The Avram Davidson Treasury

by Avram Davidson

  Gavrillo’s eyes fell to his hand. He picked up the coin, and an odd look came at once over his face. The dreamy, undecided expression vanished immediately. His eyelids became slits, his lips turned down in an ugly fashion, something like a sneer.

  After a moment the old man said, “You have made up your mind?”

  “Yes,” Gavrillo said. “I have made up my mind.” …

  There was only an old woman before him at the ticket window. He had crossed the river just a few minutes before. The contents of his small suitcase had not engaged the attention of the customs officials for long; and from there it was only a short walk to the railroad station.

  The old woman went away, and Gavrillo stepped up to the window. On the wall of the tiny office, facing him, were two framed photographs, side by side. The likeness of the older man was the same one that had been on the coin which had caught Old Stevan’s attention; but Gavrillo knew the younger man’s face, too—knew it very well, indeed. Once again the odd, ugly, strangely determined expression crossed his face.

  The station agent looked up. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Where to?”

  “One ticket, one way.” Gavrillo kept looking at the faces in the photographs.

  “Very well, sir, a one-way ticket—but where to? Trieste, Vienna?” He was a self-important little man, and his tone grew a trifle sarcastic. “Paris? Berlin? St. Petersburg?”

  Slowly Gavrillo’s eyes left the picture. He did not seem to have noticed the sarcasm.

  “No,” he said. “Just to Sarajevo.”

  Sacheverell

  INTRODUCTION BY SPIDER ROBINSON

  I discovered Avram Davidson the summer I invented masturbation.

  (That’s right: I invented masturbation. It was 1963; I must ask you to take my word that absolutely the only hints offered to even inquisitive Catholic teenagers in that era were that a behavior called “touching oneself impurely” existed and that those who practiced it were both depraved and doomed. Armed solely with these clues, I intuited the region of the body that must be involved, constructed experiments, and in due time invented the wheel. What matter if I was not the first? Elisha Gray’s invention of the telephone is no less admirable merely because A. G. Bell beat him to the Patent Office by twenty-four hours. I was quite proud of my invention, and all my memories of the summer of 1963 are [vividly] colored by it.)

  A week later, in fact, when I brought home the Ace paperback edition of The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: 14th Series and read its first story—“Sacheverell”—I was feeling so (I won’t even pretend to apologize for this one) cocky that for a glorious moment or two I actually believed I had invented Avram, too. Like the stoned character in John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar, gaping at the TV news and saying, “Christ, what an imagination I’ve got!” I had the solipsistic sensation that I had somehow caused Avram to appear in the Universe, out of an artistic necessity. Please, laugh with me at this youthful arrogance of mine, that I thought I bad the power to invent an Avram Davidson. Even God only managed that once.

  Fortunately, it was not necessary to invent him, only to discover him. And then to bicycle to the public library, ask why there were no Davidson titles on the shelves, and correct that condition. (I was vaguely aware that there were magazines that published sf, but they weren’t offered for sale anywhere within bike range of my house.)

  That particular anthology was truly excellent—I mean, it included Zelazny’s “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” alright? Yet to this day, the story that lingers longest and deepest in my mind from that book is the first one: “Sacheverell.” The second thing I asked the librarian was to order anything she could get with “Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction” in the title, and in time I hunted down all the worthy predecessors of and successors to that volume…but out of all that excellent sf, it’s “Sacheverell” I can still quote large portions of from memory.

  I marveled at it, at the time. I had just reached the age at which I was beginning to see how writers worked at least some of their magic, to spot a few of the more common professional tricks—but “Sacheverell” defeated me. I understood why my mother liked it, when I showed it to her—but I couldn’t quite figure out why I found it so memorable. I tried, that summer, to understand the source of the story’s power, to explain to myself its impact on me…with such poor success that I’m still at it thirty-three years later, sitting here typing this. Avram worked that trick often: effortlessly pushed buttons nobody else has been able to locate. A very hard writer to reverse-engineer…and therefore an immortal.

