The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Science Fiction Stories

by Arthur C. Clarke

  “One jump ahead of you. Dr. Stone thinks he’s normal, but won’t put down any I.Q. Actually, he can’t figure him out himself. Smith seems to take delight in answering questions―sort of anticipates them and has the answer ready before you’re half through asking.”

  “Well, if Dr. Stone says he’s normal, that’s enough for me.” The prosecutor was silent for a moment. Then, “How about the husband?”

  “Laughton? We’re afraid to let him see the man. All broken up. No telling what kind of a rumpus he’d start―especially if Smith started his funny business.”

  “Guess you’re right. Well, Mr. Smith won’t think it’s so funny when we hang criminal negligence or manslaughter on him. By the way, you’ve checked possible family connections?”

  “Nobody ever saw John Smith before. Even at the address on his driver’s license. And there’s no duplicate of that in Springfield, in case you’re interested.”

  * * * *

  The man who had laughingly told police his name was John Smith lay on his cot in the county jail, his eyes closed, his arms folded across his chest. This gave him the appearance of being alert despite reclining. Even as he lay, his mouth held a hint of a smile.

  Arvid 6―for John Smith was Arvid 6―had lain in that position for more than four hours, when suddenly he snapped his eyes open and appeared to be listening. For a moment a look of concern crossed his face, and he swung his legs to the floor and sat there expectantly. Arvid 6 knew Tendal 13 had materialized and was somewhere in the building.

  Eventually there were some sounds from beyond the steel cell and doorway. There was a clang when the outer doorway was opened, and Arvid 6 rose from his cot.

  “Your lawyer’s here to see you,” the jailer said, indicating the man with the briefcase. “Ring the buzzer when you’re through.”

  The jailer let the man in, locked the cell door, and walked away. The man threw his briefcase on the jail cot and stood glaring.

  “Your damned foolishness has gone far enough. I’m sick and tired of it,” he declared. “If you carry on any more we’ll never get back to the Ultroom!”

  “I’m sorry, Tendal,” the man on the cot said. “I didn’t think―”

  “You’re absolutely right. You didn’t think. Crashing that car into that tree and killing that woman―that was the last straw. You don’t even deserve to get back to our era. You ought to be made to rot here.”

  “I’m really sorry about that,” Arvid 6 said.

  “You know the instructions. Just because you work in the Ultroom don’t get to thinking human life doesn’t have any value. We wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t. But to unnecessarily kill―” The older man shook his head. “You could have killed yourself as well and we’d never get the job done. As it is, you almost totally obliterated me.” Tendal 13 paced the length of the cell and back again, gesturing as he talked. “It was only with the greatest effort I pulled myself back together again. I doubt that you could have done it. And then all the while you’ve been sitting here, probably enjoying yourself with your special brand of humor I have grown to despise.”

  “You didn’t have to come along at all, you know,” Arvid 6 said.

  “How well I know! How sorry I am that I ever did! It was only because I was sorry for you, because someone older and more experienced than you was needed. I volunteered. Imagine that! I volunteered! Tendal 13 reaches the height of stupidity and volunteers to help Arvid 6 go back 6,000 years to bring Kanad back, to correct a mistake Arvid 6 made!” He snorted. “I still can’t believe I was ever that stupid. I only prove it when I pinch myself and here I am.

  “Oh, you’ve been a joy to be with! First it was that hunt in ancient Mycenae when you let the lion escape the hunters’ quaint spears, and we were partly eaten by the lion in the bargain, although you dazzled the hunters, deflecting their spears. And then your zest for drink when we were with Octavian in Alexandria that led to everybody’s amusement but ours when we were ambushed by Anthony’s men. And worst of all, that English barmaid you became engrossed with at our last stop in 1609, when her husband mistook me for you and you let him take me apart piece by piece―”

  “All right, all right,” Arvid 6 said. “I’ll admit I’ve made some mistakes. You’re just not adventurous, that’s all.”

