The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  The communication was difficult. It is exhausting to me physically. I had again that sense of psychic pressure, of urgency, in their sendings. If I only knew what they wanted to “talk” about, it would be so much easier for me.

  I have the impression that they have a psychic itch they want me to help them scratch. That’s silly? Yes, I know, yet that is the odd impression I have.

  After they were gone, I analyzed my photographs carefully. The knotted light meshes are not identical in individuals. If the patterns are constant for individuals, it would seem that two of the light-mesh kind have been here before.

  What do they want to talk about?

  —

  May fourteenth. Today the prott—seven of them—and I communicated about habitat. This much is fairly certain. It would appear—and I think that from now on any statement I make about them is going to have to be heavily qualified—it would appear that they are not necessarily confined to the lightless, heatless depths of space. I can’t be sure about this. But I thought I got the hint of something “solid” in their thinking.

  Wild speculation: do they get their energy from stars?

  Behind their sendings, I got again the hint of some other more desired communication. Something which at once attracts and—repels? frightens? embarrasses?

  Sometimes the humor of my situation comes to me suddenly. An embarrassed prott! But I suppose there’s no reason why not.

  All my visitors today were of the knotted-network kind.

  —

  May sixteenth. No prott yesterday or today.

  —

  May eighteenth. At last! Three prott! From subsequent analysis of the network patterns, all had been here to interview me before. We began communication about habitat and what, with protoplasm, would be metabolic process, but they did not seem interested. They left soon.

  Why do they visit the ship, anyhow? Curiosity? That motive must not be so powerful by now. Because of something they want from me? I imagine so; it is again an awareness of some psychic itch. And that gives me a lead as to the course I should follow.

  The next time they appear, I shall try to be more passive in my communications. I shall try not to lead them on to any particular subject. Not only is this good interviewing technique, it is essential in this case if I am to gain their full cooperation.

  —

  May 20. After a fruitless wait yesterday, today there was one lone prott. In accordance with my recent decision, I adopted a highly passive attitude toward it. I sent out signals of willingness and receptivity, and I waited, watching the prott.

  For five or ten minutes there was “silence.” The prott moved about in the viewers with an affect of restlessness, though it might have been any other emotion, of course. Suddenly, with great haste and urgency, it began to send. I had again that image of the cork blowing out of the champagne bottle.

  Its sending was remarkably difficult for me to follow. At the end of the first three minutes or so, I was wringing wet with sweat. Its communications were repetitive, urgent, and, I believe, pleasurable. I simply had no terms into which to translate them. They seemed to involve many verbs.

  I “listened” passively, trying to preserve my mental equilibrium. My bewilderment increased as the prott continued to send. Finally I had to recognize that I was getting to a point where intellectual frustration would interfere with my telepathy. I ventured to put a question, a simple “Please classify” to the prott.

  Its sending slackened and then ceased abruptly. It disappeared.

  What did I learn from the interview? That the passive approach is the correct one, and that a prott will send freely (and most confusingly, as far as I am concerned) if it is not harassed with questions or directed to a particular topic. What I didn’t learn was what the prott was sending about.

  Whatever it was, I have the impression that it was highly agreeable to the prott.

  —

  Later—I have been rereading the notes I made on my sessions with the prott. What has been the matter with me? I wonder at my blindness. For the topic about which the prott was sending—the pleasurable, repetitive, embarrassing topic, the one about which it could not bear to be questioned, the subject which involved so many verbs—that topic could be nothing other than its sex life.

  When put thus baldly, it sounds ridiculous. I make haste to qualify it. We don’t as yet—and what a triumph it is to be able to say “as yet”—know anything about the manner in which prott reproduce themselves. They may, for example, increase by a sort of fission. They may be dioecious, as so much highly organized life is. Or their reproductive cycle may involve the cooperative activity of two, three, or even more different sorts of prott.

  So far, I have seen only the two sorts, those with the solid nucleus, and those with the intricate network of light. That does not mean there may not be other kinds.

  But what I am driving at is this: the topic about which the prott communicated with me today is one which, to the prott, has the same emotional and psychic value that sex has to protoplasmic life.

  (Somehow, at this point, I am reminded of a little anecdote of my grandmother’s. She used to say that there are four things in a dog’s life which it is important for it to keep in mind, one for each foot. The things are food, food, sex, and food. She bred dachshunds and she knew. Question: does my coming up with this recollection at this time mean that I suspect the prott’s copulatory activity is also nutritive, like the way in which amoeba conjugate? Their exchange of nuclei seems to have a beneficial effect on their metabolism.)

  Be that as it may, I now have a thesis to test in my dealings with the prott!

  —

  May 21. There were seven prott in the viewer when the signal rang. While I watched, more and more arrived. It was impossible to count them accurately, but I think there must have been at least fifteen.

  They started communicating almost immediately. Not wanting to disturb them with directives, I attempted to “listen” passively, but the effect on me was that of being caught in a crowd of people all talking at once. After a few minutes, I was compelled to ask them to send one at a time.

