The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 2 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  STUFF FROM OUTER SPACE

  My pulse quickened and my fingers clawed at the popcorn. . . .

  * * * *

  “I can’t understand it.”

  The words were spoken by a young fellow with white shoe-polish in his hair and a fascinating network of greasepaint lines on his face. These told me he was Elderly and lent weight to his next utterance: “Never in my entire medical career have I encountered anything remotely like it.”

  The camera pulled away to reveal the body of a sumptuously shaped starlet, horizontal on a white slab. I was keenly disappointed to see her dead, for she had been unusually active in the newspaper ads—veritably entwined in horror around the H of THE, baring her thighs and eyeballs with equal vigor, and displaying a healthy supply of pearly molars. However, I was too excited to quibble.

  A gentleman with prognathous jaws and a belligerent manner asked, “What’s the cause of death, Doc?”

  The Doctor scratched his head, got a fingernailful of white shoe-polish, and replied softly, “Severe nausea, Lieutenant.”

  “Brought on by what?”

  The Doctor’s silence and tight-lipped headshake were eloquent. Eloquent or not, though, he had a line and, by Gadfrey, he was going to say it: “I . . . don’t . . . know,” he said. And added, “That’s more in your department, isn’t it— the police—rather than mine?”

  It was the Lieutenant’s big scene. He played it to the hilt, stalking back and forth, shoving his hands in and out of his pockets, and casting hostile glances alternately at the Doctor and at the camera. “If we only had something to go on!” he ranted. “Anything,” he whined. “Anything at all,” he whimpered. “But there isn’t a thing.” A cogent line like this deserved expansion, and the Lieutenant was not a man to stint: “Not one single blessed thing!” Then, with a deprecating wave of his hand, he muttered, “Just these big fat globs of strange, unearthly-type goo all over the body, that’s all.”

  “Mmmnnnye-e-ess,” said the Doctor (actorese for “Yes”), “but in those strange globs may lie the answer.”

  “Whaddaya talkin’?” sneered the Lieutenant, growing more belligerent by the second.

  “I suggest we get in touch with Bradstone.”

  “Who’s that? I don’t want no Federal men musclin’ in on my precinct.”

  “Dr. Bradstone,” explained the medico with withering condescension, “is the world’s foremost authority on viscosimetry.”

  “Who? Ha?”

  “Viscosimetry, Lieutenant, is the science of measuring viscosity.”

  “What’s viscosity?”

  The Doctor pointed to the body and the camera focused sharply on the strange, unearthly-type globs. “Goo,” he said, solemnly.

  And here the Stravinsky got more neo than ever.

  I chewed my popcorn furiously and stole a glance at Marilyn Monroe. She winked with abandon. “Goo,” I said, solemnly, and winked back.

  On the screen, one scene was melting into another with head-swimming speed. Starlets of diverse dimensions were to be seen going about such workaday pursuits as cooking, gardening, screwing rhinestones into their navels, etc., with such a remarkable degree of studied unconcern that I knew their dooms were sealed. And—sure enough—in each case, a towering shadow entered the picture, the theramin began its timorous wail, and the beauty in question looked over her shoulder, uttered Scream of Mortal Terror, Female, No. 84-B (Full-Throated), and was promptly gripped by severe nausea just at the fade-out.

  Newspapers loomed upon the screen:

  goo strikes again!

  strange stuff slays sexy siren!

  And Variety, shocked at the death of a prominent girl vocalist, reported:

  thrush hushed by mush

  “Things,” said the Lieutenant, picking his nose with a matchstick, “are getting worse.”

  “You are not just a-clackin’ your prognathous jaws, Buster,” quipped a melon-bosomed blonde, undulating into range with a crackle of taffeta and flapping her well-greased eyelids.

  “Who are you?”

  “Bradstone’s the name; Dr. Brenda Bradstone, Girl Viscosimetrist”

  “You mean you’re the—”

  “World’s foremost authority?” She struck an attitude. ‘The same. Where is the latest victim?”

  “Well, uh—”

  “One moment.” The new voice belonged to a young man with broad shoulders and a sincere tilt to his eyebrows who lumbered, profile first, into their midst. “Dr. Bradstone is not entirely correct, Lieutenant,” he blathered. ‘Though possessing a certain proficiency in the field,” and here he bowed low to the lady and sized up her ankles, “she is not the world’s foremost authority.”