  “Shut up! For once you’re going to listen to me. Our instructions specifically stated we were to have as little as possible to do with these people. But at every turn you’ve got us more and more enmeshed with them. If that’s adventure, you can have it.” Tendal 13 sat down wearily and sank his head in his hands. “It was you who conceived the idea of taking Reggie right out of his play pen. ‘Watch me take that child right out from under its mother’s nose’ were your exact words. And before I could stop you, you did. Only you forgot an important factor in the equation―the dog, Tiger. And you nursed a dogbite most of the afternoon before it healed. And then you took your spite out on the poor thing by suggesting suffocation to it that night.

  “And speaking of that night, you remember we agreed I was to do the talking. But no, you pulled a switch and captured Martin Laughton’s attention. ‘I came as soon as I could, Martin,’ you said. And suddenly I played a very minor role. ‘This is my new assistant, Dr. Tompkins,’ you said. And then what happened? I get shot in the legs and you get a hole in your back. We were both nearly obliterated that time, and we didn’t even come close to getting the child.

  “Still you wanted to run the whole show. ‘I’m younger than you,’ you said. ‘I’ll take the wheel.’ And the next thing I know, I’m floating in space halfway to nowhere with two broken legs, a spinal injury, a concussion and some of the finest bruises you ever saw.”

  * * * *

  These twentieth century machines aren’t what they ought to be,” Arvid 6 said.

  “You never run out of excuses, do you, Arvid? Remember what you said in the Ultroom when you pushed the lever clear over and transferred Kanad back 6,000 years? ‘My hand slipped.’ As simple as that. ‘My hand slipped.’ It was so simple everyone believed you. You were given no real punishment. In a way it was a reward―at least to you―getting to go back and rescue the life germ of Kanad out of each era he’d be born in.”

  Tendal 13 turned and looked steadily and directly at Arvid 6. “Do you know what I think? I think you deliberately pushed the lever over as far as it would go just to see what would happen. That’s how simple I think it was.”

  Arvid 6 flushed, turned away, and looked at the floor.

  “What crazy things have you been doing since I’ve been gone?” Tendal 13 asked.

  Arvid 6 sighed. “After what you just said I guess it wouldn’t amuse you, although it has me. They got to me right after the accident before I had a chance to collect my wits, dematerialize or anything―you said we shouldn’t dematerialize in front of anybody.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I didn’t know what to do. I could see they thought I was drunk, so I was. But they had a blood sample before I could manufacture any alcohol in my blood, although I implanted a memory in them that I reeked of it.” He laughed. “I fancy they’re thoroughly confused.”

  “And you’re thoroughly amused, no doubt. Have they questioned you?”

  “At great length. They had a psychiatrist in to see me. He was an odd fellow with the most stupid set of questions and tests I ever saw.”

  “And you amused yourself with him.”

  “I suppose you’d think so.”

  “Who do you tell them you are?”

  “John Smith. A rather prevalent name here, I understand. I manufactured a pasteboard called a social security card and a driver’s license―”

  “Never mind. It’s easy to see you’ve been your own inimitable self. Believe me, if I ever get back to the Ultroom I hope I never see you again. And I hope I’ll never leave there again though I’m rejuvenated through a million years.”

  “Was Kanad’s life germ transferred all right this time?”

  T
endal 13 shook his head. “I haven’t heard. The transfers are getting more difficult all the time. In 1609, you’ll remember, it was a case of pneumonia for the two-year-old. A simple procedure. It wouldn’t work here. Medicine’s too far along.” He produced a notebook. “The last jump was 342 years, a little more than average. The next ought to be around 2250. Things will be more difficult than ever there, probably.”

  “Do you think Kanad will be angry about all this?”

  “How would you like to have to go through all those birth processes, to have your life germ knocked from one era to the next?”

  “Frankly, I didn’t think he’d go back so far.”

  “If it had been anybody but Kanad nobody’d ever have thought of going back after it. The life germ of the head of the whole galactic system who came to the Ultroom to be transplanted to a younger body―and then sending him back beyond his original birth date―” Tendal 13 got up and commenced his pacing again. “Oh, I suppose Kanad’s partly to blame, wanting rejuvenating at only 300 years. Some have waited a thousand or more or until their bones are like paper.”

