The Big Book of Science Fiction

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

The others were coming towards him across the park, but Binns didn’t look at them. He was looking at the hands. They were no longer his to control. They had held on to Teris’s body long after his own hands had let go, long after he had willed them to relax their grip. It seemed to him that their clutch was a sort of grim triumph. Now they were moving quickly and intelligently without any orders from him. He watched the right one curl, the fingers bending in, the thumb extending, thumb and forefinger touching. There was the sound of fingers snapping. An odd hollow sound, but one that Binns knew well.

  The others heard it too, and stopped. Each looked at the burden he carried with him. Farmer at the brain under his skin, Vitti at his other head, Tanizaki at his huge belly. Binns looked at his hands. Where the wrists met the skin of his chest, there was a sort of inflammation. It hurt. The skin was beginning to crack. Tanizaki fell to the ground, clutching his body. The fingers snapped again. Binns fell to his knees. The others were already on the ground. The rain was falling once more, but they didn’t notice, as under its still soft touch they gave birth to their master.

  Darkness

  ANDRÉ CARNEIRO

  Translated by Leo L. Barrow

  André Carneiro (1922–2014) was an all-around Renaissance man born in the small town of Atibaia, Brazil. He is regarded as Brazil’s best-known science fiction writer and was one of the founding fathers of Brazilian science fiction. But in addition he was a giant in the creative arts who gained national and international fame in many fields, including photography, film, painting, clinical hypnosis, advertising, and poetry. It is for poetry that he is best known in Brazil, having founded an influential Brazilian poetry journal along with a movement (Generation 45) and publishing his verse in influential magazines and anthologies. Some of his photography, representing the best of Brazilian modernism, is on permanent display in the Tate Modern museum in London. Among many honors, Carneiro received a medal from the French government for cultural exchange between France and Brazil and was chosen as Person of the Year in 2007 by the Brazilian Yearbook of Fantastic Literature. In 2009, he received a special award from the Brazilian Academy of Letters, and his hometown in 2014 and 2015 held a week of cultural events in his honor.

  In terms of science fiction, Carneiro published several novels and many influential short stories, translated into sixteen languages. He was the first South American member to join the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He also appeared in such anthologies as The Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction (Penguin Books, 1986), edited by Brian Aldiss and Sam J. Lundwall, and represented Brazil in the international collaborative science fiction novel Tales from the Planet Earth (1986), edited by Frederik Pohl and Elizabeth Anne Hull.

  His novella “Darkness” (1963), reprinted here, is a unique end-of-the-world story. It is considered an international classic and won the Nova, the Brazilian Hugo Award. Fans of the story included Arthur C. Clarke and A. E. van Vogt, who wrote that “Darkness” was one of the greatest science fiction stories ever written, comparing Carneiro to Kafka and Camus. The story preceded by several decades Portuguese writer José Saramago’s Blindness (1995), which shares some similarities with Carneiro’s tale with its depiction of a world where people are suddenly blind.

  DARKNESS

  André Carneiro

  Translated by Leo L. Barrow

  I

  Many were frightened, but Waldas wasn’t one of them. He went home at four o’clock. The lights were on. They gave off very little light—seemed like reddish balls, danger signals. At the lunch counter where he always ate, he got them to serve him cold sandwiches. There was only the owner and one waitress, who left afterward, walking slowly through the shadows.

  Waldas got to his apartment without difficulty. He was used to coming home late without turning on the hall lights. The elevator wasn’t working, so he walked up the stairs to the third floor. His radio emitted only strange sounds, perhaps voices, perhaps static. Opening the window, he confronted the thousands of reddish glows, lights of the huge buildings whose silhouettes stood out dimly against the starless sky.

