The Ninth Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack

by Dave Dryfoos

  Ignorant though we were of just those life-forms most familiar to Henry and Jane, we showed them our mornings specimens. They called these ants, bees, swallows—all forms of bird, I think—and were able to prove by the activities of these things that neither social organization, nor engineering, nor architecture were exclusively what Henry insisted on calling “human” specialties. But “human” is a word that distinguishes between us and them, and is therefore foreign to the sacred language.

  And as far as the language itself went, Zymn was prompt to point out that it wasn’t native to us, and for all we knew might not be native to them, either. And if it weren’t, well, they’d better come up with the Sign—quickly.

  So Henry tried to explain about history, which was his specialty. “None of these life-forms you’ve mentioned can write,” he said. “History, though, is the study of written records. And you’ve said that Those-Who-Taught made such records. Surely that proves our relationship.”

  Zymn was too impatient to answer. Instead, he leveled his projector and idly shot the vegetation the dog was tied to. His target disappeared. The dog was free. It walked stiffly toward us.

  “Call him,” said Henry to Jane, speaking very quickly. “Suppose he bites?”

  “Here Horace, here Horace, here Horace,” Jane said, and made a bird-note.

  The dog skirted around me, avoided Zymn as if equipped to read minds, and approached Jane. But on the way he stopped by a bit of vegetation and lifted his leg.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked, merely to ease the tension.

  “Leaving his scent,” Henry explained.

  “Another animal coming by could know he’d been here?” Zymn asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then he, too, can write history!”

  Jane suddenly doubled up and put an extremity over her mouth as if in pain. She seemed to have a breathing difficulty. Henry shook her violently.

  “You’ll insult them!” he said.

  “I—I just can’t help it,” she said. “Imagine devoting s-so many years to history and finding out you’re no better than a dog. You used to claim it was a dog’s life, but I never—Oh, this just tickles me—” And out of her mouth came the rippling sound.

  Zymn walked over and put a tentacle on her. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “She’ll stop, she’ll stop,” Henry said, and pried at the tentacle.

  With one sweep, Zymn tumbled him into the dust.

  “What are you doing?” he again demanded of Jane.

  “Laughing,” she said, and her voice broke as she said it. Moisture rolled from her eyes. “I’m laughing, but please don’t take offense. It’s just the way of some humans when under a strain.”

  “So?” said Zymn. “And you?” he asked Henry. “Are you laughing, to?”

  “All right,” said Henry, “yes, if you want to play tough. Yes, I’m laughing too!” And out came the sound, forced, strained, but genuine enough to be recognized.

  I looked at Zymn and he looked at me and said, “Okay, Orje. You win this time—you and Ayn. But if it weren’t for you two fools, I’d have a home for our people!”

  He started to levitate up the dam.

  “Wait!” said Henry. “Where are you going?”

  “Away,” said Zymn. But then, realizing the need, he came back and spoke more respectfully. “We can’t destroy the brethren of Those-Who-Taught. We owe too much to your kind.”

  “And—” Henry insisted.

  “And you’ve given the Sign. The Universe is full of life-forms that sing, and build, and record their presence variously. Each thinks itself important on that account, and all are wrong.

  “But you, my friend, are truly unique. Not because of the skill that built this dam. Not because of the stupid difficulty that developed over its name, either. All those things are really commonplace.

  “But you are the only animals that laugh!”

  TOO DENSE TO DIE

  Achievement? It’s a matter of insides, my boy. The secret of success lies in every man’s digestion. Just follow the ideas you get on nights of colicky sleeplessness and you’ll become as wealthy as me. There’s many a time when the human mind’s nothing but a gas-engine.

  It was heart-burn made me think up my Cybernetic Cooker. And out of that grew my Two-Way Space Pump, the basis of my fabulous tool-bit business. All the world knows our slogan—Buy Bye’s Bits—Bye-Bye Bumps.

  Like Henry Ford, that legendary figure of ancient industrial history, I was already middle-aged when I started toward success. I was rooming and boarding with Carrie Coles, the lady I’ve since married.