  Here’s my current best take on the source of “Sacheverell” ’s intense, layered emotional impact: maybe Avram captured, in an absolute minimum of words, what it is like to be a youth bright enough to read science fiction for pleasure.

  Even masturbation doesn’t help…enough. You need friends.

  SACHEVERELL

  THE FRONT WINDOWS OF the room were boarded up, and inside it was dark and cold and smelled very bad. There was a stained mattress on which a man wrapped in a blanket lay snoring, a chair with no back, a table which held the remains of a bag of hamburgers, several punched beer cans, and a penny candle which cast shadows all around.

  There was a scuffling sound in the shadows, then a tiny rattling chattering noise, then a thin and tiny voice said, tentatively, “You must be very cold, George …” No reply. “Because I know I’m very cold …” the voice faded out. After a moment it said, “He’s still asleep. A man needs his rest. It’s very hard …” The voice seemed to be listening for something, seemed not to hear it; after an instant, in a different tone, said, “All right.”

  “Hmm?” it asked the silence. The chattering broke out again for just a second, then the voice said, “Good afternoon, Princess. Good afternoon, Madame. And General—how very nice to see you. I wish to invite you to a tea-party. We will use the best set of doll dishes and if anyone wishes to partake of something stronger, I believe the Professor—” the voice faltered, continued, “—has a drop of the oh-be-joyful in a bottle on the sideboard. And now pray take seats.”

  The wind sounded outside; when it died away, leaving the candleflame dancing, there was a humming noise which rose and fell like a moan, then ended abruptly on a sort of click. The voice resumed, wavering at first, “Coko and Moko? No—I’m very sorry, I really can’t invite them, they’re very stupid, they don’t know how to behave and they can’t even talk …”

  The man on the stained mattress woke in a convulsive movement that brought him sitting up with a cry. He threw his head to the right and left and grimaced and struck at the air.

  “Did you have a bad dream, George?” the voice asked, uncertainly.

  George said, “Uhn!” thrusting at his eyes with the cushions of his palms. He dropped his hands, cleared his throat and spat, thickly. Then he reached out and grabbed the slack of a chain lying on the floor, one end fastened to a tableleg, and began to pull it in. The chain resisted, he tugged, something fell and squeaked, and George, continuing to pull, hauled in his prize and seized it.

  “Sacheverell—”

  “I hope you didn’t have a bad dream, George—”

  “Sacheverell—was anybody here? You lie to me and—”

  “No, George, honest! Nobody was here, George!”

  “You lie to me and I’ll kill you!”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you, George. I know it’s wicked to lie.”

  George glared at him out of his reddened eyes, took a firmer grip with both hands, and squeezed. Sacheverell cried out, thrust his face at George’s wrist. His teeth clicked on air, George released him, abruptly, and he scuttled away. George smeared at his trouser-leg with his sleeve, made a noise of disgust. “Look what you done, you filthy little ape!” he shouted.

  Sacheverell whimpered in the shadows. “I can’t help it, George. I haven’t got any sphincter muscle, and you scared me, you hurt me …”

  George groaned, huddled in under his blanket. “A million dollars on the end of this ch
ain,” he said; “and Om living in this hole, here. Like a wino, like a smokey, like a bum!” He struck the floor with his fist. “It don’t make sense!” he cried, shifting around till he was on all fours, then pushing himself erect. Wrapping the blanket around his shoulders, he shambled quickly to the door, checked the bolt, then examined in turn the boarded-up front windows and the catch on the barred and frost-rimmed back window. Then he did something in a corner, cursing and sighing.

  Under the table Sacheverell tugged on his chain ineffectually. “I don’t like it here, George,” he said. “It’s cold and it’s dirty and I’m dirty and cold, too, and I’m hungry. It’s all dark here and nobody ever comes here and I don’t like it, George, I don’t like it here one bit. I wish I was back with the Professor again. I was very happy then. The Professor was nice to me and so was the Princess and Madame Opal and the General. They were the only ones in on the secret, until you found out.”

  George swung around and looked at him. One eye sparked in the candlelight.