  He went to the refrigerator and drank a glass of milk; the motor wasn’t working. The same thing would happen to the water pump. He put the plug in the bathtub and filled it. Locating his flashlight, he went through his small apartment, anxious to find his belongings with the weak light. He left the cans of powdered milk, cereal, some crackers, and a box of chocolates on the kitchen table and closed the window, turned out the lights, and lay down on the bed. A cold shiver ran through his body as he realized the reality of the danger.

  He slept fitfully, dreamed confused and disagreeable dreams. A child was crying in the next apartment, asking its mother to turn on the lights. He woke up startled. With the flashlight pressed against his watch, he saw that it was eight o’clock in the morning. He opened the windows. The darkness was almost complete. You could see the sun in the east, red and round, as if it were behind a thick smoked glass. In the street dim shapes of people passed by like silhouettes.

  With great difficulty Waldas managed to wash his face. He went to the kitchen and ate Rice Krispies with powdered milk. Force of habit made him think about his job. He realized that he didn’t have any place to go, and he remembered the terror he felt as a child when they locked him in a closet. There wasn’t enough air, and the darkness oppressed him. He went to the window and took a deep breath. The red disk of the sun hung in the dark background of the sky. Waldas couldn’t coordinate his thoughts; the darkness kept making him feel like running for help. He clenched his fists, repeated to himself, “I have to keep calm, defend my life until everything returns to normal.”

  II

  There was a knocking on his door; his heart beat more rapidly. It was his neighbor, asking for some water for the children. Waldas told him about the full bathtub, and went with him to get his wife and children. His prudence had paid off. They held hands and the human chain slid along the hall, the kids calmer, even the wife, who, no longer crying, kept repeating, “Thank you, thank you very much.”

  Waldas took them to the kitchen, made them sit down, the children clinging to their mother. He felt the cupboard, broke a glass, then found an aluminum pan which he filled from the bathtub and took to the table. He surrendered cups of water to the fingers that groped for them. He couldn’t keep them level without seeing and the water spilled onto his hands.

  As they drank, he wondered if he should offer them something to eat. The boy thanked him and said that he was hungry. Waldas picked up the big can of powdered milk and began to prepare it carefully. While he made the slow gestures of opening the can, counting the spoonfuls, and mixing them with water, he spoke in a loud voice. They encouraged him, telling him to be careful and praising his ability. Waldas took more than an hour to make and ration out the milk, and the effort, the certainty that he was being useful, did him good.

  One of the boys laughed at something funny. For the first time since the darkness had set in, Waldas felt optimistic, that everything would turn out all right. They spent an endless time after that in his apartment, trying to talk. They would lean on the windowsill, searching for some distant light, seeing it at times, all enthused, only to discover the deceit that they wouldn’t admit.

  Waldas had become the leader of that family. He fed them and led them through the small world of four rooms, which he knew with his eyes closed. They left at nine or ten that night, holding hands. Waldas accompanied them, helped put the children to bed. In the streets desperate fathers were shouting, asking for food. Waldas had closed the windows so he couldn’t hear them. What he had would be enough to feed the five of them for one or two more days.

  Waldas stayed with them, next to the children’s room. They lay there talking, their words like links of presence and company. They finally went to sleep, heads under their pillows like shipwrecked sailors clinging to logs, listening to pleas for help that they couldn’t possibly answer. They slept, dreaming about the breaking of a new day, a
blue sky, the sun flooding their rooms, their eyes, hungry from fasting, avidly feeding on the colors. It wasn’t that way.

  III

  Rationed and divided, the box of chocolates had come to an end. There was still cereal and powdered milk. If the light didn’t return soon it would be cruel to predict the consequences. The hours passed. Lying down again, eyes closed, fighting to go to sleep, they waited for the morning with its beams of light on the window. But they woke as before, their eyes useless, the flames extinguished, the stoves cold, and their food running out. Waldas divided the last of the cereal and milk. They became uneasy.

  The couple and their children were filled with hope when he suggested the only idea that might work. He would go out and break into a grocery store about a hundred yards away.

