The Big Book of Science Fiction

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

  She followed for a while the chattery sound of water streaming along under the ice, and left it where an oily, lambish smell crossed. Almost immediately she came upon them—six small, greenish balls of wool with floppy, woolly feet. The honey-fat-man smell was strong here too, but she signaled for the lambs, the Come and shoot sound, and she stood again waiting for the master. “Good girl!” His voice had a special praise. “By God, this place is a gold mine. Hold it, Queen of Venus. Whatever it is, don’t let go.”

  There was a fifty-yard clear view here and she stood in plain sight of the little creatures, but they didn’t notice. The master came slowly and cautiously, and knelt beside her. Just as he did, there appeared at the far end of the clearing a glittering, silver and black tiger-striped man.

  She heard the sharp inward breath of the master and she felt the tenseness come to him. There was a new, faint whiff of sour sweat, a stiff silence, and a special way of breathing. What she felt from him made the fur rise along her back with a mixture of excitement and fear.

  The tiger thing held a small packet in one hand and was peering into it and pulling at the opening in it with a blunt finger. Suddenly there was a sweep of motion beside her and five fast, frantic shots sounded sharp in her ear. Two came after the honey-fat man had already fallen and lay like a huge decorated sack.

  The master ran forward and she came at his heels. They stopped, not too close, and she watched the master looking at the big, dead tiger head with the terrible eye. The master was breathing hard and seemed hot. His face was red and puffy looking, but his lips made a hard whitish line. He didn’t whistle or talk. After a time he took out his knife. He tested the blade, making a small, bloody thread of a mark on his left thumb. Then he walked closer and she stood and watched him and whispered a questioning whine.

  He stooped by the honey-fat man and it was that small, partly opened packet that he cut viciously through the center. Small round chunks fell out, bite-sized chunks of dried meat and a cheesy substance and some broken bits of clear, bluish ice.

  The master kicked at them. His face was not red anymore, but olive-pale. His thin mouth was open in a grin that was not a grin. He went about the skinning then.

  He did not keep the flat-faced, heavy head nor the blunt-fingered hands.

  —

  The man had to make a sliding thing of two of the widest kind of flat branches to carry the new heavy fur, as well as the head and the skin of the deer. Then he started directly for the ship.

  It was past eating time but she looked at his restless eyes and did not ask about it. She walked before him, staying close. She looked back often, watching him pull the sled thing by the string across his shoulder, and she knew, by the way he held the rifle before him in both hands, that she should be wary.

  Sometimes the damp-looking, inside-out bundle hooked on things, and the master would curse in a whisper and pull at it. She could see the bundle made him tired, and she wished he would stop for a rest and food as they usually did long before this time.

  They went slowly, and the smell of honey-fat man hovered as it had from the beginning. They crossed the trails of many animals. They even saw another deer run off, but she knew that it was not a time for chasing.

  Then another big silver and black tiger stood exactly before them. It appeared suddenly, as if actually it had been standing there all the time, and they had not been near enough to see it, to pick it out from its glistening background.

  It just stood and looked and dared, and the master held his gun with both hands and looked too, and she stood between them glancing from one face to the other. She knew, after a moment, that the master would not shoot, and it seemed the tiger thing knew too, for it turned to look at her and it raised its arms and spread its fingers as if grasping at the forest on each side. It swayed a bit, like bigness off balance, and then it spoke in its tight-strung, cello tones. The words and the tone seemed the same as before.

  Little slave, what have you done that is free today? Remember this is world. Do something free today. Do, do.

  She knew that what it said was important to it, something she should understand, a giving and a taking away. It watched her, and she looked back with wide, innocent eyes, wanting to do the right thing, but not knowing what.

  The tiger-fat man turned then, this time slowly, and left a wide back for the master and her to see, and then it half turned, throwing a quick glance over the heavy humped shoulder at the two of them. Then it moved slowly away into the trees and ice, and the master still held the gun with two hands and did not move.