  “We used to have tea-parties and Madame Opal always brought chocolates when she came, even when she came alone, and she read love stories to me out of a magazine book with pictures and they were all true. Why can’t I be back with the Professor again?”

  George swallowed, and opened his mouth with a little smacking sound. “Professor Whitman died of a heart-attack,” he said.

  Sacheverell looked at him, head cocked. “An attack …”

  “So he’s dead! So forget about him!” the words tore out of the man’s mouth. He padded across the room. Sacheverell retreated to the end of his chain.

  “I don’t know what the hell Om gunna do… In a few weeks now, they’ll tear this rotten building down. Maybe,” he said, slyly, putting his foot down on the chain, “I’ll sell you to a zoo. Where you belong.” He bent, grunting, and picked up the chain.

  Sacheverell’s teeth began to chatter. “I don’t!” he shrilled. “I don’t belong in a zoo! The little people they have there are stupid—they don’t know how to behave, and they can’t even talk!”

  George closed one eye, nodded; slowly, very slowly, drew in the chain. “Come on,” he said. “Level with me. Professor Whitman had a nice little act, there. How come he quit and took off and came here?” Slowly he drew in the chain. Sacheverell trembled, but did not resist.

  “We were going to go to a laboratory in a college,” he said. “He told me. It was a waste to keep me doing silly tricks with Coko and Moko, when I was so smart. He should have done it before, he said.”

  George’s mouth turned up on one side, creasing the stubble. “Naa, Sacheverell,” he said. “That don’t make sense. You know what they do to monkeys in them labs? They cut ‘em up. That’s all. I know. I went to one and I asked. They pay about fifteen bucks and then they cut ’em up.” He made a scissors out of his fingers and went k’khkhkhkh… Sacheverell shuddered. George set his foot on the chain again and took hold of him by the neck. He poked him in the stomach with his finger, stiff. It had grown colder, the man’s breath shown misty in the tainted air. He poked again. Sacheverell made a sick noise, struggled. “Come on,” George said. “Level with me. There’s a million dollars inside of you, you dirty little ape. There’s gotta be. Only I don’t know how. So you tell me.”

  Sacheverell whimpered. “I don’t know, George. I don’t know.”

  The man scowled, then grinned slyly. “That’s what you say. I’m not so sure. You think I don’t know that if They found out, They’d take you away from me? Sure. A million bucks…how come I’m being followed, if They don’t know? First a guy with a beard, then a kid in a red snow-suit. I seen them together. Listen, you frigging little jocko, you better think, I’m telling you—you better think hard!” He poked again with his stiff and dirty finger. And again. “I always knew, see, I always knew that there was a million bucks waiting for me somewhere, if I only kept my eyes open. What the hell is a guy like me doing unloading crates in the fruit market, when I got plans for a million? And then—” His voice sank and his eyes narrowed. “—this Professor Whitman come along and put up at the Eagle Hotel. I caught his act in the sticks once, I been around. First I thought he was practicing ventriloquism, then I found out about you—you was the other voice in his room! And that’s when I—”

  Abruptly he stopped. The outside door opened with a rusty squeal and footfalls sounded in the hall. Someone knocked. Someone tried the knob. Someone said, “Sacheverell? Sacheverell?” and George clamped his hairy, filthy hand over the captive’s mouth. Sacheverell jerked and twitched and rolled his eyes. The voice made a disappointed noise, the footfalls moved uncertainly, started to retreat. And then Sacheverell kicked out at George’s crotch. The man grunted, cursed, lost his grip—

  “Help!” Sacheverell cried. “Help! Help! Save me!”

  Fists beat on the door, the glass in the back window crashed and fell to the floor, a wizened old-man’s face peered through the opening, withdrew. George ran to the door, then turned to chase Sacheverell, who fled, shrieking hysterically. A tiny figure in a red snow-suit squeezed through the bars of the back window and ran to pull the bolt on the door. Someone in boots and a plaid jacket and a woolen watch-cap burst in, melting snow glittering on a big black beard.

