Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol XI

by Various

  "Look," I said, leaning far off the bench to speak to him, "I can prove you're a hallucination."

  "You can?" he quavered. "How?"

  "Because Phipps couldn't see you."

  "That square? Hah! He would not have believed it if he had seen me."

  "You mean you--"

  He disappeared and reappeared like a flashing neon sign. "There!" he said triumphantly.

  "Why didn't you let him see you then?" I asked, a little angry, but pleased nonetheless with his opinion of Phipps. "Because you didn't, you cost me my job."

  * * * * *

  He waved a forepaw deprecatingly. "You didn't want to stay on that hick sheet anyway."

  "It was a job."

  "Now you've got a better one."

  "Who's kidding whom?"

  "Together we'll write real literature."

  "I don't know anything about literature. My job is writing the news."

  "You'll be famous. With my help, of course."

  "Not with that 'dimly drouse' stuff."

  "Oh, that!"

  "Where did you come from, Fuzzy?"

  "Do I ask you where you come from?"

  "Well, no--"

  "And my name's not Fuzzy. It's Trlk, pronounced Turlick and spelled T-r-l-k."

  "My name's Larry Weaver, pronounced Lar-ree--"

  "I know. Look, you got a typewriter?"

  "A portable. At the apartment."

  "That will do."

  "Aren't you taking things for granted? I haven't said yet whether I liked the idea."

  "Do you have any choice?"

  I looked at him, a couple of ounces of harmless-looking fur that had already cost me my immediate future in the newspaper business.

  "I guess not," I said, hoping I could find a way to get rid of him if things didn't work out right.

  And so began a strange collaboration, with Trlk perched on my shoulder dictating stories into my ear while I typed them. He had definite ideas about writing and I let him have his way. After all, I didn't know anything about literature.

  Sometimes, when he'd get stuck, he'd get down and pace the living room rug. Other times he'd massage his tail, which was as long as he, smoothing it with his tongue and meticulously arranging every hair on it.

  "It's lovely, don't you think?" he often asked.

  And I'd say, "If you spent as much time working on this story as you do admiring your tail, we'd get something done."

  "Sorry," he'd say, hopping on my shoulder again. "Where were we?"

  I'd read the last page and we'd be off again.

  * * * * *

  One day, Trlk crawled on a shelf to watch me shave, whiffed the shaving lotion bottle, became excited and demanded I put a drop of it in front of him. He lapped it up, sank blissfully back on his tail and sighed.

  "Wonnerful," he squeaked. "Shimply wonnerful." He hiccupped.

  I let him sleep it off, but was always careful with the lotion after that.

  Days stretched into weeks, my money was running low and the apartment superintendent was pressing me for payment of the month's rent. I kept telling him I'd pay as soon as the first checks came in.

  But only rejection slips came. First one, then two, then half a dozen.

  "They don't even read them!" Trlk wailed.

  "Of course they read them," I said. I showed him the sheets. They were wrinkled from handling.

  "The post office did that," he countered.

  I showed him coffee spots on one page, cigarette burns on another.

  "Well, maybe--" he said, but I don't think anything would have convinced him.

  When the last story came back, Trlk was so depressed, I felt sorrier for him than I did for myself.

  It was time. We had been working hard. I got out a bottle.

  I poured a little lotion for Trlk.

  The next afternoon, we tackled the problem in earnest. We went to the library, got a book on writing and took it home. After reading it from cover to cover, I said, "Trlk, I think I've found the trouble with your stories."

  "What is it?"

  "You don't write about things you know, things that happened to you, that you have observed." I showed him where it advised this in the book.

  His eyes brightened. We went right to work.

  This time the stories glowed, but so did my cheeks. The narratives all involved a man who lived in a hotel room. They recounted the seemingly endless love affairs with his female visitors.

  "Why, Trlk!" I exclaimed. "How come you know about things like this?"

  * * * * *

  He confessed he had lived with such a man, a freelance writer who never made the grade with his writing, but who had plenty of girl friends who paid the freight.

