The Big Book of Science Fiction

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

  “A single human brain can perceive pattern on the scale of stars and galaxies,” Tomiko said, “and interpret it as Love.”

  Mannon looked from one to the other of them; Harfex was silent.

  “It’d be easier in the forest,” Osden said. “Which of you will fly me over?”

  “When?”

  “Now. Before you all crack up or go violent.”

  “I will,” Tomiko said.

  “None of us will,” Harfex said.

  “I can’t,” Mannon said. “I…I am too frightened. I’d crash the jet.”

  “Bring Eskwana along. If I can pull this off, he might serve as a medium.”

  “Are you accepting the Sensor’s plan, Coordinator?” Harfex asked formally.

  “Yes.”

  “I disapprove. I will come with you, however.”

  “I think we’re compelled, Harfex,” Tomiko said, looking at Osden’s face, the ugly white mask transfigured, eager as a lover’s face.

  Olleroo and Jenny Chong, playing cards to keep their thoughts from their haunted beds, their mounting dread, chattered like scared children. “This thing, it’s in the forest, it’ll get you—”

  “Scared of the dark?” Osden jeered.

  “But look at Eskwana, and Porlock, and even Asnanifoil—”

  “It can’t hurt you. It’s an impulse passing through synapses, a wind passing through branches. It is only a nightmare.”

  They took off in a helijet, Eskwana curled up still sound asleep in the rear compartment, Tomiko piloting, Harfex and Osden silent, watching ahead for the dark line of the forest across the vague grey miles of starlit plain. They neared the black line, crossed it; now under them was darkness.

  She sought a landing place, flying low, though she had to fight her frantic wish to fly high, to get out, get away. The huge vitality of the plant-world was far stronger here in the forest and its panic beat in immense dark waves. There was a pale patch ahead, a bare knoll-top a little higher than the tallest of the black shapes around it; the not-trees; the rooted; the parts of the whole. She set the helijet down in the glade, a bad landing. Her hands on the stick were slippery, as if she had rubbed them with cold soap.

  About them now stood the forest, black in darkness.

  Tomiko cowered and shut her eyes. Eskwana moaned in his sleep. Harfex’s breath came short and loud, and he sat rigid, even when Osden reached across him and slid the door open.

  Osden stood up; his back and bandaged head were just visible in the dim glow of the control panel as he paused stooping in the doorway.

  Tomiko was shaking. She could not raise her head. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” she said in a whisper. “No. No. No.”

  Osden moved suddenly and quietly, swinging out of the doorway, down into the dark. He was gone.

  I am coming! said a great voice that made no sound.

  Tomiko screamed. Harfex coughed; he seemed to be trying to stand up, but did not do so.

  Tomiko drew in upon herself, all centered in the blind eye in her belly, in the center of her being; and outside that there was nothing but the fear.

  It ceased.

  She raised her head; slowly unclenched her hands. She sat up straight. The night was dark, and stars shone over the forest. There was nothing else.

  “Osden,” she said, but her voice would not come. She spoke again, louder, a lone bullfrog croak. There was no reply.

  She began to realize that something had gone wrong with Harfex. She was trying to find his head in the darkness, for he had slipped down from the seat, when all at once, in the dead quiet, in the dark rear compartment of the craft, a voice spoke. “Good,” it said. It was Eskwana’s voice. She snapped on the interior lights and saw the engineer lying curled up asleep, his hand half over his mouth.

  The mouth opened and spoke. “All well,” it said.

  “Osden—”

  “All well,” said the voice from Eskwana’s mouth.

  “Where are you?”

  Silence.

  “Come back.”

  A wind was rising. “I’ll stay here,” the soft voice said.

  “You can’t stay—”

  Silence.

  “You’d be alone, Osden!”

  “Listen.” The voice was fainter, slurred, as if lost in the sound of wind. “Listen. I will you well.”

  She called his name after that, but there was no answer. Eskwana lay still. Harfex lay stiller.

  “Osden!” she cried, leaning out the doorway into the dark, wind-shaken silence of the forest of being. “I will come back. I must get Harfex to the base. I will come back, Osden!”

  Silence and wind in leaves.

  —

  They finished the prescribed survey of World 4470, the eight of them; it took them forty-one days more. Asnanifoil and one or another of the women went into the forest daily at first, searching for Osden in the region around the bare knoll, though Tomiko was not in her heart sure which bare knoll they had landed on that night in the very heart and vortex of terror. They left piles of supplies for Osden, food enough for fifty years, clothing, tents, tools. They did not go on searching; there was no way to find a man alone, hiding if he wanted to hide, in those unending labyrinths and dim corridors, vine-entangled, root-floored. They might have passed within arm’s reach of him and never seen him.