  Armed with a crowbar from his toolbox, he was leaving his shelter to steal food. It was frightening to think what he might encounter. The darkness had erased all distinctions. Waldas walked next to the wall, his mind reconstructing the details of this stretch, his hands investigating every indentation. Inch by inch his fingers followed the outline of the building until they came to the corrugated iron door. He couldn’t be wrong.

  It was the only commercial establishment on the block. He bent over to find the lock. His hands didn’t encounter resistance. The door was only half closed. He stooped over and entered without making a sound. The shelves on the right would have food and sweets. He collided with the counter, cursed, and remained motionless, muscles tensed, waiting. He climbed over the counter and began to reach out with his hand. It touched the board and he started running it along the shelf.

  There was nothing. Of course, they sold it before the total darkness. He raised his arm, searching more rapidly. Nothing, not a single object…

  He took up the crowbar again and with short careful steps he started back home in search of his invisible friends….He was lost. He sat down on the sidewalk, his temples throbbing. He struggled up like a drowning man and shouted, “Please, I’m lost, I need to know the name of this street.” He repeated it time after time, each time more loudly, but no one answered him. The more silence he felt around him, the more he implored, asking them to help him for pity’s sake. And why should they? He himself, from his own window, had heard the cries of the lost asking for help, their desperate voices causing one to fear the madness of an assault.

  Waldas started off without any direction, shouting for help, explaining that four persons depended on him. No longer feeling the walls, he walked hurriedly in circles, like a drunk, begging for information and food. “I’m Waldas, I live at number two fifteen, please help me.”

  There were noises in the darkness; impossible for them not to hear him. He cried and pleaded without the least shame, the black pall reducing him to a helpless child. The darkness stifled him, entering through his pores, changing his thoughts.

  Waldas stopped pleading. He bellowed curses at his fellow men, calling them evil names, asking them why they didn’t answer. His helplessness turned into hate, and he grasped the crowbar, ready to obtain food by violence. He came across others begging for food like himself. Waldas advanced, brandishing his crowbar until he collided with someone, grabbing him and holding him tightly. The man shouted and Waldas, without letting him go, demanded that he tell him where they were and how they could get some food. The other seemed old and broke into fearful sobs. Waldas relaxed the pressure, released him. He threw the weapon into the street and sat down on the sidewalk, listening to the small sounds, the wind rattling windows in the abandoned apartments. Different noises emerged from several directions, deep, rasping, and sharp sounds, from animals, men perhaps, trapped or famished.

  A light rhythmic beating of footsteps was approaching. He yelled for help and remained listening. A man’s voice, some distance away, answered him. “Wait, I’ll come and help you.”

  The man carried a heavy sack and was panting from the effort. He asked Waldas to help him by holding one end—he would go in front. Waldas sensed something inexplicable. He could hardly follow the man as he turned the corners with assurance. A doubt passed through his mind. Perhaps his companion could see a little; the light was coming back for the others. He asked him, “You walk with such assurance, you can’t by any chance see a little?”

  The man took a while to answer. “No, I can see absolutely nothing. I am completely blind.”

  Waldas stammered, “Before this…too?”

  “Yes, blind from birth, we are going to the Institute for the Blind, where I live.”

  Vasco, the blind man, told him that they had helped lost persons and had taken in a few. But their stock of food was small and they couldn’t take anybody else in. The darkness continued without any sign of ending. Thousands of people might die from starvation and nothing could be done. Waldas felt like a child that adults had saved from danger. At the Institute they gave him a glass of milk and some toast. In his memory, however, the image of his friends was growing, their hearts jumping at every sound, going hungry, waiting for his return.

  He spoke to Vasco. They deliberated. The apartment building was large, all the others living there also deserved help, something quite impracticable. Waldas remembered the children. He asked them to show him the way or he would go alone. He got up to leave, stumbled over something, falling. Vasco remembered that there was a bathtub full of water, and water was one thing they needed. They brought two big plastic containers, and Vasco led Waldas to the street. They tied a little cord around both their waists.