  “I just wonder how angry Kanad will be,” Arvid muttered.

  * * * *

  HB92167. ULTROOM ERROR. TENDAL 13. ARVID 6. KANAD TRANSFER OUT OF 1951 COMPLETE. NEXT KANAD TRANSFER READY. 2267. PHULLAM 19, SON OF ORLA 39 AND RHODA R, 22H LEVEL M, HEMISPHERE B, QUADRANT 3, SECTOR I. ARRIVE HIS 329TH DAY.

  TB92167

  * * * *

  Arvid 6 rose from the cot, and the two men faced each other.

  “Before we leave, Arvid,” Tendal 13 started to say.

  “I know, I know. You want me to let you handle everything.”

  “Exactly. Is that too much to ask after all you’ve done?”

  “I guess I have made mistakes. From now on you be the boss. I’ll do whatever you say.”

  “I hope I can count on that.”

  Tendal 13 rang the jail buzzer. The jailer came and unlocked the cell door.

  “You remember the chief said it’s all right to take him with me, Matthews,” Tendal 13 told the jailer.

  “Yes, I remember,” the jailer said mechanically, letting them both out of the cell.

  They walked together down the jail corridor. When they came to another barred door, the jailer fumbled with the keys and clumsily tried several with no luck.

  Arvid 6, an amused set to his mouth and devilment in his eyes, watched the jailer’s expression as he walked through the bars of the door. He laughed as he saw the jailer’s eyes bulge.

  “Arvid!”

  Tendal 13 walked briskly through the door, snatched Arvid 6 by the shoulders and shook him.

  The jailer watched stupified as the two men vanished in the middle of a violent argument.

  REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS TO COME, by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  He stared at the student in shock.

  “You think it’s a typo?” he said.

  “Well, yeah,” the boy said, shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other. “W is right above S on the keyboard; it’d be easy to type ‘wet’ instead of ‘set.’ And ‘set’ makes a lot more sense, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” Williams said, his voice not entirely steady. “It changes all the imagery completely, don’t you see that? ‘He wet the blade on the floor’ is the essential clue that he’s killed her, that the floor’s covered in her blood…”

  “So maybe it isn’t,” the boy said. “Maybe she really is asleep, and he’s decided to forgive her.”

  “But that’s a completely different story!”

  The boy shrugged. Williams stared at him in horror—didn’t this smartass kid realize what he was trying to do? Williams had built his career on the careful analysis of Dorrie Ledbetter’s short stories—hell, he’d written his doctoral dissertation on this very story, ‘A Sleeping Kiss,’ and had used it in class as a model for all his students to follow! His whole reputation had been founded on it. And now this…this punk dared to suggest that all the subtleties Williams had read into the story, based on that one final image of the protagonist wetting his knife in his wife’s blood, were the result of a typographical error?

  When the silence threatened to become awkward, Williams cleared his throat.

  “It’s an interesting theory,” he said, “but for now, we’ll just have to deal with the story as it was originally published, all right?”

  The kid shrugged again. “Okay,” he said. “I just thought I’d ask. ‘Set’ seemed to make so much more sense.”

  “Well, things don’t always make obvious sense,” Williams said. “Now, run along, I need to lock up.”

  The boy turned, gathered his books, and trotted up the aisle, out of the classroom. Williams stared after him.

  Then he pulled out his own battered copy of Seven Endings and thumbed it open to “A Sleeping Kiss” and began reading.

  At supper that evening he poured out the whole thing to Dr. Garrand, his regular dinner companion. She was in the physics department, but pleasant company all the same.

  “One word!” he said. “One letter, and it’s an entirely different story!”

  “That’s fascinating,” Garrand said. “A classic example of a sensitive dependence upon initial conditions. I’d never thought that would have applications in your field—though I suppose I should have; chaos theory certainly does seem to turn up everywhere once you start looking…”

  Williams blinked. “Chaos theory?”

  “Of course.”

