Sci Fiction Classics Volume 3

by Vol 3 (v1. 2) (epub)

  "What?"

  "You know things like that make me sick. I won't be able to eat for two days."

  "I was watching the program," he said.

  "You've seen that one twice before. What's the matter with you?"

  "Take some aspirin if you're upset," he said. He squeezed the stone in the palm of his hand until she shook her head and went away.

  A few minutes later a news program came on with a report on some people who had picketed a military base, protesting bombs and fallout. A university professor's face came on the screen and gravely he pointed to a chart. "The Atomic Energy Commission admits—"

  Randolph sighed and shut the set off.

  He went to bed early that night. When he woke up the next day, he went and got a book and brought it back to bed with him. He picked up the touchstone from the chair next to the bed and turned it over in his hand a few times. It was really a very plain kind of stone. Black, smooth, softly curving … What was it about the rock that could make everything seem so unimportant, so commonplace?

  Well, of course a rock is one of the most common things in the world, he thought. You find them everywhere—even in the streets of the city, where everything is man-made, you'll find rocks. They're part of the ground underneath the pavement, part of the world we live on. They're part of home.

  He held the touchstone in one hand while he read.

  Margo had been up for several hours when he finished the book. When he set it down, she came in and stood in the doorway, watching him silently.

  After a few minutes she asked, "Do you love me?"

  He looked up, faintly surprised. "Yes, of course."

  "I wasn't sure."

  "Why not? Is anything wrong?"

  She came over and sat on the bed next to him in her terrycloth robe. "It's just that you've hardly spoken to me since yesterday. I thought maybe you were angry about something."

  Randolph smiled. "No. Why should I be angry?"

  "I don't know. It just seemed that …" She shrugged.

  He reached out and touched her face with his free hand. "Don't worry about it."

  She lay down beside him, resting her head on his arm. "And you do love me? Everything's all right?"

  He turned the stone over in his right hand. "Of course everything's all right," he said softly.

  She pressed against him. "I want to kiss you."

  "All right." He turned to her and brushed his lips across her forehead and nose. Then she held him tightly while she kissed his mouth.

  When she had finished he lay back against the pillow and looked up at the ceiling. "Is it sunny out today?" he asked. "It's been dark in here all day."

  "I want to kiss you some more," she said. "If that's all right with you."

  Randolph was noticing the warmth of the touchstone in his hand. Rocks aren't warm, he thought; it's only my hand that gives it warmth. Strange.

  "Of course it's all right," he said, and turned to let her kiss him again.

  Bobby stayed in his room most of the day; Randolph supposed he was doing something. Margo, after that one time, didn't try to talk to him. Randolph stayed in bed fingering the touchstone and thinking, though whenever he tried to remember what he'd been thinking about, he drew a blank.

  Around five-thirty, his friend Blake appeared at the door. Randolph heard him say something to Margo, and then he came into the bedroom.

  "Hey, are you all right? You weren't at the party last night."

  Randolph shrugged. "Sure. I just felt like lounging around this weekend."

  Blake's weathered face cleared. "Well, that's good. Listen, I've got a problem."

  "A problem," Randolph said. He settled down in the bed, looking idly at the stone in his hand.

  Blake paused. "You sure everything's all right? Nothing wrong with Margo? She didn't look good when I came in."

  "We're both fine."

  "Well, okay. Look, Ran, you know you're the only close friend I've got, don't you? I mean, there's a lot of people in the world, but you're the only one I can really count on when the chips are down. Some people I joke with, but with you I can talk. You listen. You know?"

  Randolph nodded. He supposed he was right.

  "Well … I guess you heard the commotion last night. A couple guys drank too much, and there was a fight."

  "I went to bed early."

  "I'm surprised you slept through it. It developed into quite a brawl there for a while; the cops came later on. They broke three windows and somebody pushed over the refrigerator. Smashed everything all to hell. One of the doors is off the hinges."