  But he was there; for there was no fear anymore. Rational, and valuing reason more highly after an intolerable experience of the immortal mindless, Tomiko tried to understand rationally what Osden had done. But the words escaped her control. He had taken the fear into himself, and, accepting, had transcended it. He had given up his self to the alien, an unreserved surrender, that left no place for evil. He had learned the love of the Other, and thereby had been given his whole self. But this is not the vocabulary of reason.

  The people of the Survey team walked under the trees, through the vast colonies of life, surrounded by a dreaming silence, a brooding calm that was half aware of them and wholly indifferent to them. There were no hours. Distance was no matter. Had we but world enough and time…The planet turned between the sunlight and the great dark; winds of winter and summer blew fine, pale pollen across the quiet seas.

  Gum returned after many surveys, years, and light-years, to what had several centuries ago been Smeming Port. There were still men there, to receive (incredulously) the team’s reports, and to record its losses: Biologist Harfex, dead of fear, and Sensor Osden, left as a colonist.

  Good News from the Vatican

  ROBERT SILVERBERG

  Robert Silverberg (1935– ) is an influential US writer and editor of science fiction and fantasy who began to explore science fiction while studying at Columbia University. He has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards during a long and distinguished sixty-year career. He won his first Hugo in 1956 for Best New Writer and for most of his life has balanced his writing with a prodigious editing schedule, having edited or coedited more than seventy anthologies. These anthologies, including the Universe series, would have been considerable, noteworthy achievements even had Silverberg not written fiction; Silverberg has often championed new writers and nontraditional fiction. He was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1999 and received the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Award in 2004.

  During the late fifties, Silverberg wrote, by his estimation, a million words a year, mostly for various magazines and Ace Doubles, before briefly retiring from science fiction due to what some termed a collapse in the market. However, in the mid-1960s, Silverberg returned with material that was considered far superior and mature compared with his fifties output, including the novels Downward to the Earth, The World Inside, and Dying Inside. Silverberg once again retired from writing in the late seventies, due to the stresses of thyroid issues and a house fire, but he returned in 1980 with his vastly popular Majipoor series, starting with the novel Lord Valentine’s Castle. Both Silverberg’s novels and short fiction are immensely popular with readers
. He is one of the few writers to adapt to the changing landscape of genre fiction over a span that saw the rise of the New Wave, feminist SF, cyberpunk, and Humanism.

  “Good News from the Vatican” (Universe 1, 1971) won the Nebula Award. It showcases Silverberg’s oft-neglected gift for satire in a humorous story that pokes fun at religious power structures.

  GOOD NEWS FROM THE VATICAN

  Robert Silverberg

  This is the morning everyone has waited for, when at last the robot cardinal is to be elected pope. There can no longer be any doubt of the outcome. The conclave has been deadlocked for many days between the obstinate advocates of Cardinal Asciuga of Milan and Cardinal Carciofo of Genoa, and word has gone out that a compromise is in the making. All factions now are agreed on the selection of the robot. This morning I read in Osservatore Romano that the Vatican computer itself has taken a hand in the deliberations. The computer has been strongly urging the candidacy of the robot. I suppose we should not be surprised by this loyalty among machines. Nor should we let it distress us. We absolutely must not let it distress us.

  “Every era gets the pope it deserves,” Bishop FitzPatrick observed somewhat gloomily today at breakfast. “The proper pope for our times is a robot, certainly. At some future date it may be desirable for the pope to be a whale, an automobile, a cat, a mountain.” Bishop FitzPatrick stands well over two meters in height and his normal facial expression is a morbid, mournful one. Thus it is impossible for us to determine whether any particular pronouncement of his reflects existential despair or placid acceptance. Many years ago he was a star player for the Holy Cross championship basketball team. He has come to Rome to do research for a biography of St. Marcellus the Righteous.

  We have been watching the unfolding drama of the papal election from an outdoor cafe several blocks from the Square of St. Peter’s. For all of us, this has been an unexpected dividend of our holiday in Rome; the previous pope was reputed to be in good health and there was no reason to suspect that a successor would have to be chosen for him this summer.