  “Who is, then, you’re so smott?” asked Brenda.

  “The author of Viscosity in a Changing World, Viscosity for the Millions, How Viscous Are You? and Whither Viscosity? of course. In short, myself.”

  “Then you’re Dr. Quentin Conroy of the Institute for Viscosimetrical Research!”

  “The same,” said Conroy, striking an attitude.

  “Well, Dr. Conroy,” said Brenda coldly, striking another attitude and striking, also, the Lieutenant, whose hands had been roving, “it’s a pleasure.”

  “Thank you,” smirked Conroy, removing from his satchel a small device resembling a double-barreled rectal thermometer.

  “What, pray, is that?” asked Brenda haughtily. “A double-barreled rectal thermometer?”

  “It is obvious, Dr. Bradstone,” responded Conroy with cool decorum, “that you do not know a capillary viscometer from a hole in the ground.”

  Brenda sniffed huffily. “If that,” she said, writhing with ambivalence and lamping her opponent’s shoulders with something more than scientific interest, “is a Thorpe and Rodger viscometer, or even a Wilhelm Ostwald viscometer, I’ll eat it.”

  “It is neither,” came the sharp riposte. “It is a Conroy viscometer. Now shake your butt and help me set up my equipment.”

  “Yes, sir,” mumbled Brenda submissively.

  Having made this obeisance to the spirit of scientific discussion and also putting half the audience to sleep, the scene now shifted to the city room of a local newspaper. The screen was a riot of shirtsleeves, blue pencils, green eye-shades and cigarette smoke. The city editor, picking his nose with a blue pencil, was snarling at an unkempt but earnest young man. “Yurroutaya mind, Pfeiffer,” he said. “Just because”—here he paused to suck a dram of coffee from a soggy container—”just because the first goo killing coincided with reports of a flying saucer sighted in the hills near town, and just because a few hundred nitwits say they’ve seen a weird monster fifty feet tall walkin’ around, and just because a bunch of boobs swear they’ve been hearin’ some strange, unearthly-type theramin music the last few days—you get the dim-bulb notion that these broads are bein’ knocked off by a creature from outer space! Pfeiffer, you kill me. You know what I think? You really wanna know what I think?”

  “What, boss?”

  “Yurroutaya mind, Pfeiffer, that’s what I think. Go get me another pint o’ java.”

  The city editor, I noted, was cast from the same rugged mold as the police lieutenant: in fact, upon closer inspection, I discovered that he was played by the same actor, his bushy hair covered with liquid latex to simulate a lumpy baldness. I admired this stroke of economy.

  Pfeiffer, of course (if I may condense the action a bit here) took his story to the Lieutenant and was promptly catalogued as a troublesome illusionary. Conroy, however, overhearing the reporter’s theory, got a faraway look in his eye and, loosening his Countess Mara, began to wade into his work with renewed bustle.

  Two lap-dissolves and a theramin solo later, Conroy looked up from his viscometer. His face was pale, his eyebrows knotted. “It’s—incredible!” he said. “And yet—why should it be incredible? If, on our world, all living things have a basis of carbon, why then on other worlds may not life have a basis of something else? Silicon, or hydrogen, or—this?”r />
  “Quentin,” breathed Brenda quietly, looking soulfully into his hair-line (they had reached the First Name Stage while I wasn’t looking), “what is it?”

  “The stuff,” said Conroy, “the horrible goo on the bodies . . .” He broke off, consulted his viscometer once more, then looked up again, nostrils akimbo. “Yes! Brenda, the monster that killed those poor girls, the monster that, even now, is roaming at large: that monster is a fifty-foot blob of—Vaseline!”

  “Vaseline?!”

  Conroy nodded grimly. “With hair.”

  “Yurroutaya mind,” said the Lieutenant.

  “But . . . but . . .” floundered Brenda, forgetting her lines, “but Vaseline is harmless . . .”

  “Yes—Vaseline as we know it,” Conroy agreed. “But what if it were endowed with a superhuman intelligence beyond our ken???”

  “Yeah,” said the Lieutenant, “but even so—”

  “Lieutenant,” Conroy said evenly, “picture it. What would you do if you saw a blob of Vaseline fifty feet high and all covered with hair coming at you?”