  "He had a way with women," Trlk explained.

  "He certainly had," I said, reading again the last page he had dictated.

  "He finally married an older woman with money. Then he gave up trying to write."

  "I don't blame him," I said wistfully.

  "I had to find another writer. This time I decided to try a newspaper. That's where I ran into you."

  "Don't remind me."

  Things got better after that. We began to get a few checks from magazines. They were small checks, but they paid a few bills.

  The big blow fell, however, when Mr. Aldenrood, the superintendent, came roaring upstairs one day clutching a sheaf of papers.

  "This stuff!" he screamed, waving the sheets before me. "The kids found it in the waste paper. They're selling them a dime a sheet around the neighborhood."

  "They're worth more than that," I said, regretting that Trlk and I hadn't burned our rough drafts.

  "You're going to move," Mr. Aldenrood said, "at the earliest possible instant." His face was apoplectic. "I'm giving you notice right now--thirty days!" He turned and went out, muttering, "The idea of anybody committing to paper--" and slammed the door.

  Two days later, I was seated at the typewriter, smoking a cigarette and waiting for Trlk as he paced back and forth on the rug, tiny paws clasped behind his back, talking to himself and working out a story angle at the same time, when suddenly there appeared on the carpet next to him a whole host of creatures just like him.

  I nearly gulped down my cigarette.

  Trlk let out a high-pitched screech of joy and ran over to them. They wound their long tails around each other, clasped and unclasped them, twined them together. It seemed a sort of greeting. Meanwhile, they kept up a jabber that sounded like a 33-1/3 rpm record being played 78 rpm.

  Finally, the biggest one detached himself from the group and gave Trlk a tongue-lashing that would have done justice to a Phipps. Trlk hung his head. Every time he tried to say something, the big one would start in again.

  * * * * *

  At length the leader turned to me. "My name is Brknk, pronounced burk-neck and spelled b-r-k-n-k."

  "And I'm Larry Weaver," I said, hoping they weren't relatives who were going to stay. "That's pronounced Lar-ree--"

  "I know. We're from Sybilla III. Tourists. We include Earth in our itinerary. It has some of the quaintest customs of all the inhabited planets we visit. We're terribly sorry for all the inconveniences our wayward Trlk here has caused you."

  "It was nothing," I said with a lightness I didn't feel.

  "Trlk had threatened to run off many times. He has a craze for self-expression and your literature fascinates him. He has an insatiable thirst--"

  "I know."

  * * * * *

  He turned to Trlk. "It's against the rules of the Galactic Tours to make yourself visible to any of the inhabitants along the way. You know that. And it's a prime offense to interfere with their lives. Do you realize how many rules you have broken, how long we have been looking for you?"

  "He did the best he could," I said hopefully. "As a matter of fact, we were having considerable success with his--a literary project."

  "I understand you lost your job because of him. Is that right?"

  "Yes, but I
encouraged him." I hoped there was some way I could ease the sentence.

  "Trlk has committed grievous wrongs, Mr. Weaver. We must make it up to you."

  "Oh?" Here was an angle I hadn't expected.

  "What can we do for you?"

  I considered a moment. "You mean a wish or something?"

  Brknk laughed. "Nothing like that. We're not magicians."

  "Well, I could stand a little cash."

  "I'm sorry," he said, and did look pained. "We can't interfere in business. We don't have any of your currency and we are forbidden to duplicate or steal it."

  He frowned and studied me. Suddenly his face brightened. He bawled orders and several smaller Sybillians rushed forward and started scampering all over me. One of them nipped a piece of flesh out of my arm.

  "Ouch!" I yelped, rubbing the spot. "What are you doing?"

  "You humans are a proud race," Brknk explained. "I'll give you reason to be prouder than the rest. We'll change your metabolism, your endocrine balance, toughen your muscle fibers a thousandfold. We'll make you the strongest man on Earth!"