  The evening wind began to blow, and there sounded about them that sound of a million chandeliers tinkling and clinking like gigantic wind chimes. A furry bird, the size of a shrew and as fast, flew by between them with a miniature shriek.

  She watched the master’s face, and when he was ready she went along beside him. The soft sounds the honey-fat man had made echoed in her mind but had no meaning.

  —

  That night the master stretched the big skin on a frame and afterward he watched the dazzle of it. He didn’t talk to her. She watched him awhile and then she turned around three times on her rug and lay down to sleep.

  The next morning the master was slow, reluctant to go out. He studied charts of other places, round or hourglass-shaped maps with yellow dots and labels, and he drank his coffee standing up looking at them. But finally they did go out, squinting into the ringing air.

  It was her world. More each day, she felt it was so, right feel, right temperature, lovely smells. She darted on ahead as usual, yet not too far today, and sometimes she stopped and waited and looked at the master’s face as he came up. And sometimes she would whine a question before she went on….Why don’t you walk brisk, brisk, and call me Queen of Venus, Aloora, Galaxa, or Bitch of Betelgeuse? Why don’t you sniff like I do? Sniff, and you will be happy with this place….And she would run on again.

  Trails were easy to find, and once more she found the oily lamb smell, and once more came upon them quickly. The master strode up beside her and raised his gun…but a moment later he turned, carelessly, letting himself make a loud noise, and the lambs ran. He made a face, and spit upon the ice. “Come on, Queen. Let’s get out of here. I’m sick of this place.”

  He turned and made the signal to go back, pointing with his thumb above his head in two jerks of motion.

  But why, why? This is morning now and our world. She wagged her tail and gave a short bark, and looked at him, dancing a little on her back paws, begging with her whole body. “Come on,” he said.

  She turned then, and took her place at his heel, head low, but eyes looking up at him, wondering if she had done something wrong, and wanting to be right and noticed and loved because he was troubled and preoccupied.

  They’d gone only a few minutes on the way back when he stopped suddenly in the middle of a step, slowly put both feet flat upon the ground, and stood like a soldier at a stiff, off-balance attention. There, lying in the way before them, was the huge, orange-eyed head and in front of it, as if at the end of outstretched arms, lay two leathery hands, the hairless palms up.

  —

  She made a growl deep in her throat and the master made a noise almost exactly like hers, but more a groan. She waited for him, standing as he stood, not moving, feeling his tenseness coming into her. Yet it was just a head and two hands of no value, old ones they had had before and thrown away.

  He turned and she saw a wild look in his eyes. He walked with deliberate steps, and she followed, in a wide circle about the spot. When they had skirted the place, he began to walk very fast.

  They were not far from the ship. She could see its flat blackness as they drew nearer to the clearing where it was, the burned, iceless pit of spewed and blackened earth. And then she saw that the silver tiger men were there, nine of them in a wide circle, each with the honey-damp fur smell, but each with a separate particular sweetness.

  The master was still walking very fast, eyes down to
watch his footing, and he did not see them until he was there in the circle before them all, standing there like nine upright bears in tiger suits.

  He stopped and made a whisper of a groan, and he let the gun fall low in one hand so that it hung loose with the muzzle almost touching the ground. He looked from one to the other and she looked at him, watching his pale eyes move along the circle.

  “Stay,” he said, and then he began to go toward the ship at an awkward limp, running and walking at the same time, banging the gun handle against the air lock as he entered.

  He had said, Stay. She sat watching the ship door and moving her front paws up and down because she wanted to be walking after him. He was gone only a few minutes, though, and when he came back it was without the gun and he was holding the great fur with cut pieces of thongs dangling like ribbons along its edges where it had been tied to the stretching frame. He went at that same run-walk, unbalanced by the heavy bundle, to one of them along the circle. Three gathered together before him and refused to take it back. They pushed it, bunched loosely, back across his arms again and to it they added another large and heavy package in a parchment bag, and the master stood, with his legs wide to hold it all.