  The Cybernetic Cooker idea, when it came, was a big one and I needed space to work it out. So one night, after the other boarder had moved away, taking his ‘gyro from the basement hangar, I went into the kitchen to see if Carrie’d let me have a shop downstairs.

  Well, you know how women are. She wanted to be coaxed.

  “Need my hangar-space, do you,” she said, putting down the egg, tomato, cheese, olive, bacon and onion sandwich she was nibbling to keep her strength up till morning. “Well, you think too much, Wizard Bye. What are you going to invent this time—invisible light?”

  “Invisible light’s already been invented,” I told her. “You can see it lots of places. I’m designing a mechanical brain. That’s Cybernetics—an old-fashioned development of machines that think faster than men can.”

  “Why make a machine to think faster than men?” she scoffed. “There’s no shortage of women. Besides, it won’t work. Any machine that thinks like men will wear itself out thinking up ways to avoid thinking.”

  “You just don’t understand the creative process,” I said.

  “No?” she came back. “Have I forgotten the artificial rubber you strengthened until the Board of Health insisted it smelled strong enough? Or the silent boiler-riveting machine the police took away? Or the drain-cleaning compound that stopped all the sewers? Or—”

  The little lady raised her two hundred pounds of pleasing plumpness to the dainty feet she hadn’t seen in twenty years. “If you think you’re going to ruin my stove and ice-box,” she warned, shaking a finger like a delicate pink banana, “you do need a thinking machine!

  “And what’s wrong with my cooking, I’d like to know? After the way I work and slave over a hot stove, boiling your milk and barely taking time to fix the few things I eat all day—”

  “That’s just the point, Carrie,” I interrupted. “I can’t bear to see you work so hard. Besides, you’ll go down in history as the first woman ever to do Cybernetic Cooking—the neighbors’ll stand on their heads in envy!”

  “Hm,” she said, thoughtfully. “At that, I guess you can play in the hangar till it’s rented, Wiz. Of course, I’ll never actually use your hootenanny but another gadget might look nice by the sink if it was to be enameled in white and trimmed in chrome.”

  Well, sir, after that warning, you can be sure I was careful of the Cybernetic Cooker’s appearance. I followed the latest theories of interior decorating—designed my machine to harmonize with Carrie’s personal style of beauty. It was as wide as the whole hangar.

  But you know how women are. When I brought Carrie down to look at the finished masterwork she first flicked off invisible dust to establish title. Then she asked, “How in the world do you expect to get that tremendous contraption out of this basement and fit it into my crowded kitchen?”

  Well, I couldn’t answer right away because that happened to be one of the details I hadn’t got around to. But the Cybernetic Cooker itself could easily have solved the problem if she’d only given me a chance to translate her question into binary arithmetic and put it to the mechanical brain.

  I didn’t get time though. The very next night, just after I’d excused myself from the dinner table—she had eaten a cod-fish pizza with soy sauce—and had
gone to my room for a little bicarb, in clumped this red-haired stranger, Herc Hardhart, bringing a load of trouble on the broken-down dump-plane he parked just over my window.

  He was about six-feet-six and weighed three hundred twenty pounds in his sheer nylon sox. Had a nose for nourishment too—went straight from the front door to the dining room, though he had never seen the place before. That showed how rude he was but from the tone of Carrie’s voice as he scraped with his fork I knew she had found a boarder of her own kidney. I couldn’t stomach him.

  I knew he’d want the hangar where my Cybernetic Cooker was, so while he munched I stood in my room on pins and needles, with an ear glued to the door’s panel and my eyes riveted to its crack. Naturally that was one of the most painful periods of my life.

  The red-haired human tape-worm was eating his way right under Carrie’s skin. “I do like to see a man take his food,” she kept simpering. “Maybe that’s why I’m still a lonely widow. My present boarder is a skinny little runt with the appetite of a sick canary, though he ate normally when he first came here.

  “But you remind me of Rudy Coles, my fourth husband. There was a man now. Every night he used to eat a pound of raw hamburger with six fried eggs on top. Then he’d visit the corner tavern to see his friends and wash down a few pig’s-trotters and pretzels and pickles and olives and cheese and crackers and anchovies and onions with a little beer.

