by Drew Ford
“If the sun does blow up,” Bill asked abruptly—trying to catch his hallucination unawares—“what would happen?”
“Why, your planet would be melted instantly. All the planets, in fact, right out to Jupiter.”
Bill had to admit that this was quite a grandiose conception. He let his mind play with the thought, and the more he considered it, the more he liked it.
“My dear hallucination,” he remarked pityingly. “If I believed you, d’you know what I’d say?”
“But you must believe us!” came the despairing cry across the light-years.
Bill ignored it. He was warming to his theme.
“I’d tell you this. It would be the best thing that could possibly happen. Yes, it would save a whole lot of misery. No one would have to worry about the Russians and the atom bomb and the high cost of living. Oh, it would be wonderful! It’s just what everybody really wants. Nice of you to come along and tell us, but just you go back home and pull your old bridge after you.”
There was consternation on Thaar. The Supreme Scientist’s brain, floating like a great mass of coral in its tank of nutrient solution, turned slightly yellow about the edges—something it had not done since the Xantil invasion, five thousand years ago. At least fifteen psychologists had nervous breakdowns and were never the same again. The main computer in the College of Cosmophysics started dividing every number in its memory circuits by zero, and promptly blew all its fuses.
And on Earth, Bill Cross was really hitting his stride.
“Look at me,” he said, pointing a wavering finger at his chest. “I’ve spent years trying to make rockets do something useful, and they tell me I’m only allowed to build guided missiles, so that we can all blow each other up. The Sun will make a neater job of it, and if you did give us another planet we’d only start the whole damn thing all over again.”
He paused sadly, marshaling his morbid thoughts.
“And now Brenda heads out of town without even leaving a note. So you’ll pardon my lack of enthusiasm for your Boy Scout act.”
He couldn’t have said “enthusiasm” aloud, Bill realized. But he could still think it, which was an interesting scientific discovery. As he got drunker and drunker, would his cogitation—whoops, that nearly threw him!—finally drop down to words of one syllable?
In a final despairing exertion, the Thaarns sent their thoughts along the tunnel between the stars.
“You can’t really mean it, Bill! Are all human beings like you?”
Now that was an interesting philosophical question, Bill considered it carefully—or as carefully as he could in view of the warm, rosy glow that was now beginning to envelope him. After all, things might be worse. He could get another job, if only for the pleasure of telling General Porter what he could do with his three stars. And as for Brenda—well, women were like streetcars: there’d always be another along in a minute.
Best of all, there was a second bottle of whiskey in the top secret file. Oh, frabjous day! He rose unsteadily to his feet and wavered across the room.
For the last time, Thaar spoke to Earth.
“Bill!” it repeated desperately. “Surely all human beings can’t be like you!”
Bill turned and looked into the swirling tunnel. Strange—it seemed to be lit with flecks of starlight, and was really rather pretty. He felt proud of himself: not many people could imagine that.
“Like me?” he said. “No, they’re not.” He smiled smugly across the light-years, as the rising tide of euphoria lifted him out of his despondency. “Come to think of it,” he added, “there are a lot of people much worse off than me. Yes, I guess I must be one of the lucky ones, after all.”
He blinked in mild surprise, for the tunnel had suddenly collapsed upon itself and the whitewashed wall was there again, exactly as it had always been. Thaar knew when it was beaten.
“So much for that hallucination,” thought Bill. “I was getting tired of it, anyway. Let’s see what the next one’s like.”
As it happened, there wasn’t a next one, for five seconds later he passed out cold, just as he was setting the combination of the file cabinet.
The next two days were rather vague and bloodshot, and he forgot all about the interview.
On the third day something was nagging at the back of his mind: he might have remembered if Brenda hadn’t turned up again and kept him busy being forgiving.
And there wasn’t a fourth day, of course.
UPON THE DULL EARTH
PHILIP K. DICK
“Who is Silvia? What is she?”
Oh, no!
What is Silvia . . .
and who isn’t she?