  Then one honey-fat man motioned with a fur-backed hand to the ship and the bundles, and then to the ship and the master, and then to the sky. He made two sharp sounds once, and then again. And another made two different sounds, and she felt the feeling of them….Take your things and go home. Take them, these and these, and go.

  They turned to her then and one spoke and made a wide gesture. This is world. The sky, the earth, the ice.

  They wanted her to stay. They gave her…was it their world? But what good was a world?

  She wagged her tail hesitantly, lowered her head, and looked up at them….I do want to do right, to please everybody, everybody, but…Then she followed the master into the ship.

  The locks rumbled shut. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. She took her place, flat on her side, takeoff position. The master snapped the flat plastic sheet over her, covering head and all, and, in a few minutes, they roared off.

  —

  Afterward he opened the parchment bag. She knew what was in it. She knew he knew too, but she knew by the smell. He opened it and dumped out the head and the hands. His face was tight and his mouth stiff.

  She saw him almost put the big head out the waste chute, but he didn’t. He took it in to the place where he kept good heads and some odd paws or hoofs, and he put it by the others there.

  Even she knew this head was different. The others were all slant-browed like she was and most had jutting snouts. This one seemed bigger than the big ones, with its heavy, ruffed fur and huge eye staring, and more grand than any of them, more terrible…and yet a flat face, with a delicate, black nose and tender lips.

  The tenderest lips of all.

  The Monster

  GÉRARD KLEIN

  Translated by Damon Knight

  Gérard Klein (1937– ) is a well-known French writer, anthologist, critic, and editor. An economist by profession, Klein has used the pseudonyms Gilles d’Argyre (most frequently) and Mark Starr, and, jointly with Patrice Rondard and Richard Chomet, François Pagery (based on the collaborators’ first names, PAtrice plus GErard plus RIchard). His first stories, heavily influenced by Ray Bradbury, appeared in 1955 when he was only eighteen, beginning with “Une place au balcon” in Galaxie (the French edition of Galaxy) in 1955. He soon made a major impact on the field in France, publishing more than forty delicately crafted tales between 1956 and 1962 (a total that reached sixty by 1977), while also establishing himself as a forceful and literate critic of the genre with a series of thirty penetrating essays in various publications.

  In the late 1970s Klein remarked upon the pessimism of American science fiction, finding it lacking in its ability to envision a future with better social constructs. Yet this very “accusation” was leveled against many French science fiction writers, for leaning toward the dark, psychological side of science fiction, rather than a perceived (and more common) American optimism from prior decades of science fiction. Klein called to task writers for not taking it upon themselves to imagine a different societal setup, instead falling back on the status quo and therefore seeing only a dark, bleak future. Joanna Russ, in How to Suppress Women’s Writing, agreed with Klein about the lack of political honesty in much of the science fiction being written at that time. Klein’s later works were compared to Cordwainer Smith and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in their ability to evoke a certain awe about the universe.

  This story was first published in 1958 in French. It was translated into English by Damon Knight and published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1961 and reprinted in the Knight-edited 13 French Science-Fiction Stories (1965). Perhaps Klein was also influenced by the Belgian writer Jean Ray when creating “The Monster,” as there is a certain sense, along with resignation, of horror and fear of the unknown.

  THE MONSTER

  Gérard Klein

  Translated by Damon Knight

  Night was ready to fall, just in equilibrium on the edge of the horizon, ready to close like a lid over the town, releasing in its fall the precise clockwork of the stars. Metallic curtains fell like eyelids over the shop windows. Keys went into locks and made the bolts grate. The day was over. A rain of footsteps beat upon the dusty asphalt of the streets. It was then that the news ran through the town, leaping from mouth to ear, showing itself in dazed or frightened eyes, humming in the copper telephone wires or crackling in television picture tubes.

