The Big Book of Science Fiction

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

  There is a fierce intelligence to all of Gansovsky’s fiction, wedded to a spare but effective characterization underpinned by a keen observation of the absurdities and ruthlessness of human nature. Clearly, too, his experiences in World War II influenced his fiction. Stories involving the military reveal a war-weary sensibility, and Gansovsky had a knack for situating interesting characters within the constraints of political and social systems.

  Gansovsky was one of the best science fiction writers of his era, easily rivaling his Western counterparts, and his work deserves a revival in the English-language world. Although several stories are worthy of reprinting—including the antiwar story “Testing Grounds”—the classic “Day of Wrath,” with its focus on biotech experimentation and echoes of Dr. Moreau, is showcased here, in a new translation.

  DAY OF WRATH

  Sever Gansovsky

  Translated by James Womack

  Chairman: You read in several languages, you are familiar with higher mathematics and can perform all manner of work. Do you think that this makes you human?

  Otark: Yes, of course. Do humans know how to do anything else?

  (FROM THE CROSS-EXAMINATION OF AN OTARK, STATE COMMISSION MATERIALS.)

  Two riders came out of the thickly overgrown valley and started to climb the mountain. In front, on a roan with a twisted nose, rode the forester, and Donald Betly followed him on a chestnut mare. The mare slipped on the stony path and fell to her knees. Betly, who had been lost in thought, nearly fell off because the saddle—an English racing saddle with a single strap—slid forward down the horse’s neck.

  The forester waited for him further up.

  “Don’t let her put her head down, she always slips.”

  Betly, swallowing his anger, shot him a frustrated glance. “Devil take it, he could have warned me about that earlier.” He was cross with himself as well, because the horse had fooled him. When Betly had saddled her up, she had breathed in, so that the strap would be completely loose.

  He pulled so hard on the reins that the horse danced about and moved backward.

  The path had leveled out again. They were riding across a mesa, and in front of them the hilltops were visible, covered in fir forests.

  The horses took long strides, sometimes breaking into a trot and trying to overtake one another. Whenever the mare nudged ahead, Betly could see the sunburned, cleanly shaven thin cheeks of the forester and his sullen eyes, fixed on the road ahead. It was as if he didn’t notice the presence of his companion.

  “I’m too direct,” Betly thought. “And that doesn’t help me. I’ve tried to strike up conversation with him a handful of times, and he either answers me in monosyllables or else doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t think I’m worth anything. He thinks that if someone wants to talk, then he’s a chatterbox and doesn’t need any respect. Out here in the wilds they don’t know how to take the measure of things. They think that being a journalist doesn’t mean anything. Even a journalist like…Anyway, I won’t talk to him either. Damn it!”

  But step by step his mood improved. Betly was a successful man and thought that everyone else should love life as much as he did. He was surprised at the forester’s aloofness, but didn’t feel any animosity toward him.

  The weather, which had been bad in the morning, was starting to clear up. The fog melted away. The dull sheet over the sky had broken up into separate clouds. Huge shadows moved swiftly over the dark forests and valleys, and this emphasized the cruel, wild, and somehow liberated character of the place.

  Betly slapped the mare on her damp neck that smelled of sweat.

  “They must have hobbled your front legs when they let you out to graze, and that’s why you slip. But we’ll be all right together.”

  He stopped pulling back on the reins and caught up with the forester.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Meller, were you born around here?”

  “No,” the forester replied, without turning around.

  “Where were you born then?”

  “A long way away.”

  “And have you been here for a long time?”

  “A while.” Meller turned to the journalist. “You should talk a little more quietly. They might hear you.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The otarks, of course. They’ll hear you and tell the others. Or they could ambush us, jump out from behind and rip us to pieces….And it would be better if they didn’t know why we’re here.”

  “Do they attack people often? It says in the papers that such things almost never happen.”

  The forester was silent.

  “And do they attack in person?” Betly involuntarily looked over his shoulder. “Or do they shoot people as well? Do they have weapons? Rifles, machine guns?”

  “They only rarely shoot. Their hands aren’t made for it. Not hands, paws. They’re clumsy with weapons.”

  “Paws,” Betly repeated. “So people here don’t think of them as human?”

  “Who, us?”

  “Yes, you. The people who live here.”

  The forester spat.

  “Of course they’re not human. No one here thinks that they are.”

  He spoke in bursts. Betly had already forgotten his vow of silence.

  “So, have you ever spoken to them? Is it true that they can speak quite well?”

  “The older ones can speak. The ones who were here when the laboratory was working…The younger ones speak worse. But they are much more dangerous. They are cleverer, their heads are twice the size.” The forester suddenly reined in his horse. His voice was bitter. “Look, there’s no point discussing all this. It’s all useless. I’ve answered these questions a dozen times already.”

  “What’s all useless?”

  “All of it, this trip. You won’t get anything out of it. Everything will stay as it is.”

  “Why does it have to? I’m from an influential paper. We have a lot of influence. They’re gathering material for a Senate commission. If it is shown that the otarks are really so dangerous, then steps will be taken. You must know that this time they are getting ready to send out the troops against them.”