SILVIA ran laughing through the night brightness, between the roses and cosmos and Shasta daisies, down the gravel paths and beyond the heaps of sweet-tasting grass swept from the lawns. Stars, caught in pools of water, glittered everywhere, as she brushed through them to the slope beyond the brick wall. Cedars supported the sky and ignored the slim shape squeezing past, her brown hair flying, her eyes flashing.
“Wait for me,” Rick complained, as he cautiously threaded his way after her, along the half-familiar path. Silvia danced on without stopping. “Slow down!” he shouted angrily.
“Can’t—we’re late.” Without warning, Silvia appeared in front of him, blocking the path. “Empty your pockets,” she gasped, her gray eyes sparkling. “Throw away all metal. You know they can’t stand metal.”
Rick searched his pockets. In his overcoat were two dimes and a fifty-cent piece. “Do these count?”
“Yes!” Silvia snatched the coins and threw them into the dark heaps of calla lilies. The bits of metal hissed into the moist depths and were gone. “Anything else?” She caught hold of his arm anxiously. “They’re already on their way. Anything else, Rick?”
“Just my watch.” Rick pulled his wrist away as Silvia’s wild fingers snatched for the watch. “That’s not going in the bushes.”
“Then lay it on the sundial—or the wall. Or in a hollow tree.” Silvia raced off again. Her excited, rapturous voice danced back to him. “Throw away your cigarette case. And your keys, your belt buckle—everything metal. You know how they hate metal. Hurry, we’re late!”
Rick followed sullenly after her. “All right, witch.”
Silvia snapped at him furiously from the darkness. “Don’t say that! It isn’t true. You’ve been listening to my sisters and my mother and—”
Her words were drowned out by the sound. Distant flapping, a long way off, like vast leaves rustling in a winter storm. The night sky was alive with the frantic pounding; they were coming very quickly this time. They were too greedy, too desperately eager to wait. Flickers of fear touched the man and he ran to catch up with Silvia.
Silvia was a tiny column of green skirt and blouse in the center of the thrashing mass. She was pushing them away with one arm and trying to manage the faucet with the other. The churning activity of wings and bodies twisted her like a reed. For a time she was lost from sight.
“Rick!” she called faintly. “Come here and help!” She pushed them away and struggled up. “They’re suffocating me!”
Rick fought his way through the wall of flashing white to the edge of the trough. They were drinking greedily at the blood that spilled from the wooden faucet. He pulled Silvia close against him; she was terrified and trembling. He held her tight until some of the violence and fury around them had died down.
“They’re hungry,” Silvia gasped feebly.
“You’re a little cretin for coming ahead. They can sear you to ash!”
“I know. They can do anything.” She shuddered, excited and frightened. “Look at them,” she whispered, her voice husky with awe. “Look at the size of them—their wingspread. And they’re white, Rick. Spotless—perfect. There’s nothing in our world as spotless as that. Great and clean and wonderful.”
“They certainly wanted the lamb’s blood.”
Silvia’s soft hair blew against his face as the
wings fluttered on all sides. They were leaving now, roaring up into the night sky. Not up, really—away. Back to their own world, whence they had scented the blood. But it was not only the blood—they had come because of Silvia. She had attracted them.
The girl’s gray eyes were wide. She reached up toward the rising white creatures. One of them swooped close. Grass and flowers sizzled as blinding white flames roared in a brief fountain. Rick scrambled away. The flaming figure hovered momentarily over Silvia and then there was a hollow pop. The last of the white-winged giants was gone. The air, the ground, gradually cooled into darkness and silence.
“I’m sorry,” Silvia whispered.
“Don’t do it again,” Rick managed. He was numb with shock. “It isn’t safe.”
“Sometimes I forget. I’m sorry, Rick. I didn’t mean to draw them so close.” She tried to smile. “I haven’t been that careless in months. Not since that other time, when I first brought you out here.” The avid, wild look slid across her face. “Did you see him? Power and flames! And he didn’t even touch us. He just—looked at us. That was all. And everything’s burned up, all around.”