  Each morning we drive across by taxi from our hotel near the Via Veneto and take up our regular positions around “our” table. From where we sit, we all have a clear view of the Vatican chimney through which the smoke of the burning ballots rises: black smoke if no pope has been elected, white if the conclave has been successful. Luigi, the owner and headwaiter, automatically brings us our preferred beverages: Fernet-Branca for Bishop FitzPatrick, Campari and soda for Rabbi Mueller, Turkish coffee for Miss Harshaw, lemon squash for Kenneth and Beverly, and Pernod on the rocks for me. We take turns paying the check, although Kenneth has not paid it even once since our vigil began. Yesterday, when Miss Harshaw paid, she emptied her purse and found herself three hundred fifty lire short; she had nothing else except hundred-dollar travelers’ checks. The rest of us looked pointedly at Kenneth but he went on calmly sipping his lemon squash. After a brief period of tension Rabbi Mueller produced a five-hundred-lire coin and rather irascibly slapped the heavy silver piece against the table. The rabbi is known for his short temper and vehement style. He is twenty-eight years old, customarily dresses in a fashionable plaid cassock and silvered sunglasses, and frequently boasts that he has never performed a bar mitzvah ceremony for his congregation, which is in Wicomico County, Maryland. He believes that the rite is vulgar and obsolete, and invariably farms out all of his bar mitzvahs to a franchised organization of itinerant clergymen who handle such affairs on a commission basis. Rabbi Mueller is an authority on angels.

  Our group is divided over the merits of electing a robot as the new pope. Bishop FitzPatrick, Rabbi Mueller, and I are in favor of the idea. Miss Harshaw, Kenneth, and Beverly are opposed. It is interesting to note that both of our gentlemen of the cloth, one quite elderly and one fairly young, support this remarkable departure from tradition. Yet the three “swingers” among us do not.

  I am not sure why I align myself with the progressives. I am a man of mature years and fairly sedate ways. Nor have I ever concerned myself with the doings of the Church of Rome. I am unfamiliar with Catholic dogma and unaware of recent currents of thought within the Church. Still, I have been hoping for the election of the robot since the start of the conclave. Why? I wonder. Is it because the image of a metal creature upon the Throne of St. Peter’s stimulates my imagination and tickles my sense of the incongruous? That is, is my support of the robot purely an aesthetic matter? Or is it, rather, a function of my moral cowardice? Do I secretly think that this gesture will buy the robots off? Am I privately saying, Give them the papacy and maybe they won’t want other things for a while? No. I can’t believe anything so unworthy of myself. Possibly I am for the robot because I am a person of unusual sensitivity to the needs of others.

  “If he’s elected,” says Rabbi Mueller, “he plans an immediate time-sharing agreement with the Dalai Lama and a reciprocal plug-in with the head programmer of the Greek Orthodox Church, just for starters. I’m told he’ll make ecumenical overtures to the rabbinate as well, which is certainly something for all of us to look forward to.”

  “I don’t doubt that there’ll be many corrections in the customs and practices of the hierarchy,” Bishop FitzPatrick declares. “For example, we can look forward to superior information-gathering techniques as the Vatican computer is given a greater role in the operations of the Curia. Let me illustrate by—”

  “What an utterly ghastly notion,” Kenneth says. He is a gaudy young man with white hair and pink eyes. Beverly is either his wife or his sister. She rarely speaks. Kenneth makes the sign of the Cross with offensive brusqueness and murmurs, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Automaton.” Miss Harshaw giggles but chokes the giggle off when she sees my disapproving face.

  Dejectedly, but not responding at all to the interruption, Bishop FitzPatrick continues, “Let me illustrate by giving you some figures I obtained yesterday afternoon. I read in the newspaper Oggi that during the last five years, according to a spokesman for the Missiones Catholic, the Church has increased its membership in Yugoslavia from 19,381,403 to 23,501,062. But the government census taken last year gives the total population of Yugoslavia at 23,575,194. That leaves only 74,132 for the other religious and irreligious bodies. Aware of the large Moslem population of Yugoslavia, I suspected an inaccuracy in the published statistics and consulted the computer in St. Peter’s, which informed me”—the bishop, pausing, produces a lengthy printout and unfolds it across much of the table—“that the last count of the Faithful in Yugoslavia, made a year and a half ago, places our numbers at 14,206,198. Therefore an overstatement of 9,294,864 has been made. Which is absurd. And perpetuated. Which is damnable.”

  “What does he look like?” Miss Harshaw asks. “Does anyone have any idea?”