  “Save me!” Sacheverell screamed, dashing from side to side. “He attacked Professor Whitman and knocked him down and he didn’t get up again—”

  George stooped, picking up the chair, but the red snow-suit got between his legs and he stumbled. The chair was jerked from his hands, he came up with his fists clenched and the bearded person struck down with the chair. It caught him across the bridge of the nose with a crunching noise, he fell, turned over, stayed down. Silence.

  Sacheverell hiccupped. Then he said, “Why are you wearing men’s clothing, Princess Zaga?”

  “A bearded man attracts quite enough attention, thank you,” the Princess said, disengaging the chain. “No need to advertise… Let’s get out of here.” She picked him up and the three of them went out into the black, deserted street, boarded-shut windows staring blindly. The snow fell thickly, drifting into the ravaged hall and into the room where George’s blood, in a small pool, had already begun to freeze.

  “There’s our car, Sacheverell,” said the man in the red snow-suit, thrusting a cigar into his child-size, jaded old face. “What a time—”

  “I assume you are still with the carnival, General Pinkey?”

  “No, kiddy. The new owners wouldn’t reckernize the union, so we quit and retired on Social Security in Sarasota. You’ll like it there. Not that the unions are much better, mind you: Bismarkian devices to dissuade the working classes from industrial government on a truly Marxian, Socialist-Labor basis. We got a television set, kiddy.”

  “And look who’s waiting for you—” Princess Zaga opened the station wagon and handed Sacheverell inside. There, in the back seat, was the hugest, the vastest, the fattest woman in the world.

  “Princess Opal!” Sacheverell cried, leaping into her arms—and was buried in the wide expanse of her bosom and bathed in her warm Gothick tears. She called him her Precious and her Little Boy and her very own Peter Pan.

  “It was Madame Opal who planned this all,” Princess Zaga remarked, starting the car and driving off. General Pinkey lit his cigar and opened a copy of The Weekly People.

  “Yes, I did, yes, I did,” Mme. Opal murmured, kissing and hugging Sacheverell. “Oh, how neglected you are! Oh, how thin! We’ll have a tea-party, just like we used to, the very best doll dishes; we’ll see you eat nice and we’ll wash you and comb you and put ribbons around your neck.”

  Sacheverell began to weep. “Oh, it was awful with George,” he said.

  “Never mind, never mind, he didn’t know any better,” Mme. Opal said, soothingly.

  “The hell he didn’t!” snapped Princess Zaga.

  “Predatory capitalism,” General Pinkey began.

  “Never mind, never mind, forget about it, darling, it was only a bad dream �
�”

  Sacheverell dried his tears on Mme. Opal’s enormous spangled-velvet bosom. “George was very mean to me,” he said. “He treated me very mean. But worst of all, you know, Madame Opal, he lied to me—he lied to me all the time, and I almost believed him—that was the most horrible part of all: I almost believed that I was a monkey.”

  The House the Blakeneys Built

  INTRODUCTION BY URSULA K. LE GUIN

  Science fiction often paints a hopeful history of colonists and castaways on far planets. They not only survive, they thrive in their isolation; they keep all their skills, they remember how to operate the sawmill, how to program the computer, how to maintain liberty and justice for all. And when the Federation finds them after five hundred years, they talk just the way the Feds talk.

  Avram didn’t share the rationalist’s faith that reason, once established, will prevail. I doubt he believed that reason had ever been established anywhere for more than about five minutes. In the incredibly fertile darkness of his imagination, rational behavior is the gleam of a flashlight for a moment in a midnight thunderstorm in a tropical forest.

  The Blakeneys could well be a Heinlein survivalist scenario five centuries later, the offspring of a couple of masterful polygamist studs, the children of Reason.

  This profoundly disturbing story comes on as light as a meringue. Avram’s ear for weird ways of talking was wonderful, and his Blakeneys are very funny, mumbling on and going “Rower, rower.” It’s hard not to start talking like them, funnyfunny, a hey. But Avram’s ear was also for the precise meanings of words; he wrote with a very rare accuracy of usage. Late in the story we realize that the Blakeneys have no plural for the word house. “Houses?”—“No such word, hey.” And the whole story lies in that reply.