  "No, I didn't hear it."

  "Wow. Well, look, Ran … the super is on my neck. He's going to sue me; he's going to kick me out. You know that guy. I've got to get ahold of some money fast, to fix things up."

  Randolph didn't say anything. He had found a place on the stone where his right thumb fit perfectly, as though the stone had been molded around it. He switched the stone to his left hand, but it didn't quite fit that thumb.

  Blake was nervous. "Look, I know it's short notice. I wouldn't ask you, but I'm stuck. Can you lend me about a hundred?"

  "A hundred dollars?"

  "I might be able to get by with eighty, but I figured a bribe to the super …"

  "All right. It doesn't make any difference."

  Blake paused again, looking at him. "You can do it?"

  "Sure."

  "Which? Eighty or a hundred?"

  "A hundred, if you want."

  "You're sure it won't … bother you, make you short? I mean, I could look around somewhere else …"

  "I'll write you a check," Randolph said. He got up slowly and took his checkbook from the dresser. "How do you spell your first name?"

  "G-E-N-E." Blake stood nervously, indecisive. "You're sure it's no trouble? I don't want to pressure you."

  "No." Randolph signed the check, tore it out, and handed it to him.

  "You're a friend," Blake said. "A real one."

  Randolph shrugged. "What the hell."

  Blake stood for a few seconds more, apparently wanting to say something. But then he thanked him again and hurried out. Margo came and stood in the doorway and looked at him silently for a moment, then went away.

  "Are you going to get me the marbles tomorrow?" Bobby said that evening over supper.

  "Marbles?"

  "I told you. I still have to pay that guy for the frog you made me throw away."

  "Oh. How many?"

  "Thirty-five of them. I owed him sixty, and I only had twenty-five."

  Bobby was silent, picking at his corn. He speared three kernels carefully with his fork and slid them off the fork with his teeth.

  "I'll bet you forget."

  Margo looked up from where she had been silently eating. "Bobby!"

  "I'm finished with my dinner," Bobby said quickly, standing up. He threw a quick glance at Randolph. "I'll bet he does forget," he said, and ran out.

  After five minutes of silence between them, Margo stood up and started clearing away the dishes. Randolph was rubbing the touchstone against the bridge of his nose.

  "I'd like to sleep with you tonight," she said.

  "Of course," he said, a bit surprised.

  She stopped beside him and touched his arm. "I don't mean just sleep. I want you to love me."

  He nodded. "All right."

  But when the time came, she turned away and lay silently in the dark. He went to sleep with one arm lying carelessly across her hips.

  When the telephone rang, he came out of sleep slowly. It was ringing for the fifth time when he answered it.

  It was Howard, at the agency. "Are you all right?" he asked.

  "Yes, I'm all right," Randolph said.

  "It's past ten. We thought maybe you were sick and couldn't call."

  "Past ten?" For a moment he didn't know what that meant. Then Margo appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, holding the alarm clock in her hand, and he remembered it was Monday.

&n
bsp; "I'll be there in an hour or so," he said quickly. "It's all right; Margo wasn't feeling too good, but she's all right now."

  Margo, her face expressionless, put the clock down on the chair next to the bed and looked at him for a moment before leaving the room.

  "Nothing serious, I hope," said Howard.

  "No, it's all right. I'll see you in a while." He hung up.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and tried to remember what had happened. The past two days were a blur. He had lost something, hadn't he? Something he'd been holding.

  "I tried to wake you three times," Margo said quietly. She had come back into the room and was standing with her hands folded under her breasts. Her voice was level, controlled. "But you wouldn't pay any attention."

  Randolph was slowly remembering. He'd had the touchstone in his hand last night, but it must have slipped out while he was asleep. He began to search among the covers.

  "Did you see the stone?" he asked her.

  "What?"

  "The stone. I've dropped it."

  There was a short silence. "I don't know. Is it so important right now?"