  Vasco, who knew the neighborhood, walked as fast as possible, choosing the best route, calling out the name of the streets, changing course when they heard suspicious sounds or mad ravings. Vasco stopped and said softly, “It must be here.” Waldas advanced a few steps, recognized the door latch. Vasco whispered for him to take off his shoes; they would go in without making any noise. After tying their shoes to the cord, they entered with Waldas in front, going up the stairs two at a time. They bumped into things along the way and heard unintelligible voices from behind the doors.

  Reaching the third floor, they went to his neighbor’s apartment, knocked softly and then more loudly. No one answered. They went to Waldas’s apartment. “It’s me, Waldas, let me in.”

  His neighbor uttered an exclamation like someone who didn’t believe it and opened the door, extending his arm for his friend to grasp.

  “It’s me all right. How is everybody? I brought a friend who saved me and knows the way.”

  In the bathroom they filled the two plastic containers with water, and Vasco tied them to the backs of the two men with strips of cloth. He also helped to identify some useful things they could take. They took off their shoes and in single file, holding hands, started for the stairs. They went hurriedly; they would inevitably be heard. On the main floor, next to the door, a voice inquired, “Who are you?” No one answered and Vasco pulled them all out into the street. In single file they gained distance; it would be difficult to follow them.

  It took more time to return because of the children, and the stops they made to listen to nearby noises. They arrived at the Institute exhausted, with the temporary feeling of relief of soldiers after winning a battle.

  Vasco served them oatmeal and milk and went to talk to his companions about what they would do to survive if the darkness continued. Another blind man fixed them a place to sleep, which came easily since they hadn’t slept for a long time. Hours later Vasco came to awaken them, saying that they had decided to leave the Institute and take refuge on the Model Farm that the Institute owned a few miles outside the city. Their supplies here wouldn’t last long and there was no way to replenish them without danger.

  IV

  Like mountain climbers, they formed four groups linked by a cord. Waldas was surprised when the cord tied to his waist pulled him into a dirt road. Without knowing how, he realized that they were in the country. How did the blind men find the exact spot? Perhaps through their sense of smell, the perfume of the trees like ripe lim
es. He breathed deeply. He knew that odor; it came from eucalyptus trees. He could imagine them in straight lines, on each side of the road. The column stopped; they had arrived at their unseen destination. For the time being the urgent fight to keep from dying of hunger had ended.

  The blind men brought them a cold soup that seemed to contain oatmeal and honey. Vasco directed the difficult maneuver to keep them from colliding. They had shelter and food. And the others who remained in the city, the sick in the hospitals, the small children…? No one could or wanted to know.

  There were carrots, tomatoes, and greens in the gardens, some ripe fruit in the orchard. They should distribute equal rations, a little more for the children. There was speculation as to whether the green vegetables would wilt after so many days without sunshine. The man in charge of the small henhouse told how he had fed the hens every day since the sun stopped shining, but they hadn’t laid since then….

  They were already in their sixteenth day when Vasco called Waldas aside. He told him that even the reserves of oatmeal, powdered milk, and canned goods that they had saved were almost gone. And their nervous condition was becoming aggravated; it wouldn’t be prudent to warn the others. Arguments came up over the least thing and were prolonged without reason. Most of them were on the edge of nervous collapse.

  During the early hours of the eighteenth day, they were awakened by shouts of joy and animation. One of the refugees who hadn’t been able to go to sleep had felt a difference in the atmosphere. He climbed the ladder outside the house.

  There was a pale red ball on the horizon.

  Everyone came out at once, pushing and falling, and remained there in a contagious euphoria waiting for the light to increase. Vasco asked if they really did see something, if it wasn’t just another false alarm. Someone remembered to strike a match and after a few attempts the flame appeared. It was fragile and without heat, but visible to the eyes of those who looked upon it as a rare miracle.