  “We repeat, there is no danger,” the loudspeaker said to Marion, sitting in her kitchen, hands on her knees, looking out the window at the newly cut grass, the white garden fence, and the road. “Residents of the areas around the park are merely asked to remain at home so as not to interfere in any way with the movements of the specialists. The thing from another planet is not at all hostile to human beings. It’s a historic day, this day when we can welcome as our guest a being from another world, one undoubtedly born, in the opinion of the eminent professor who stands beside me at this moment, under the light of another sun.”

  —

  Marion rose and opened the window. She breathed the air charged with the scent of grass, a spray of water, and a thousand sharp knives of cold, and stared at the street, at the dark and distant point where it detached itself from the high cliffs of the town’s tall buildings, and spread itself out, widened among the lawns and the brick houses. In the front of each house, a light burned in a window, and behind nearly every one of these windows Marion could make out a waiting shadow. And these shadows leaning on the sills disappeared one by one, while men’s footsteps echoed in the street, keys slipped into oiled locks, and doors clicked, shutting out the day that was ended and the nightfall.

  “Nothing will happen to him,” Marion told herself, thinking of Bernard, who would be crossing the park, if he came as usual by the shortest and easiest way. She glanced in the mirror, touching her black hair. She was small and somewhat round, and soft as melting vanilla ice cream.

  “Nothing will happen to him,” Marion told herself, looking toward the park, between the tall illuminated checkerboards of the building fronts, seeing the dark, compact mass of trees enlivened by no other light but that of passing autos’ headlamps; “probably he’s taking another route”; but in spite of herself, she imagined Bernard walking down the gravel paths with an easy stride, between the clipped shadows of yews and the quaking of poplars, in the thin moonlight, avoiding the low fences that bordered the lawns like iron eyelashes, carrying a newspaper in one hand and whistling perhaps, or smoking a half-burned-out pipe and blowing little puffs of thin smoke, eyes half closed, his attitude faintly insolent, as if he could fight the world. And a big black claw moved in the bushes, or a long tentacle coiled itself up in a ditch, ready to flick through the air like a whip and snap, and she saw them, with her eyes closed, on the point of calling out and screaming with te
rror, and she did nothing because it was only an illusion brought on by the confident words of the radio.

  “All necessary precautions have been taken. The park entrances are being watched. The last pedestrians have been escorted individually as far as the gates. We ask you only to avoid making any noise and preferably any light in the vicinity of the park, in order not to frighten our guest from another world. Contact has not yet been made with the being from another planet. No one can say what its shape is, or how many eyes it has. But here we are at the entrance of the park itself, and we’ll keep you up to date. Beside me now is Professor Hermant of the Institute of Space Research, who will give you the results of his preliminary observations. Professor, I’m going to turn the mike over to you….”

  —

  Marion thought about that thing from space, that being, huddled and lonely in a corner of the park, crouching against the wet ground, shivering with cold in this alien wind—staring up through an opening in the bushes at the sky, with its new, unknown stars—feeling the earth shake with the footsteps of the men who were surrounding it, the throbbing of motors, and deeper down, the subterranean rumbling of the city.

  “Would what I do in its place?” Marion wondered, and she knew that everything would be all right because the radio voice was solemn and untroubled, assured, like the voice of a preacher heard on Sunday, whose words hardly broke the silence. She knew the men would move forward toward that creature trembling in the light of the headlamps, and that it would wait, calm and trusting, for them to hold out their hands and talk to it, and then it would go to them, quivering with anxiety, until, listening to their incomprehensible voices—as she had listened to Bernard’s a year ago—it would suddenly understand.

  “Our instruments have barely scratched the surface of the immense spaces around us,” said the professor’s voice. “Just imagine, at the very moment I’m speaking to you, we’re hurtling through cosmic space, between the stars, between clouds of hydrogen….”