  “After that, his friends would send him home with a police escort. Why, even the autopsy surgeon admired him—said he had a cute digestion. Have some more of my nice jellied leeks, Mr. Hardhart.”

  I knew he’d taken some by his burp. When the windows stopped rattling he said, “Madam, you are a genuine geographic genius of the gastronomic. Advise me where to dispose my vehicle, and I shall enter upon tenancy forthwith.”

  I could see what was coming before Carrie even answered.

  “You might as well have another slice of this nice persimmon pie,” she told him. “My other boarder’s got a few things in the hangar right now but I’ll see he empties it out for you. And what’s the matter with my coffee? You haven’t had but five cups.”

  “I consider moderation best, don’t you?” Herc answered. “As the ancient Greeks accurately advised—the middle course.”

  “Every course goes to my middle,” Carrie replied. “But you needn’t worry about old Greek joints as long as you live here—I’ll fix your lunch every day in a suitcase. Now, if you’ve quite finished eating I’ll show you the hangar for your plane.”

  Knowing I was in for it, I followed them downstairs. Carrie introduced me.

  “Ah,” said Herc, driving my skull between my shoulders with a pat on the head. “The household’s white-haired boy, I see. Kindly identify this marvelous metallic monstrosity, my fatuously funny friend.”

  “Don’t call him friend till the hangar’s cleared,” Carrie advised. “This is supposed to be a mechanical cook, he says. Now I think of it that’s an insult!”

  “Any attempt to displace your internationalized culinary artistry with mechanistic meddling is sacrilegious,” Herc promptly agreed. “This glittering gargoyle must go—particularly inasmuch as I’ve contracted to rent the space it occupies.”

  “Contracted, hey?” I snorted. “That means you let him get by without paying! Carrie, you’re being taken for a ride—on a dump-plane. Why not let things stand? At least I pay cash.”

  “Now you’ve insulted us both!” Carrie snapped. “You get that gadget out of here, understand? I’ll give you exactly one week and if it’s still here then you’ll go with it!”

  “You heard the lady!” Herc echoed maliciously. “One week to shrink to invisibility this impious implement of insult. And if you shrink from the task I’ll personally diminish you to a damaged dot of dirt!” He turned and lumbered upstairs.

  “Ha!” mocked Carrie, following him back to the kitchen for a snack. “Get yourself Sanforized, milksop!”

  Poor Carrie! I knew she’d be sorry for speaking to me like that.

  She had certainly fallen for her new boarder, to have extended credit for the first time in a long life. The heavy hand of love had made her a soft touch—she thought she itched for Hardhart but it was only the wool over her eyes.

  Because her Herc certainly looked like the kind that thinks husband is something you do with your money. She’d never get him. She wouldn’t even collect for board—I could tell right away he’d unpurse nothing but his fat lips.

  Well, when it was over, a flash in the frying-pan, she’d need my new invention to cheer her up. And I certainly didn’t intend to do away with my Cybernetic Cooker for a pot-bellied gigolo. But getting out of that didn’t look so hard once I’d thought about it awhile.

  I got the idea trying to figure Carrie’s mind. Like all matter, including her gray-matter, my invention was full of vacant space. The open emptiness in and around atoms takes up most of anything’s volume.

  So all I’d have to do was suck the empty space out of my Cybernetic Cooker, move the Cooker to the kitchen, pour the space back in again and I’d be all set.

  What I needed was a Two-Way Space Pump.

  I set to work that same night. First thing was to strip the Cybernetic Cooker for equipment to build the Pump. That fooled Herc and Carrie into thinking I was dismantling the Cooker but of course I only took it completely apart in order to avoid dismantling it. They were outwitted, that’s all.

  But they didn’t pay much attention anyhow, being busy with their own problems. Every time Carrie hinted at rent-money Herc would put her off by praising her cooking.

