The Big Book of Science Fiction

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

  Minds, not bodies! The immortal bodies remained back on the planets, in suspension over the eons. Sometimes they roused for material activity but that was growing rarer. Few new individuals were coming into existence to join the incredibly mighty throng, but what matter? There was little room in the universe for new individuals.

  Zee Prime was roused out of his reverie upon coming across the wispy tendrils of another mind.

  “I am Zee Prime,” said Zee Prime. “And you?”

  “I am Dee Sub Wun. Your galaxy?”

  “We call it only the galaxy. And you?”

  “We call ours the same. All men call their galaxy their galaxy and nothing more. Why not?”

  “True. Since all galaxies are the same.”

  “Not all galaxies. On one particular galaxy the race of man must have originated. That makes it different.”

  Zee Prime said, “On which one?”

  “I cannot say. The Universal AC would know.”

  “Shall we ask him? I am suddenly curious.”

  Zee Prime’s perceptions broadened until the galaxies themselves shrunk and became a new, more diffuse powdering on a much larger background. So many hundreds of billions of them, all with their immortal beings, all carrying their load of intelligences with minds that drifted freely through space. And yet one of them was unique among them all in being the original galaxy. One of them had, in its vague and distant past, a period when it was the only galaxy populated by man.

  Zee Prime was consumed with curiosity to see this galaxy and called out: “Universal AC! On which galaxy did mankind originate?”

  The Universal AC heard, for on every world and throughout space, it had its receptors ready, and each receptor led through hyperspace to some unknown point where the Universal AC kept itself aloof.

  Zee Prime knew of only one man whose thoughts had penetrated within sensing distance of the Universal AC, and he reported only a shining globe, two feet across, difficult to see.

  “But how can that be all of the Universal AC?” Zee Prime had asked.

  “Most of it,” had been the answer, “is in hyperspace. In what form it is there I cannot imagine.”

  Nor could anyone, for the day had long since passed, Zee Prime knew, when any man had any part of the making of a universal AC. Each Universal AC designed and constructed its successor. Each, during its existence of a million years or more, accumulated the necessary data to build a better and more intricate, more capable successor in which its own store of data and individuality would be submerged.

  The Universal AC interrupted Zee Prime’s wandering thoughts, not with words, but with guidance. Zee Prime’s mentality was guided into the dim sea of galaxies and one in particular enlarged into stars.

  A thought came, infinitely distant, but infinitely clear. “THIS IS THE ORIGINAL GALAXY OF MAN.”

  But it was the same after all, the same as any other, and Zee Prime stifled his disappointment.

  Dee Sub Wun, whose mind had accompanied the other, said suddenly, “And is one of these stars the original star of man?”

  The Universal AC said, “MAN’S ORIGINAL STAR HAS GONE NOVA. IT IS NOW A WHITE DWARF.”

  “Did the men upon it die?” asked Zee Prime, startled and without thinking.

  The Universal AC said, “A NEW WORLD, AS IN SUCH CASES, WAS CONSTRUCTED FOR THEIR PHYSICAL BODIES IN TIME.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Zee Prime, but a sense of loss overwhelmed him even so. His mind released its hold on the original galaxy of man, let it spring back and lose itself among the blurred pinpoints. He never wanted to see it again.

  Dee Sub Wun said, “What is wrong?”

  “The stars are dying. The original star is dead.”

  “They must all die. Why not?”

  “But when all energy is gone, our bodies will finally die, and you and I with them.”

  “It will take billions of years.”

  “I do not wish it to happen even after billions of years. Universal AC! How may stars be kept from dying?”

  Dee Sub Wun said in amusement, “You’re asking how entropy might be reversed in direction.”

  And the Universal AC answered. “THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”

  Zee Prime’s thoughts fled back to his own galaxy. He gave no further thought to Dee Sub Wun, whose body might be waiting on a galaxy a trillion light-years away, or on the star next to Zee Prime’s own. It didn’t matter.

  Unhappily, Zee Prime began collecting interstellar hydrogen out of which to build a small star of his own. If the stars must someday die, at least some could yet be built.

  —

  Man considered with himself, for in a way, Man, mentally, was one. He consisted of a trillion, trillion, trillion ageless bodies, each in its place, each resting quiet and incorruptible, each cared for by perfect automatons, equally incorruptible, while the minds of all the bodies freely melted one into the other, indistinguishable.

  Man said, “The universe is dying.”

  Man looked about at the dimming galaxies. The giant stars, spendthrifts, were gone long ago, back in the dimmest of the dim far past. Almost all stars were white dwarfs, fading to the end.

  New stars had been built of the dust between the stars, some by natural processes, some by Man himself, and those were going, too. White dwarfs might yet be crashed together and of the mighty forces so released, new stars built, but only one star for every thousand white dwarfs destroyed, and those would come to an end, too.

  Man said, “Carefully husbanded, as directed by the Cosmic AC, the energy that is even yet left in all the universe will last for billions of years.”

  “But even so,” said Man, “eventually it will all come to an end. However it may be husbanded, however stretched out, the energy once expended is gone and cannot be restored. Entropy must increase to the maximum.”