  From then on, the sending was entirely orderly.

  Orderly, but incomprehensible. So much so that, at the end of some two hours, I was forced to break off the interview.

  It is the first time I have ever done such a thing.

  Why did I do it? My motives are not entirely clear even to myself. I was trying to receive passively, keeping in mind the theory I had formed about the protts’ communication. (And let me say at this point that I have found nothing to contradict it. Nothing whatever.) Yet, as time passed, my bewilderment increased almost painfully. Out of the mass of chaotic, repetitive material presented to me, I was able to form not one single clear idea.

  I would not have believed that a merely intellectual frustration could be so difficult to take.

  The communication itself was less difficult than yesterday. I must think.

  I have begun to lose weight.

  —

  June twelfth. I have not made an entry in my diary for a long time. In the interval, I have had thirty-six interviews with prott.

  What emerges from these sessions, which are so painful and frustrating to me, so highly enjoyed by the prott?

  First, communication with them has become very much easier. It has become, in fact, too easy. I continually find their thoughts intruding on me at times when I cannot welcome them—when I am eating, writing up my notes, or trying to sleep. But the strain of communication is much less and I suppose that does constitute an advance.

  Second, out of the welter of material presented to me, I have at last succeeded in forming one fairly clear idea. That is that the main topic of the prott’s communication is a process that could be represented verbally as ——ing the ——. I add at once that the blanks do not necessarily represent an obscenity. I have, in fact, no idea what they do represent.

  (The phrases that come into my mind in this c
onnection are “kicking the bucket” and “belling the cat.” It may not be without significance that one of these phrases relates to death and the other to danger. Communication with prott is so unsatisfactory that one cannot afford to neglect any intimations that might clarify it. It is possible that ——ing the —— is something which is potentially dangerous to prott, but that’s only a guess. I could have it all wrong, and I probably do.)

  At any rate, my future course has become clear. From now on I will attempt, by every mental means at my disposal, to get the prott to specify what ——ing the —— is. There is no longer any fear of losing their cooperation. Even as I dictate these words to the playback, they are sending more material about ——ing the —— to me.

  —

  June 30. The time has gone very quickly, and yet each individual moment has dragged. I have had fifty-two formal interviews with prott—they appear in crowds ranging from fifteen to forty or so—and countless informal ones. My photographic record shows that more than 90 percent of those that have appeared have been of the luminous-network kind.

  In all these communications, what have I learned? It gives me a sort of bitter satisfaction to say: “Nothing at all.”

  I am too chagrined to go on.

  —

  July 1. I don’t mean that I haven’t explored avenue after avenue. For instance, at one time it appeared that ——ing the —— had something to do with the intersections of the luminous network in prott of that sort. When I attempted to pursue this idea, I met with a negative that seemed amused as well as indignant.

  They indicated that ——ing the —— was concerned with the whitish body surfaces, but when I picked up the theme, I got another negative signal. And so on. I must have attacked the problem from fifty different angles, but I had to give up on all of them. ——ing the ——, it would appear, is electrical, nonelectrical, solitary, dual, triple, communal, constant, never done at all. At one time I thought that it might apply to any pleasurable activity, but the prott signalled that I was all wrong. I broke that session off short.

  Outside of their baffling communications on the subject of ——ing the ——, I have learned almost nothing from the prott.

  (How sick I am of them and their inane, vacuous babbling! The phrases of our communication ring in my mind for hours afterward. They haunt me like a clinging odor or stubbornly lingering taste.)

  During one session, a prott (solid nucleus, I think, but I am not sure) informed me that they could live under a wide variety of conditions, provided there was a source of radiant energy not too remote. Besides that scrap of information, I have an impression that they are grateful to me for listening to them. Their feelings, I think, could be expressed in the words “understanding and sympathetic.”

  I don’t know why they think so, I’m sure. I would rather communicate with a swarm of dogfish, which are primitively telepathic, than listen to any more prott.

  I have had to punch another hole in my wristwatch strap to take up the slack. This makes the third one.

  —

  July third. It is difficult for me to use the playback, the prott are sending so hard. I have scarcely a moment’s rest from their communications, all concerned with the same damned subject. But I have come to a resolve: I am going home.

  Yes, home. It may be that I have failed in my project, because of inner weaknesses. It may be that no man alive could have accomplished more. I don’t know. But I ache to get away from them and the flabby texture of their babbling minds. If only there were some way of shutting them off, of stopping my mental ears against them temporarily, I think I could stand it. But there isn’t.

  I’m going home. I’ve started putting course data in the computers.

  —

  July fourth. They say they are going back with me. It seems they like me so much, they don’t want to be without me. I will have to decide.

  —

  July twelfth. It is dreadfully hard to think, for they are sending like mad.

  I am not so altruistic, so unselfish, that I would condemn myself to a lifetime of listening to prott if I could get out of it. But suppose I ignore the warnings of instinct, the dictates of conscience, and return to Earth, anyhow—what will be the result?