Rick grabbed hold of her. “Listen,” he grated. “You mustn’t call them again. It’s wrong. This isn’t their world.”
“It’s not wrong—it’s beautiful.”
“It’s not safe!” His fingers dug into her flesh until she gasped. “Stop tempting them down here!”
Silvia laughed hysterically. She pulled away from him, out into the blasted circle that the horde of angels had seared behind them as they rose into the sky. “I can’t help it,” she cried. “I belong with them. They’re my family, my people. Generations of them, back into the past.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re my ancestors. And someday I’ll join them.”
“You are a little witch!” Rick shouted furiously.
“No,” Silvia answered. “Not a witch, Rick. Don’t you see? I’m a saint.”
The kitchen was warm and bright. Silvia plugged in the Silex and got a big red can of coffee down from the cupboards over the sink. “You mustn’t listen to them,” she said, as she set out plates and cups and got cream from the refrigerator. “You know they don’t understand. Look at them in there.”
Silvia’s mother and her sisters, Betty Lou and Jean, stood huddled together in the living room, fearful and alert, watching the young couple in the kitchen. Walter Everett was standing by the fireplace, his face blank, remote.
“Listen to me,” Rick said. “You have this power to attract them. You mean you’re not—isn’t Walter your real father?”
“Oh, yes—of course he is. I’m completely human. Don’t I look human?”
“But you’re the only one who has the power.”
“I’m not physically different,” Silvia said thoughtfully. “I have the ability to see, that’s all. Others have had it before me—saints, martyrs. When I was a child, my mother read to me about St. Bernadette. Remember where her cave was? Near a hospital. They were hovering there and she saw one of them.”
“But the blood! It’s grotesque. There never was anything like that.”
“Oh, yes. The blood draws them, lamb’s blood especially. They hover over battlefields. Valkyries—carrying off the dead to Valhalla. That’s why saints and martyrs cut and mutilate themselves. You know where I got the idea?”
Silvia fastened a little apron around her waist and filled the Silex with coffee. “When I was nine years old, I read of it in Homer, in the Odyssey. Ulysses dug a trench in the ground and filled it with blood to attract the spirits. The shades from the nether world.”
“That’s right,” Rick admitted reluctantly. “I remember.”
“The ghosts of people who died. They had lived once. Everybody lives here, then dies and goes there.” Her face glowed. “We’re all going to have wings! We’re all going to fly. We’ll all be filled with fire and power. We won’t be worms any more.”
“Worms! That’s what you always call me.”
“Of course you’re a worm. We’re all worms—grubby worms creeping over the crust of the Earth, through dust and dirt.”
“Why should blood bring them?”
“Because it’s life and they’re attracted by life. Blood is uisge beatha—the water of life.”
“Blood means death! A trough of spilled blood . . .”
“It’s not death. When you see a caterpillar crawl into its cocoon, do you think it’s dying?”
Walter Everett was standing in the doorway. He stood listening to his daughter, his face dark. “One day,” he said hoarsely, “they’re going to grab her and carry her off. She wants to go with them. She’s waiting for that day.”
“You see?” Silvia said to Rick. “He doesn’t understand either.” She shut off the Silex and poured coffee. “Coffee for you?” she asked her father.
“No,” Everett said.
“Silvia,” Rick said, as if speaking to a child, “if you went away with them, you know you couldn’t come back to us.”
“We all have to cross sooner or later. It’s part of our life.”
“But you’re only nineteen,” Rick pleaded. “You’re young and healthy and beautiful. And our marriage—what about our marriage?” He half-rose from the table. “Silvia, you’ve got to stop this!”
“I can’t stop it. I was seven when I saw them first.” Silvia stood by the sink, gripping the Silex, a faraway look in her eyes. “Remember, Daddy? We were living back in Chicago. It was winter. I fell, walking home from school.” She held up a slim arm. “See the scar? I fell and cut myself on the gravel and slush. I came home crying—it was sleeting and the wind was howling around me. My arm was bleeding and my mitten was soaked with blood. And then I looked up and saw them.”