  “Isn’t that a mathematical thing? What’s it got to do with literature?”

  “It’s mathematical in nature, yes. Chaos theory is a way of looking at systems too complex to predict by ordinary means…”

  “What?”

  Garrand sighed. “It’s like this,” she said. “In physics, or any other science, we look for models that will predict what will happen under certain conditions. Then we create those conditions and see what happens, and see whether our prediction is correct. If it is, that’s good; if it isn’t, we throw out our model and start over. But sometimes, there are things that are so complicated we can’t say what will happen, even if our models are right. There might be a situation where the tiniest little fluctuation can completely change the outcome—the classic example is the flap of a butterfly’s wing stirring the air at just the right time, in just the right place, to start a cascade. That one tiny movement means that a breeze is ever so slightly stronger, so a branch falls that wouldn’t have, and that changes something else, and it builds up and builds up until you have a hurricane that wouldn’t have happened if that butterfly hadn’t been there.”

  “For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost.”

  “Something like that, yes,” Garrand agreed. “Ordinarily, the flap of a butterfly’s wing would be lost in the noise, canceled out by other events; but if everything’s just right, it can tip the balance and change everything. That’s a sensitive dependence on initial conditions—your starting set-up determines what effect that butterfly has.”

  “And that one letter is the butterfly.”

  “Yes!” Garrand nodded. “If the letter is W you have the story you always thought was there, about a grief-stricken murderer; if it’s S, then you have a story of forgiveness and redemption.”

  “But how do I know which is right?”

  “Well, if this were quantum mechanics I’d say you can’t know, that the Heisenberg principle is in effect—but it isn’t physics, it’s literature. You can open Schroedinger’s box and see if the cat’s alive or dead by contacting the author and asking her whether she meant to say ‘set’ or ‘wet.’”

  Williams had no idea who Heisenberg or Schroedinger were, or what cats had to do with anything—Ledbetter hadn’t been one of the Beat writers, she was after that. He did, however, understand Garrand’s basic suggestion.

  “Dorrie Ledbetter’s dead,” he said. “She died before the story was published, in fact. Heart failure, at age forty-seven.”

  “Oh,” Garrand said. Her fa
ce fell. “Maybe her editor? Or her heirs?”

  “I can ask, I guess,” Williams said thoughtfully.

  Two weeks later he and Garrand dined together once again after a longer hiatus than customary, and Garrand had to struggle to hide her dismay at Williams’ appearance. He hadn’t shaved for at least three days, and his hair, normally fussily neat, was uncombed. There were circles under his wild eyes.

  “You want to know something awful?” he said. “Nobody knows. I’m not sure Ledbetter herself really knew!”

  “Well, of course she did,” Garrand said soothingly. “She must have known what story she was writing.”

  Williams smiled crookedly. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But I’m not sure. I tracked down the original manuscript, you see, and got a photocopy.”

  “So which is it in the manuscript?”

  Wordlessly, Williams pulled a paper from his pocket and unfolded it.

  Garrand leaned forward and looked at it.

  “Oh, my,” she said.

  The manuscript was typed, not computer-printed—and the key word was spelled with both an S and a W, one typed over the other.

  “And even the experts can’t tell which one was first,” Williams said wearily. “She used a non-correcting electric typewriter, and each letter was a single stroke, no white-out, no repeat. Maybe if someone did a microscopic fiber analysis of the paper, to see which fibers were stretched how by the impact—but Ledbetter’s niece won’t allow it.”

  “So you aren’t the first person to wonder about this?”

  Williams snorted. “No,” he said. “But it’s been kept quiet; the publisher doesn’t like to admit they might have made a vital mistake in one of their reliable sellers.”

  “So nobody but Ledbetter herself ever knew which was the correct version?” Garrand asked, as she stared at the photocopy. “Huh. Or maybe she didn’t know, either—maybe she planned it both ways. Maybe she wrote the story as a wavicle, a quantum indeterminacy…”

  “What?” Williams stared at her.

  “I’m sorry, I’m just babbling,” Garrand said, as she slid back down into her chair.