  And his appetite was more flattering to Carrie than a dozen Nero Wolfe orchids. She forgot all about money and lay awake every other night thinking up new dishes. The nights in between she lay awake because she’d eaten them. Among other things, she fixed him sweet lentil pudding, minced pie à la sour cream, fried ravioli with sugar icing, baked alaska in tomato sauce, dill-pickle ice cream, and chocolate-covered frankfurters à la Felix.

  Neither had time for me, so I could concentrate on saving my Cybernetic Cooker. By the end of the allotted week it had entirely disappeared. In its place, made of its parts and a few others, was my Two-Way Space Pump. It took up very little more hangar-space than the Cooker had.

  And the Space Pump worked perfectly. Its field of electronic gravitation was transmitted in two cones for about five feet to front and rear. The front cone pumped the space from anything within range, reducing the gravitational potential of the sub-atomic particles. It shrunk things to dust mote size, unchanged in weight or chemistry. The rear field-cone returned the space to anything shrunk without disturbing ordinary matter.

  One thing, though—the hangar was fuller than ever. But I knew how to make room for Herc’s plane. I’d just build a second Space Pump. Then I’d use it to shrink the first one. I’d move that one, shrunk, to the kitchen.

  Next, I’d build a third Space Pump—demand would be world-wide, anyhow—use it to shrink the second and take that one upstairs too. With the second Space Pump I’d restore the first one’s size, so it could be rebuilt into the Cybernetic Cooker.

  Simple! I was sure the second Space Pump would restore the first one even when shrunk by the third, so all Carrie’d have to do was enlarge her kitchen till it could hold the Cooker. Then, with the third Space Pump still unshrunk in the hangar, we’d have this slight addition to the kitchen under which to park Herc’s plane.

  But you know how women are. I tried to explain when Carrie checked on the basement at the end of the week but she just stood on the bottom step, sucking a grapefruit, and refused to listen.

  “Wiz Bye, I’m simply not building a new hangar!” she said obstinately. “And Mr. Hardhart will be very angry. I don’t know what-all he’ll do.”

  What he did, when she called him to look at the spot his plane still couldn’t occupy, was try to chisel. “Since t
hat glittering gargantuosity remains heaped in my hangar,” he told me, “I shall have to haul it to the mid-ocean dump first thing tomorrow morning—at your expense. That will be a hundred fifty dollars—payable immediately.”

  He lunged for my collar but I got Carrie between us.

  “Honey,” I said to her, ignoring my huge antagonist as you’d ignore an angry elephant, “don’t let it be said you can’t appreciate my wonderful Two-Way Space Pump. This invention works! It shrinks things!”

  “Shrinks?” she repeated. “Why use a machine? We’ve got plenty of water.”

  “Will water shrink uranium?” I demanded. “Lookit!”

  I turned on the machine, picked a lump from the fuel-bin and tossed it before the Two-Way Space Pump—into the reduction-field. The ore that left my hands a chunk thudded to the floor a mere speck of grit.

  “My good fuel!” Carrie wailed. “You put that back, Wiz Bye!”

  “Easily,” I said easily. I reached under the invisible cone of energy, picked up the grit—quite a job, because of its concentrated, unchanged weight—held it under the restoring-cone and let them watch it return to normal.

  “Magic!” cried Carrie and looked at me with new respect.

  But Herc Hardhart was skeptical. “An oddly obvious optical illusion,” he gibed.

  Well, I showed him all right—demonstrated the Two-Way Space Pump on all kinds of things. Carrie got a big kick out of it. She was so interested she laid down her grapefruit and even forgot to eat the cold garlic-bread bulging the pocket of her tent-like house dress.

  But Herc was scheming as usual. After thinking awhile he said, “Our funny friend flings a fine farewell frolic, doesn’t he, Carrie? I almost wish his allotted week were not ending and that he were not under a solemn obligation to depart first thing in the morning, leaving his devious device behind as payment for the rental of my hangar.”

  “Gee-whiz, Wiz!” said Carrie, doubtfully. I opened my mouth to tell Herc off but he reached around Carrie to choke me with a gagging hand as he went on talking.