  “He’s like all the rest,” says Kenneth. “A shiny metal box with wheels below and eyes on top.”

  “You haven’t seen him,” Bishop FitzPatrick interjects. “I don’t think it’s proper for you to assume that—”

  “They’re all alike,” Kenneth says. “Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen all of them. Shiny boxes. Wheels. Eyes. And voices coming out of their bellies like mechanized belches. Inside, they’re all cogs and gears.” Kenneth shudders delicately. “It’s too much for me to accept. Let’s have another round of drinks, shall we?”

  Rabbi Mueller says, “It so happens that I’ve seen him with my own eyes.”

  “You have?” Beverly exclaims.

  Kenneth scowls at her. Luigi, approaching, brings a tray of new drinks for everyone. I hand him a five-thousand-lire note. Rabbi Mueller removes his sunglasses and breathes on their brilliantly reflective surfaces. He has small, watery gray eyes and a bad squint. He says, “The cardinal was the keynote speaker at the Congress of World Jewry that was held last fall in Beirut. His theme was ‘Cybernetic Ecumenicism for Contemporary Man.’ I was there. I can tell you that His Eminence is tall and distinguished, with a fine voice and a gentle smile. There’s something in
herently melancholy about his manner that reminds me greatly of our friend the bishop, here. His movements are graceful and his wit is keen.”

  “But he’s mounted on wheels, isn’t he?” Kenneth persists.

  “On treads,” replies the rabbi, giving Kenneth a fiery, devastating look and resuming his sunglasses. “Treads, like a tractor has. But I don’t think that treads are spiritually inferior to feet, or, for that matter, to wheels. If I were a Catholic I’d be proud to have a man like that as my pope.”

  “Not a man,” Miss Harshaw puts in. A giddy edge enters her voice whenever she addresses Rabbi Mueller. “A robot,” she says. “He’s not a man, remember?”

  “A robot like that as my pope, then,” Rabbi Mueller says, shrugging at the correction. He raises his glass. “To the new pope!”

  “To the new pope!” cries Bishop FitzPatrick.

  Luigi comes rushing from his cafe. Kenneth waves him away. “Wait a second,” Kenneth says. “The election isn’t over yet. How can you be so sure?”

  “The Osservatore Romano,” I say, “indicates in this morning’s edition that everything will be decided today. Cardinal Carciofo has agreed to withdraw in his favor, in return for a larger real-time allotment when the new computer hours are decreed at next year’s consistory.”

  “In other words, the fix is in,” Kenneth says.

  Bishop FitzPatrick sadly shakes his head. “You state things much too harshly, my son. For three weeks now we have been without a Holy Father. It is God’s Will that we shall have a pope; the conclave, unable to choose between the candidacies of Cardinal Carciofo and Cardinal Asciuga, thwarts that Will; if necessary, therefore, we must make certain accommodations with the realities of the times so that His Will shall not be further frustrated. Prolonged politicking within the conclave now becomes sinful. Cardinal Carciofo’s sacrifice of his personal ambitions is not as self-seeking an act as you would claim.”

  Kenneth continues to attack poor Carciofo’s motives for withdrawing. Beverly occasionally applauds his cruel sallies. Miss Harshaw several times declares her unwillingness to remain a communicant of a church whose leader is a machine. I find this dispute distasteful and swing my chair away from the table to have a better view of the Vatican. At this moment the cardinals are meeting in the Sistine Chapel. How I wish I were there! What splendid mysteries are being enacted in that gloomy, magnificent room! Each prince of the Church now sits on a small throne surmounted by a violet-hued canopy. Fat wax tapers glimmer on the desk before each throne. Masters of ceremonies move solemnly through the vast chamber, carrying the silver basins in which the blank ballots repose. These basins are placed on the table before the altar. One by one the cardinals advance to the table, take ballots, return to their desks. Now, lifting their quill pens, they begin to write. “I, Cardinal ——, elect to the Supreme Pontificate the Most Reverend Lord my Lord Cardinal ——.” What name do they fill in? Is it Carciofo? Is it Asciuga? Is it the name of some obscure and shriveled prelate from Madrid or Heidelberg, some last-minute choice of the anti-robot faction in its desperation? Or are they writing his name? The sound of scratching pens is loud in the chapel. The cardinals are completing their ballots, sealing them at the ends, folding them, folding them again and again, carrying them to the altar, dropping them into the great gold chalice. So have they done every morning and every afternoon for days, as the deadlock has prevailed.