  "I paid five dollars for it," he said, still rummaging through the bed.

  "For a rock?"

  He stopped suddenly. Yes, five dollars for a rock, he thought. It didn't sound right.

  "Ran, what's the matter with you lately? Gene Blake was up here this morning. He gave back your check and said to apologize to you. He was really upset. He said he didn't think you really wanted to loan him the money."

  But it wasn't just a rock, Randolph thought. It was a black, smooth touchstone.

  "Is something worrying you?" she asked him.

  The back of his neck was suddenly cold. Worrying me? he thought. No, nothing's been worrying me. That's just the trouble.

  He looked up. "It may be cold out today. Can you find my gloves?"

  She looked at him for a moment and then went to the hall closet. Randolph got up and started dressing. In a few minutes she returned with the gloves. He put them on. "It's a little cold in here right now," he said.

  When she had gone back into the kitchen, he started looking through the bed again, this time coldly and carefully. He found the touchstone under his pillow, and without looking at it he slipped it into a paper bag. He put the bag into his coat pocket.

  When he got to the agency, he made his excuses as glibly as possible, but he was sure they all knew that he had simply overslept. Well, it wasn't that important … once.

  He stopped off at the store on his way home that night. It was just as he remembered it, and the same man was inside. He raised his thick eyebrows when he saw Randolph.

  "You came back quickly."

  "I want to return the touchstone," Randolph said.

  "I'm not surprised. So many people return my magic pieces. Sometimes I think I am only lending them, too, like the books."

  "Will you buy it back?"

  "Not at the full price. I have to stay in business."

  "What price?" Randolph asked.

  "A dollar only," the man said. "Or you could keep it, if that's not enough."

  Randolph thought for a moment. He certainly didn't intend to keep the stone, but a dollar wasn't much. He could throw the stone away …

  But then someone would probably pick it up.

  "Do you have a hammer here?" he asked. "I think it would be better to break the stone."

  "Of course I have a hammer," the man said. He reached into one of the lower drawers of his desk and brought one out, old and brown with rust.

  He held it out. "The hammer rents for a dollar," he said.

  Randolph glanced sharply at the man, and then decided that that wasn't really surprising. He had to stay in business, yes. "All right." He took the hammer. "I wonder if the veins of the rock are as smooth as the outside."

  "Perhaps we'll see the fossilized soul," said the man. "I never know about the things I sell."

  Randolph knelt and dropped the touchstone from its bag onto the floor. It rolled in a wobbling circle and then lay still.

  "I knew quite a bit about rocks when I was young," he said. "I used to pick them up at the beach."

  He brought the hammer down on the touchstone and it shattered into three pieces which skittered across the floor and bounced to a stop. The largest one was next to Randolph's foot.

  He picked it up and the owner of the store turned on the overhead lightbulb. Together they examined the rock's fragment.

  There was a fossil, but Randolph couldn't tell what it was. It was small and not very distinct, but looking at it he felt a chill strike out at him. It was as ugly and unformed as a human foetus, but it was something older, a kind of life that had died in the world's mud before anything like a man had been born.

  The End

  © 1964 by Terry Carr. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1964.

  A Full Member of the Club

  Bob Shaw

  It was a trivial thing—a cigarette lighter—which finally wrecked Philip Connor's peace of mind.

  Angela and he had been sitting at the edge of her pool for more than an hour. She had said very little during that time, but every word, every impatient gesture of her slim hands, had conveyed the message that it was all over between them.

  Connor was sitting upright on a canvas chair, manifestly ill at ease, trying to understand what had brought about the change in their relationship. He studied Angela carefully, but her face was rendered inscrutable, inhuman, by the huge insect eyes of her sunglasses. His gaze strayed to a lone white butterfly as it made a hazardous flight across the pool and passed, twinkling like a star, into the shade of the birches.

  He touched his forehead and found it buttery with sweat. "This heat is murderous."