  "Look," I said, "I don't want to be the strongest man on Earth."

  "Well, how about the world's champion boxer? We can speed up your reflexes at least ten times."

  I shook my head. "I don't want that, either. Sounds too much like work. Besides, I never liked getting into fights."

  Brknk scowled, called a huddle. They buzzed at each other, their tails vibrating like mad. One of them finally yipped and everybody spun around.

  Brknk beamed. "We've got it!"

  "What is it?"

  A little Sybillian I hadn't noticed jabbed something in my arm. I winced and he nearly fell off. He retreated with injured pride.

  "Come along, Trlk," Brknk said.

  "What's supposed to happen?" I asked.

  "It will be a glorious surprise," Brknk assured me. "You'll never regret it. The only thing I ask is that you never tell anyone about us."

  I promised.

  Trlk looked up at me. I noticed the beginning of tears in his eyes. I reached down and patted him gently on the head.

  "So long, little fellow," I said. "It's been fun."

  "Good-by," he said sorrowfully.

  They vanished.

  Nothing happened for several days, so I bought a copy of Editor and Publisher and was writing for my first job when I felt a tender spot on my tail bone. When I examined it, I saw a protuberance there.

  There was no denying it. The Sybillians had given me what they treasured most.

  I was growing a tail--a long, hairy tail.

  As I say, I have come to like circus life.

  At first I tried to get doctors to cut it off, but they were too curious for that. Then I thought of jumping in the river or putting a bullet through my head.

  But after I saw what the scientists were making of it, when I viewed my picture in all the papers, and when I saw the awe with which I was regarded by everyone, I changed my mind.

  Now I make a cool twenty-five thousand a year without lifting a finger.

  Just my tail.

  I've become rather fond of it. I've even learned how to vibrate it.

  But I've never told anyone about the Sybillians. They wouldn't believe it.

  Not old Phipps, anyway.

  Some day I'll go and vibrate my tail right in his face. I'd never amount to anything, eh? Let's see him grow a tail!

  * * *

  Contents

  B-12's MOON GLOW

  By Charles A. Stearns

  Among the metal-persons of Phobos, robot B-12 held a special niche. He might not have been stronger, larger, faster than some ... but he could be devious ... and more important, he was that junkyard planetoid's only moonshiner.

  I am B-12, a metal person. If you read Day and the other progressive journals you will know that in some quarters of the galaxy there is considerable prejudice directed against us. It is ever so with minority races, and I do not complain. I merely make this statement so that you will understand about the alarm clock.

  An alarm clock is a simple mechanism used by the Builders to shock themselves into consciousness after the periodic comas to which they are subject. It is obsolescent, but still used in such out of the way places as Phobos.

  My own contact with one of these devices came about in the following manner:

  I had come into Argon City under cover of darkness, which is the only sensible thing to do, in my profession, and I was stealing through the back alleyways as silently as my rusty joints would allow.

  I was less than three blocks from Benny's Place, and still undetected, when I passed the window. It was a large, cheerful oblong of light, so quite naturally I stopped to investigate, being slightly phototropic, by virtue of the selenium grids in my rectifier cells. I went over and looked in, unobtrusively resting my grapples on the outer ledge.

  There was a Builder inside such as I had not seen since I came to Phobos half a century ago, and yet I recognized the subspecies at once, for they are common on Earth. It was a she.

  It was in the process of removing certain outer sheaths, and I noted that, while quite symmetrical, bilaterally, it was otherwise oddly formed, being disproportionately large and lumpy in the anterior ventral region.

  I had watched for some two or three minutes, entirely forgetting my own safety, when then she saw me. Its eyes widened and it snatched up the alarm clock which was, as I have hinted, near at hand.

  "Get out of here, you nosey old tin can!" it screamed, and threw the clock, which caromed off my headpiece, damaging one earphone. I ran.

  If you still do not see what I mean about racial prejudice, you will, when you hear what happened later.