  The prott will go with me. I will not be rid of them. And I will have loosed a wave of prott on Earth.

  They want passionately to send about ——ing the ——. They have discovered that Earthmen are potential receptors. I have myself to blame for that. If I show them the way to Earth…

  The dilemma is inherently comic, I suppose. It is nonetheless real. Oh, it is possible that there is some way of destroying prott, and that the resources of Earth intelligence might discover it. Or, failing that, we might be able to work out a way of living with them. But the danger is too great; I dare not ask my planet to face it. I will stay here.

  The Ellis is a strong, comfortable ship. According to my calculations, there is enough air, water, and food to last me the rest of my natural life. Power—since I am not going back—I have in abundance. I ought to get along all right.

  Except for the prott. When I think of them, my heart contracts with despair and revulsion. And yet—a scientist must be honest—it is not all despair. I feel a little sorry for them, a little flattered at their need for me. And I am not, even now, altogether hopeless. Perhaps someday—someday—I shall understand the prott.

  I am going to put this diary in a permaloy cylinder and jet it away from the ship with a signal rocket. I can soup up the rocket’s charge with power from the fuel tanks. I have tried it on the calculators, and I think the rocket can make it to the edge of the gravitational field of the solar system.

  Good-bye, Earth. I am doing it for you. Remember me.

  —

  Fox put the last page of the manuscript down. “The poor bastard,” he said.

  “Yeah, the poor bastard. Sitting out there in deep space, year after year, listening to those things bellyaching, and thinking what a savior he was.”

  “I can’t say I feel much sympathy for him, really. I suppose they followed the signal rocket back.”

  “Yeah. And then they increased. Oh, he fixed it, all right.”

  There was a depressed silence. Then Fox said, “I’d better go. Impatient.”

  “Mine, too.”

  They said good-bye to each other on the curb. Fox stood waiting, still not quite hopeless. But after a moment the hateful voice within his head began:

  “I want to tell you more about ——ing the ——.”

  The Liberation of Earth

  WILLIAM TENN

  William Tenn (pseudonym of Philip Klass, 1920–2010) was a British-American writer of science fiction. After serving in World War II, Klass began writing science fiction as William Tenn, publishing his first work of genre interest, “Alexander the Bait,” for Astounding Science Fiction in 1946. He soon followed it with the brilliant and scathing time paradox tale “Brooklyn Project” (Planet Stories, 1948), which fell afoul of the 1940s zeitgeist, being rejected by prominent editors like John W. Campbell Jr. This type of rejection—along political lines—occurred more than once in Tenn’s career and reflects poorly on the science fiction field.

  From the first, Tenn was one of the genre’s very few genuinely comic, genuinely incisive writers of short fiction. From 1950 onward he found a congenial market in Galaxy, where he published much of his best work before falling relatively quiet after about 1960, despite some stellar efforts like “The Ghost Standard” (1994), reprinted later in this volume. Despite his cheerful surface and the occasional zany humor of his stories, Tenn, like most real satirists, was fundamentally a pessimist, a writer who persisted in describing the bars of the prison; when the comic disguise was whipped off, as happened with some frequency, the result was salutary.

  “The Liberation of Earth” was written as a response to the Korean War, although many readers, and later protesters, used it as a call to end the Vietnam War. The story was actually read alou
d by student protesters in the 1960s at antiwar rallies. Yet in the beginning not one of the top science fiction magazines wanted to publish the story. It was eventually published in Future Science Fiction (1953), considered near the bottom of the barrel of science fiction markets. At the time of publication, the story received little attention, but it has gone on to become a much-reprinted standard.

  In Immodest Proposals: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, Volume 1, the author writes, “The period covered [by the Korean War] was roughly the same as the Red-scare years that began with the Dies Committee and ended with the Senate censure of Joseph McCarthy in 1954. As a result, the organized Left inveighed against what it called ‘Truman’s War,’ and urged us to get the hell out of Korea; the official Right not only supported the war but considered it perhaps the most crucial element in the battle against the godless Communists. In writing the story, all I wanted to do is point out what a really awful thing it was to be a Korean (and later a Vietnamese) in such a situation.”

  Today, “The Liberation of Earth” is considered one of the classic science fiction stories of all time.

  THE LIBERATION OF EARTH

  William Tenn

  This, then, is the story of our liberation. Suck air and grab clusters. Heigh-ho, here is the tale.

  August was the month, a Tuesday in August. These words are meaningless now, so far have we progressed; but many things known and discussed by our primitive ancestors, our unliberated, unreconstructed forefathers, are devoid of sense to our free minds. Still the tale must be told, with all of its incredible place-names and vanished points of reference.

  Why must it be told? Have any of you a better thing to do? We have had water and weeds and lie in a valley of gusts. So rest, relax, and listen. And suck air, suck air.

  On a Tuesday in August, the ship appeared in the sky over France in a part of the world then known as Europe. Five miles long the ship was, and word has come down to us that it looked like an enormous silver cigar.