  "It suits me," Angela said, another reminder that they were no longer as one. She moved slightly on the lounger, altering the brown curvatures of her semi-nakedness.

  Connor stared nostalgically at the miniature landscape of flesh, the territory from which he was being evicted, and reviewed the situation. The death of an uncle had made Angela rich, very rich, but he was unable to accept that as sufficient reason for her change in attitude. His own business interests brought him more than two hundred thousand a year, so she knew he wasn't a fortune hunter.

  "I have an appointment in a little while," Angela said with a patently insincere little smile.

  Connor decided to try making her feel guilty. "You want me to leave?"

  He was rewarded by a look of concern, but it was quickly gone, leaving the beautiful face as calm and immobile as before.

  Angela sat up, took a cigarette from a pack on the low table, opened her purse, and brought out the gold cigarette lighter. It slipped from her fingers, whirred across the tiles, and went into the shallow end of the pool. With a little cry of concern, she reached down into the water and retrieved the lighter, wetting her face and tawny hair in the process. She clicked the dripping lighter once, and it lit. Angela gave Connor a strangely wary glance, dropped the lighter back into her purse, and stood up.

  "I'm sorry, Phil," she said. "I have to go now."

  It was an abrupt dismissal, but Connor, emotionally bruised as he was, scarcely noticed. He was a gypsy entrepreneur, a wheeler-dealer, one of the very best—and his professional instincts were aroused. The lighter had ignited the first time while soaking wet, which meant it was the best he had ever seen, and yet its superb styling was unfamiliar to him. This fact bothered Connor. It was his business to know all there was to know about the world's supply of sleek, shiny, expensive goodies, and obviously he had let something important slip through his net.

  "All right, Angie." He got to his feet. "That's a nice lighter—mind if I have a look?"

  She clutched her purse as though he had moved to snatch it. "Why don't you leave me alone? Go away, Phil." She turned and strode off toward the house.

  "I'll stop by for a while tomorrow."

  "Do that," she called wit
hout looking back. "I won't be here."

  Connor walked back to his Lincoln, lowered himself gingerly onto the baking upholstery, and drove into Long Beach. It was late in the afternoon, but he went back to his office and began telephoning various trade contacts, making sure they too were unaware of something new and radical in cigarette lighters. Both his secretary and telephonist were on vacation, so he did all the work himself. The activity helped to ease the throbbing hurt of having lost Angela, and—in a way he was unable to explain—gave him a comforting sense that he was doing something toward getting her back or at least finding out what had gone wrong between them.

  He had an illogical conviction that the little gold artifact was somehow connected with their breaking up. The idea was utterly ridiculous, of course, but in thinking back over the interlude by the pool with Angela, it struck him that, amazingly for her, she had gone without smoking. Although it probably meant she was cutting down, another possibility was that she had not wanted to produce the lighter in his presence.

  Realizing his inquiries were getting him nowhere, he closed up the office and drove across town to his apartment. The evening was well advanced yet seemingly hotter than ever—the sun had descended to a vantage point from which it could attack more efficiently, slanting its rays through the car windows. He let himself into his apartment, showered, changed his clothes, and prowled unhappily through the spacious rooms, wishing Angela was with him. A lack of appetite robbed him of even the solace of food. At midnight he brewed coffee with his most expensive Kenyan blend, deriving a spare satisfaction from the aroma, but took only a few disappointed sips. If only, he thought for the thousandth time, they could make it taste the way it smells.

  He went to bed, consciously lonely, and yearned for Angela until he fell asleep.

  Next morning Connor awoke feeling hungry and, while eating a substantial breakfast, was relieved to find he had regained his usual buoyant outlook on life. It was perfectly natural for Angela to be affected by the sudden change in her circumstances, but when the novelty of being rich, instead of merely well off, had faded, he would win her back. And in the meanwhile he—the man who had been first in the country with Japanese liquid display watches—was not going to give up on a simple thing like a new type of cigarette lighter.