  “Even so, nothing’s going to happen,” the forester sighed. “You’re not the first person to come here. Every year someone comes, and they’re only interested in the otarks. But not in the people who have to live with them. Everyone asks: ‘Is it true that they can learn geometry? Are there really otarks who can understand the theory of relativity?’ As if that meant anything at all! As if that were a reason not to destroy them!”

  “But that’s why I’m here,” Betly began, “to gather material for the commission. And then the whole country will know that—”

  “And you think that the others weren’t gathering material?” Meller interrupted. “And…and how are you going to understand the situation here? You need to live here to understand it. It’s one thing to pass through, and another to be here the whole time. Oh, what’s the point of talking? Let’s go.” He nudged his horse. “Here’s where their range begins, anyway. From this valley onward.”

  The journalist and the forester had reached the top of a hill. The path headed down in a zigzag from under the horse’s hooves.

  A long way beneath them lay the brush-filled valley, cut in two lengthwise by a narrow stony river. The forest rose in a sheer wall straight from the stream, and beyond it in the immeasurable distance the snow-whitened slopes of the Chief mountain range.

  You could see for tens of kilometers all around from here, but Betly saw no signs of life: no smoke from a chimney, not a single haystack. It was as if the place had died.

  The sun hid behind some clouds, all at once it grew cold, and the journalist suddenly felt that he did not want to go down after the forester. He coldly shrugged his shoulders. He recalled the warm, heated air of his city apartment, the bright warm office at the newspaper. But then he pulled himself together. “Rubbish, I’ve been in worse situations than this. What do I have to be afraid of? I’m an excellent sh
ot, and I have very good reactions. Who else could they have sent instead of me?” He saw Meller unshoulder his rifle, and did the same with his own weapon.

  The mare carefully lifted its feet on the narrow path.

  When they were at the bottom of the hill, Meller said:

  “We should try to ride abreast. Better not to talk. We need to get to Steglich’s farm by around eight. We’ll spend the night there.”

  They spurred their horses on and rode for about two hours in silence. They headed up and rode around Mount Bear, keeping the forest wall to their right at all times, the drop-off to their left, covered in bushes, but so small and sparse that no one could hide among them. They went down to the river and went along its rocky bottom until they reached an abandoned asphalted road, the surface cracked with grass growing through it.

  As they rode along the asphalt, Meller suddenly stopped his horse and listened. Then he dismounted, got to his knees, and put his ear to the ground.

  “Something’s not right,” he said, standing up. “Someone’s galloping after us. Let’s get off the road.”

  Betly also dismounted and they led the horses into a ditch in a clump of alders.

  About two minutes later, the journalist heard the clattering of hooves. They came closer. You could feel that the rider was going flat out.

  Then through the faded leaves they saw a gray horse galloping hard. On it, sitting awkwardly, was a man wearing yellow riding breeches and an anorak. He came so close that Betly got a good look at the man’s face and realized that he had seen him before. He even remembered where. Back in town there had been a group of people standing around outside the bar. Five or six men, dirty, badly dressed. They all had the same eyes. Lazy, half-closed, impertinent. The journalist knew those eyes—gangsters’ eyes.

  As soon as the horseman had come past, Meller rushed out into the road.

  “Hey!”

  The man pulled on his horse’s reins and stopped.

  “Hey, wait!”

  The rider looked back, and obviously recognized the forester. For a few moments they looked at one another. Then the man waved, turned his horse around, and rode on.

  The forester stared after him as the noise of the hooves died away in the distance. Then he suddenly hit his head with his fist and groaned.

  “It’s not going to work now, that’s for certain.”

  “What is it?” Betly asked. He had come out from among the bushes as well.

  “Nothing. It’s just put an end to our plan.”

  “But why?” The journalist looked at the forester and was surprised to see tears in his eyes.

  “It’s all over now,” Meller said, as he turned and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “The bastards! Bastards!”

  “Listen to me.” Betly had started to lose his patience as well. “If you’re going to get so worked up, then there’s really no point carrying on.”

  “Worked up?” the forester exclaimed. “You think I’ve gotten worked up? Just look at this!”

  He waved his hand at a branch of a pine tree with reddish cones on it, hanging over the road about thirty paces away from them.

  Betly still had not realized why he was supposed to be looking at it when a shot thundered out, he got a strong whiff of gunpowder, and the last pinecone, hanging by itself, dropped down onto the asphalt.

  “That’s how worked up I am,” Meller said, and went into the clump of alders for his horse.

  They reached the farm just as night was falling.

  Out of the unfinished log house came a tall dark-bearded man with disheveled hair who stood watching in silence how Betly and the forester unsaddled their horses. Then a woman came out onto the porch, red haired and with a flat expressionless face, ungroomed as well. And three children came after her. Two boys of eight or nine years old and a girl aged about thirteen, skinny as if drawn with a single crooked line.

  The five of them were not at all surprised at Meller and the journalist: they were not happy or sad. They just stood and stared in silence. Betly didn’t like the silence.