  I continued on until I came to Benny's Place, entering through the back door. Benny met me there, and quickly shushed me into a side room. His fluorescent eyes were glowing with excitement.

  Benny's real name is BNE-96, and when on Earth he had been only a Servitor, not a General Purpose like myself.

  But perhaps I should explain.

  We metal people are the children of the Builders of Earth, and later of Mars and Venus. We were not born of two parents, as they are. That is a function far too complex to explain here; in fact I do not even understand it myself. No, we were born of the hands and intellects of the greatest of their scientists, and for this reason it might be natural to suppose that we, and not they, would be considered a superior race. It is not so.

  Many of us were fashioned in those days, a metal person for every kind of task that they could devise, and some, like myself, who could do almost anything. We were contented enough, for the greater part, but the scientists kept creating, always striving to better their former efforts.

  And one day the situation which the Builders had always regarded as inevitable, but we, somehow, had supposed would never come, was upon us. The first generation of the metal people--more than fifty thousand of us--were obsolete. The things that we had been designed to do, the new ones, with their crystalline brains, fresh, untarnished, accomplished better.

  We were banished to Phobos, dreary, lifeless moon of Mars. It had long been a sort of interplanetary junkyard; now it became a graveyard.

  * * * * *

  Upon the barren face of this little world there was no life except for the handful of hardy Martian and Terran prospectors who searched for minerals. Later on, a few rude mining communities sprang up under plastic airdromes, but never came to much. Argon City was such a place.

  I wonder if you can comprehend the loneliness, the hollow futility of our plight. Fifty thousand skilled workmen with nothing to do. Some of the less adaptable gave up, prostrating themselves upon the bare rocks until their joints froze from lack of use, and their works corroded. Others served the miners and prospectors, but their needs were all too few.

  The overwhelming majority of us were still idle, and somehow we learned the secret of racial existence at last. We learned to serve each other.

  This was not an
easy lesson to learn. In the first place there must be motivation involved in racial preservation. Yet we derived no pleasure out of the things that make the Builders wish to continue to live. We did not sleep; we did not eat, and we were not able to reproduce ourselves. (And, besides, this latter, as I have indicated, would have been pointless with us.)

  There was, however, one other pleasure of the Builders that intrigued us. It can best be described as a stimulation produced by drenching their insides with alcoholic compounds, and is a universal pastime among the males and many of the shes.

  One of us--R-47, I think it was (rest him)--tried it one day. He pried open the top of his helmet and pouted an entire bottle of the fluid down his mechanism.

  Poor R-47. He caught fire and blazed up in a glorious blue flame that we could not extinguish in time. He was beyond repair, and we were forced to scrap him.

  But his was not a sacrifice in vain. He had established an idea in our ennui-bursting minds. An idea which led to the discovery of Moon Glow. My discovery, I should say, for I was the first.

  Naturally, I cannot divulge my secret formula for Moon Glow. There are many kinds of Moon Glow these days, but there is still only one B-12 Moon Glow.

  Suffice it to say that it is a high octane preparation, only a drop of which--but you know the effects of Moon Glow, of course.

  How the merest thimbleful, when judiciously poured into one's power pack, gives new life and the most deliriously happy freedom of movement imaginable. One possesses soaring spirits and super-strength.

  Old, rusted joints move freely once more, one's transistors glow brightly, and the currents of the body race about with the minutest resistance. Moon Glow is like being born again.

  The sale of it has been illegal for several years, for no reason that I can think of except that the Builders, who make the laws, can not bear to see metal people have fun.

  Of course, a part of the blame rests on such individuals as X-101, who, when lubricated with Moon Glow, insists upon dancing around on large, cast-iron feet to the hazard of all toes in his vicinity. He is thin and long jointed, and he goes "creak, creak," in a weird, sing-song fashion as he dances. It is a shameful, ludicrous sight.

  Then there was DC-5, who tore down the 300 feet long equipment hangar of the Builders one night. He had over-indulged.