  Man said, “Can entropy not be reversed? Let us ask the Cosmic AC.”

  The Cosmic AC surrounded them but not in space. Not a fragment of it was in space. It was in hyperspace and made of something that was neither matter nor energy. The question of its size and nature no longer had meaning to any terms that Man could comprehend.

  “Cosmic AC,” said Man, “how may entropy be reversed?”

  The Cosmic AC said, “THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”

  Man said, “Collect additional data.”

  The Cosmic AC said, “I WILL DO SO. I HAVE BEEN DOING SO FOR A HUNDRED BILLION YEARS. MY PREDECESSORS AND I HAVE BEEN ASKED THIS QUESTION MANY TIMES. ALL THE DATA I HAVE REMAINS INSUFFICIENT.”

  “Will there come a time,” said Man, “when data will be sufficient or is the problem insoluble in all conceivable circumstances?”

  The Cosmic AC said, “NO PROBLEM IS INSOLUBLE IN ALL CONCEIVABLE CIRCUMSTANCES.”

  Man said, “When will you have enough data to answer the question?”

  “THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”

  “Will you keep working on it?” asked Man.

  The Cosmic AC said, “I WILL.”

  Man said, “We shall wait.”

  —

  The stars and galaxies died and snuffed out, and space grew black after ten trillion years of running down.

  One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain.

  Man’s last mind paused before fusion, looking over a space that included nothing but the dregs of one last dark star and nothing besides but incredibly thin matter, agitated randomly by the tag ends of heat wearing out, asymptotically, to the absolute zero.

  Man said, “AC, is this the end? Can this chaos not be reversed into the universe once more? Can that not be done?”

  AC said, “THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”

  Man’s last mind fused and only AC existed—and that in hyperspace.

  —

  Matter and energy had ended and wit
h it, space and time. Even AC existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never answered from the time a half-drunken computer ten trillion years before had asked the question of a computer that was to AC far less than was a man to Man.

  All other questions had been answered, and until this last question was answered also, AC might not release his consciousness.

  All collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collected.

  But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.

  A timeless interval was spent in doing that.

  And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.

  But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer—by demonstration—would take care of that, too.

  For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.

  The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a universe and brooded over what was now chaos. Step by step, it must be done.

  And AC said, “LET THERE BE LIGHT!”

  And there was light——

  Stranger Station

  DAMON KNIGHT

  Damon Knight (1922–2002) was an influential US science fiction writer and critic, highly regarded for editing the edgy original anthology series Orbit and for his (sometimes overshadowed) fiction, for which he won the Hugo Award. He started early, founding his own fanzine, entitled Snide, when he was only eleven. Knight could also be said to have helped create, along with his second wife (the acclaimed writer Kate Wilhelm), the modern structure and apparatus of the US science fiction community.

  In addition to being a member of the famous Futurians science fiction group, Knight founded the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and cofounded three influential organizations: the National Fantasy Fan Federation, the Milford Writer’s Workshop, and the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. As creative writing teachers, Knight and Wilhelm helped shape several generations of primarily US and UK speculative fiction writers by teaching at both Milford and Clarion; they also helped run Sycamore Hill, a kind of Clarion for intermediate and advanced writers. The SFWA officers and past presidents named Knight its thirteenth grand master in 1994. After Knight’s death in 2002, the award became the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2003.

  Ray Bradbury bought Knight’s first short story, “The Itching Hour” (Futuria Fantasia, 1940), but Knight would soon also be active as an editor and reviewer. As a critic, he (in)famously wrote in 1945 that A. E. van Vogt “is not a giant as often maintained. He’s only a pygmy who has learned to operate an overgrown typewriter”—a hyperbolic statement that has not been proven true. Knight is more rightly known for the term idiot plot, a story that only functions because almost everyone in it acts stupidly. The term may have been invented by James Blish, a fellow Futurian, but Knight’s frequent use of it in his reviews made its use common.

  Knight’s Orbit series (1966–80) ran contiguous with New Worlds during the New Wave boom and then outlived New Worlds, providing an American refuge for edgy, risk-taking speculative fiction. In addition to being an influence on the editors of this volume, Orbit was the only home for early chapters from Stepan Chapman’s Philip K. Dick Award–winning novel The Troika (stand-alone segments reprinted herein) and a host of other interesting writers. Knight edited several wonderful reprint anthologies, including A Century of Science Fiction and A Century of Great Short Science Fiction Novels. Knight was also an active translator and champion of French fiction, including that of the notorious Boris Vian.

  In terms of his fiction, Knight’s most famous story is the jokey “To Serve Man” (1950). It won a fifty-year Retro Hugo in 2001 and was made into a Twilight Zone episode, but it is not his best work and has not aged well. Readers should instead seek out his strange, sometimes Nabokovian novels and stories like the first-contact story reprinted here, the novelette “Stranger Station.” First published in 1956 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, “Stranger Station” showcases Knight at the height of his powers, able to convey both intensity and nuance in a truly unique context. As the title suggests, this is a truly strange story, and a superior example of exploring the complexities of alien contact through fiction.