  Over dinner he tried to start a conversation.

  “Tell me, how do you get on with the otarks? Are they really very troublesome?”

  “What?” The dark-bearded farmer put his palm to his ear and bent over the table. “What?” he shouted. “Speak up. I don’t hear so good.”

  This was how things went on for a few minutes, and the farmer very clearly did not want to understand what was wanted of him. In the end he spread his hands. Yes, there are otarks here. Do they bother him? No, they don’t bother him personally. He doesn’t know about the others. He can’t say anything about them.

  In the middle of this conversation the thin girl stood up, threw a shawl around her shoulders, and left without saying a word to anyone.

  As soon as all the plates were empty the farmer’s wife brought two mattresses out of another room and started to lay them out for the visitors.

  But Meller stopped her.

  “I think it would be better if we slept in the barn.”

  The woman stood up without saying a word. The farmer jumped up from the table.

  “Why? Sleep here.”

  But the forester had already picked up the mattresses.

  The farmer led them into the high barn with a lamp. He watched for a minute as they got themselves ready, and for a moment there was an expression on his face as though he wished to say something. But he only raised his hand and rubbed his head. Then he left.

  “What’s all this about?” Betly asked. “The otarks won’t get into the house, surely?”

  Meller picked up a thick plank from the floor and forced it up against the heavy solid door, checking that it didn’t slip away.

  “Go to bed,” he said. “Anything can happen. They get into houses as well.”

  The journalist sat on the mattress and started to unlace his boots.

  “Tell me, are there any real bears left here? Not otarks, but real wild bears. Didn’t there used to be a lot of bears wandering around here, in the forest?

  “There aren’t anymore,” Meller replied. “The first thing that the otarks did when they broke out of the laboratory and got off the island was to destroy all the real bears. And the wolves. And there used to be raccoons and foxes—all the normal animals. They took poison from the ruined laboratory and poisoned the smaller animals. There were dead wolves lying around all over the place—for some reason they didn’t eat the wolves. But they ate the bears. They sometimes even eat each other.”

  “They eat each other?”

  “Of course, they’re not people. You don’t know what to expect from them.”

  “Do you think they’re just animals?”

  “No.” The forester shook his head. “We don’t think they’re wild animals. That’s the kind of thing they argue about in the cities, if they’re people or animals. Out here we know that they’re neither one thing nor the other. Don’t you see, it used to be like this: there were people and there were animals. And now there’s something else: the otarks. This is the first time such a thing has happened in the whole history of the world. Otarks aren’t animals—it would be great if they were just animals. But they’re not people either, of course.”

  “Tell me”—Betly felt that he couldn’t stop himself asking the question, even though he knew it was banal—“is it true that they find it very easy to learn higher mathematics?”

  The forester turned sharply toward him.

  “Listen, shut up about mathematics for once! Just shut up! I don’t give a toss if they know higher mathematics! Yeah, the otarks can do complicated math standing on their heads! So what? You need to be a person, that’s what the question really is.”

  He turned away and bit his lip.

  “He’s worked up,” Betly thought. “He’s still really worked up. He’s not a healthy man.”

  But the forester had already calmed down. He was uncomfortable to have flown off the handle. After a short silence, he asked:


  “Sorry, but have you seen him?”

  “Who?”

  “You know, the genius. Fidler.”

  “Fidler? Yes, I’ve seen him. I spoke to him just before I came out here. The newspaper sent me.”

  “I guess they keep him wrapped up in plastic over there? So he doesn’t get a single drop of rain on him.”

  “Yes, they look after him.” Betly remembered how they had checked his pass and frisked him for the first time by the walls of the Science Center. Then they had searched him again and checked his pass again at the entrance to the Institute. And the third search just before they let him into the garden where Fidler came out to meet him. “They look after him. But he is a truly gifted mathematician. He was only thirteen when he wrote his Corrections to the General Theory of Relativity. Of course, he’s an unusual man, you’d have to be.”

  “But what does he look like?”

  “What does he look like?”

  The journalist hesitated. He remembered Fidler coming out into the garden in his baggy white suit. There was something odd about his figure. His hips were wide, his shoulders narrow. A short neck…It had been a strange interview, because Betly felt that it was rather he who was being interviewed. Fidler had answered his questions. But somehow frivolously. As if he were laughing at the journalist and at the whole world of normal people out there, behind the walls of the Science Center. And he asked questions as well. Strange, almost foolish questions. Rubbish, like whether Betly liked carrot juice. As if the conversation were an experiment and he, Fidler, were carrying out research into a normal person.

  “Averagely tall,” Betly said. “Small eyes…Have you really never seen him? He’s been here, out at the lake and in the laboratory.”

  “He came twice,” Meller replied. “But he had so much security with him that they wouldn’t even let dead people get within a mile of him. That was back when they still kept the otarks behind fences, when Reichhardt and Klein were working with them. They ate Klein. And when the otarks escaped, Fidler never showed his face here again….What does he say about the otarks now?”