There was silence.
“They want you,” Everett said wretchedly. “They’re flies—bluebottles, hovering around, waiting for you. Calling you to come along with them.”
“Why not?” Silvia’s gray eyes were shining and her cheeks radiated joy and anticipation. “You’ve seen them, Daddy. You know what it means. Transfiguration—from clay into gods!”
Rick left the kitchen. In the living room, the two sisters stood together, curious and uneasy. Mrs. Everett stood by herself, her face granite-hard, eyes bleak behind her steel-rimmed glasses. She turned away as Rick passed them.
“What happened out there?” Betty Lou asked him in a taut whisper. She was fifteen, skinny and plain, hollow-cheeked, with mousy, sand-colored hair. “Silvia never lets us come out with her.”
“Nothing happened,” Rick answered.
Anger stirred the girl’s barren face. “That’s not true. You were both out there in the garden, in the dark, and—”
“Don’t talk to him!” her mother snapped. She yanked the two girls away and shot Rick a glare of hatred and misery. Then she turned quickly from him.
Rick opened the door to the basement and switched on the light. He descended slowly into the cold, damp room of concrete and dirt, with its unwinking yellow lights hanging from dust-covered wires overhead.
In one corner loomed the big floor furnace with its mammoth hot air pipes. Beside it stood the water heater and discarded bundles, boxes of books, newspapers and old furniture, thick with dust, encrusted with strings of spider webs.
At the far end were the washing machine and spin dryer. And Silvia’s pump and refrigeration system.
From the workbench Rick selected a hammer and two heavy pipe wrenches. He was moving toward the elaborate tanks and pipes when Silvia appeared abruptly at the top of the stairs, her coffee cup in one hand.
She hurried quickly down to him. “What are you doing down here?” she asked, studying him intently. “Why that hammer and those two wrenches?”
Rick dropped the tools back onto the bench. “I thought maybe this could be solved on the spot.”
Silvia moved between him and the tanks. “I thought you understood. They’ve always been a part of my life. When I br
ought you with me the first time, you seemed to see what—”
“I don’t want to lose you,” Rick said harshly, “to anybody or anything—in this world or any other. I’m not going to give you up.”
“It’s not giving me up!” Her eyes narrowed. “You came down here to destroy and break everything. The moment I’m not looking you’ll smash all this, won’t you?”
“That’s right.”
Fear replaced anger on the girl’s face. “Do you want me to be chained here? I have to go on—I’m through with this part of the journey. I’ve stayed here long enough.”
“Can’t you wait?” Rick demanded furiously. He couldn’t keep the ragged edge of despair out of his voice. “Doesn’t it come soon enough anyhow?”
Silvia shrugged and turned away, her arms folded, her red lips tight together. “You want to be a worm always. A fuzzy, little creeping caterpillar.”
“I want you.”
“You can’t have me!” She whirled angrily. “I don’t have any time to waste with this.”
“You have higher things in mind,” Rick said savagely.
“Of course.” She softened a little. “I’m sorry, Rick. Remember Icarus? You want to fly, too. I know it.”
“In my time.”
“Why not now? Why wait? You’re afraid.” She slid lithely away from him, cunning twisting her red lips. “Rick, I want to show you something. Promise me first—you won’t tell anybody.”
“What is it?”
“Promise?” She put her hand to his mouth. “I have to be careful. It cost a lot of money. Nobody knows about it. It’s what they do in China—everything goes toward it.”
“I’m curious,” Rick said. Uneasiness flicked at him. “Show it to me.”
Trembling with excitement, Silvia disappeared behind the huge, lumbering refrigerator, back into the darkness behind the web of frost-hard freezing coils. He could hear her tugging and pulling at something. Scraping sounds, sounds of something large being dragged out.
