he insisted on binoculars, and a granddaughter obtained them from a nearby store. “A red and oval egg, with something in the middle, resembling an eye!” The paralytic alerted his kin. A group was formed that would go on growing. And the same occurred with the watchman of a factory, installed in his high wooden sentry-box. And with a talkative storyteller, who went up to the roof to feed his pigeons, as usual.

  The band of musicians that was to gather in the square to announce with clash and clatter the following day’s festivities, disintegrated. Within an hour the news had run from mouth to mouth. Like a lever, it made heads lean back to scan the skies. And there was a diversity of opinions, There were many who attempted, without success, to spot the cancer. “It must have been a piece of paper!” they exclaimed, incredulous. “It must have been a witch!” But, suddenly, someone would shout, “There it is!” And many forefingers became arrows. There was the greatest number of eyewitnesses at a few minutes past one, that is, when the cancer became dizzy and went off through space toward the west, crossing through various clean and clear areas.

  At two o’clock sharp, all the observation posts were taken, and the diagnosis was positive and unanimous. The Red Egg, the mysterious presence, was a fact. When a photographer appeared with a plate on which the silhouette of the tumor could be seen clearly contrasted over the gas tank, the news was considered official, and a superstitious panic completely took hold of the populace.

  The authorities met in the hurry of hysteria, but they could not prevent the tumultuous mobilization of the population’s reflexes, they could not prevent the men who used blowers at their work from looking at these instruments with the same fearful and impatient perplexity with which firemen look at their long metal stepladders. All the conjectures agreed on one point: there was something about the Red Egg, in its appearance, that was repugnant to the depths of a human being, and it was evident that, in spite of its smallness and its being called “a ball” or “a top” by the children, it represented a threat of unpredictable magnitude. Of course, no one thought of an object from another planet, and only a pair of cloistered nuns alluded to the devil; it was generally believed to be a complex robot, with electric and fulminating bowels, or a beast. An unknown animal, freed from some remote sleep. The bad thing was that its manner of moving about was reminiscent of beings endowed with free will.

  The tumor soon noticed that the city had spotted him. But he didn’t care. Man was so limited, the sun had only to hide to blind him. And since the bells had been silenced, what stillness their muteness created! Almost insolently, he turned several cartwheels in the air, coming to rest at last by the lightning rod of an official building.

  At that moment, two chemists in a canning factory who had been examining some photographic plates, insinuated a diagnosis: there was a possibility that the Red Egg was fleshy, that it contained flesh mitter. Upon hearing this suggestion, made with great timidity, an illustrious neighbor of the city, the gravedigger, had a sudden illumination. While the authorities continued their meeting without daring to take any measures, the gravedigger looked up and clenching his fists shou
ted, “It’s a cancer!” With the help of binoculars he looked up again and repeated, more firmly this time, “It’s a cancer!”

  The impressive word ran through the streets and crossed bridges with as many feet as it had letters, or like an escaping stream of blood. “It’s a cancer!” Ah, no one knew those “quills” or “antennae” like the gravedigger! His own wife had been a victim of those quills and now lay in the cemetery, converted into one of those drops in that sea of crosses, fifty yards away from where her bedroom had once been. “The doctors!” demanded the gravedigger. “The doctors should act!”

  The first reaction was a collective paralysis. Immobility. After that, fantastic ideas crossed men’s minds: to bury oneself in stone and mortar or, even better, to flee. But a cancer must run faster than an idea and must filter through walls without effort. And guns? And airplanes? And fumigating machines?