  STRANGER STATION

  Damon Knight

  The clang of metal echoed hollowly down through the station’s many vaulted corridors and rooms. Paul Wesson stood listening for a moment as the rolling echoes died away. The maintenance rocket was gone, heading back to Home; they had left him alone in Stranger Station.

  Stranger Station! The name itself quickened his imagination. Wesson knew that both orbital stations had been named a century ago by the then-British administration of the satellite service; “Home” because the larger, inner station handled the traffic of Earth and its colonies; “Stranger” because the outer station was designed specifically for dealings with foreigners—beings from outside the solar system. But even that could not diminish the wonder of Stranger Station, whirling out here alone in the dark—waiting for its once-in-two-decades visitor….

  One man, out of all Sol’s billions, had the task and privilege of enduring the alien’s presence when it came. The two races, according to Wesson’s understanding of the subject, were so fundamentally different that it was painful for them to meet. Well, he had volunteered for the job, and he thought he could handle it—the rewards were big enough.

  He had gone through all the tests, and against his own expectations he had been chosen. The maintenance crew had brought him up as dead weight, drugged in a survival hamper; they had kept him the same way while they did their work and then had brought him back to consciousness. Now they were gone. He was alone.

  But not quite.

  “Welcome to Stranger Station, Sergeant Wesson,” said a pleasant voice. “This is your alpha network speaking. I’m here to protect and serve you in every way. If there’s anything you want, just ask me.” It was a neutral voice, with a kind of professional friendliness in it, like that of a good schoolteacher or rec supervisor.

  Wesson had been warned, but he was still shocked at the human quality of it. The alpha networks were the last word in robot brains—computers, safety devices, personal servants, libraries, all wrapped up in one, with something so close to “personality” and “free will” that experts were still arguing the question. They were rare and fantastically expensive; Wesson had never met one before.

  “Thanks,” he said now, to the empty air. “Uh—what do I call you, by the way? I can’t keep saying, ‘Hey, alpha network.’ ”

  “One of your recent predecessors called me Aunt Nettie,” was the response.

  Wesson grimaced. Alpha network—Aunt Nettie. He hated puns; that wouldn’t do. “The aunt part is all right,” he said. “Suppose I call you Aunt Jane. That was my mother’s sister; you sound like her, a little bit.”

  “I am honored,” said the invisible mechanism politely. “Can I serve you any refreshments now? Sandwiches? A drink?”

  “Not just yet,” said Wesson. “I think I’ll look the place over first.”

  He turned away. That seemed to end the conversation as far as the network was concerned. A good thing; it was all right to have it for company, speaking when spoken to, but if it got talkative…

  The human part of the station was in four segments: bedroom, living room, dining room, bath. The living room was comfortably large and pleasantly furnished in greens and tans; the only mechanical note in it was the big instrument console in one corner. The other rooms, arranged in a ring around the living room, were tiny; just space enough for Wesson, a narrow encircling corridor, and the mechanisms that would serve him. The whole place was spotlessly clean, gleaming and efficient in spite of its twenty-year layoff.

  This is the gravy part of the run, Wesson told
himself. The month before the alien came—good food, no work, and an alpha network for conversation. “Aunt Jane, I’ll have a small steak now,” he said to the network. “Medium rare, with hashed brown potatoes, onions and mushrooms, and a glass of lager. Call me when it’s ready.”

  “Right,” said the voice pleasantly. Out in the dining room, the autochef began to hum and cluck self-importantly. Wesson wandered over and inspected the instrument console. Air locks were sealed and tight, said the dials; the air was cycling. The station was in orbit and rotating on its axis with a force at the perimeter, where Wesson was, of one g. The internal temperature of this part of the station was an even 73 degrees.

  The other side of the board told a different story; all the dials were dark and dead. Sector Two, occupying a volume some eighty-eight thousand times as great as this one, was not yet functioning.

  Wesson had a vivid mental image of the station, from photographs and diagrams—a five-hundred-foot Duralumin sphere, onto which the shallow thirty-foot disk of the human section had been stuck apparently as an afterthought. The whole cavity of the sphere, very nearly—except for a honeycomb of supply and maintenance rooms and the all-important, recently enlarged vats—was one cramped chamber for the alien….

  “Steak’s ready!” said Aunt Jane.

  The steak was good, bubbling crisp outside the way he liked it, tender and pink inside. “Aunt Jane,” he said with his mouth full, “this is pretty soft, isn’t it?”

  “The steak?” asked the voice, with a faintly anxious note.

  Wesson grinned. “Never mind,” he said. “Listen, Aunt Jane, you’ve been through this routine—how many times? Were you installed with the station, or what?”

  “I was not installed with the station,” said Aunt Jane primly. “I have assisted at three contacts.”

  “Um. Cigarette,” said Wesson, slapping his pockets. The autochef hummed for a moment, and popped a pack of GIs out of a vent. Wesson lighted up. “All right,” he said, “you’ve been through this three times. There are a lot of things you can tell me, right?”