  The Lieutenant’s eyes grew glassy at the image; then he clapped his hand to his mouth and lurched straight for the washroom.

  “It all fits together, Quentin,” said Brenda, breathing heavily. “The severe nausea—the globs of goo—the flying saucer —the theramin music. But what is this monster’s purpose in killing these girls? And why only girls?”

  Conroy frowned. “I . . . don’t. . . know,” he said.

  And suddenly the monster was upon us. The screen was filled with hairy Vaseline—fifty feet of it, strolling oafishly down the road and humming to itself. John Quincy Adams clapped his hand to his mouth and was never seen again. My dentist climbed up the theatre wall, and Marilyn Monroe clung to me (understandably) for comfort. My popcorn, of course, went flying at the first sight of the monster, and for a moment I was blinded by salt and falling kernels.

  When my vision cleared, I saw to my horror that Brenda was in the toils of the unearthly-type creature and was giving the theramin some stiff competition in the wailing department. Next we saw Conroy, his viscometer awry, pointing wildly and yelling, “It’s taking her toward the hills!”

  “The hills!” echoed Pfeiffer, the reporter, materializing from behind a clothes-tree. ‘That’s where the flying saucer was sighted!”

  After some scratchy stock footage of Grant Withers and Onslow Stevens climbing in a couple of ‘35 Chevvies and barelling down the road, we got our first glimpse of the saucer. It was made of Limoges china, trimmed with blue. The monster oozed into the picture, lugging Brenda, whose struggles had grown noticeably lacking in sincerity. The armed services had apparently been summoned, for we were now treated to stirring shots of the U. S. infantry, the Polish cavalry, and the air force of an unidentified nation, all engaged in dust-raising activity of one sort or another, culminating in the detonation of the hydrogen bomb. Needless to say, these efforts left the monster unscathed. By the time Conroy and Pfeiffer arrived, it had miraculously released Brenda, however, and she ran toward her colleague.

  “Brenda!” said Conroy. “You’re all right! It let you go . . . and you didn’t get severe nausea . . . What—”

  Panting, Brenda said, “I found out everything. That theramin music—it’s Morse code. The goo told me the whole story. He didn’t want to kill those girls; they just got deathly ill at the sight of him. He was only looking for a mate. He’s lonely.”

  “A mate?! But he’s—that is—he doesn’t have any—I mean—”

  “You don’t understand, Quentin. Look at my eyelids.”

  “They’re ravishing.”

  “What else?”

  “They’re well-greased.”

  “Correct. With Vaseline!”

  “You mean—”

  “Exactly! All those other girls greased their eyelids with Vaseline, too. And the stuff from outer space was just looking for someone of his own kind!”

  “Amazing!” Conroy embraced her. “You’re wonderful, Brenda! A true scientist. Brenda, darling—will you marry me? Together, we will plumb new depths of viscosity!”

  “Yurroutaya mind,” said Brenda. “I’m going home with Pete.”

  “Pete??”

  Brenda sighed ecstatically. “I can’t pronounce his real name. I call him Pete because he’s made of petroleum jelly— Vaseline to you.”

  “What? You’re going back to his native planet with him?”

  “Yes, isn’t it wonderful? Talk about plumbing new depths of viscosity—man, he’s really viscous! I’ll be doing the cause of viscosimetry a great service. Besides,” she added, with a libidinous growl, “I always was a sucker for tall, hairy guys.”

  Hand-in-pseudopod, Brenda and Pete walked toward the flying saucer as the music climbed to great heights. It was still neo, but this time it was more like Tschaikowsky than Stravinsky. Conroy took it like a man, blinked back a tear, packed his viscometer, and walked slowly in the opposite direction.

  The lights in the theatre went up and I became suddenly aware of the coldness of the leather seat on which I was sitting. A sudden fear gripped me and I looked down to find it confirmed. Somehow, by the wizardry of dreams, I was now clad in only the tops—rather than the bottoms—of my pajamas. Furtively, I looked, at Marilyn. She was wearing the bottoms. I found this turn-of-events charming and, as I left the theatre with her, hand-in-pseudopod, I did not even try to understand the transference. That would require, I knew, a superhuman intelligence beyond my ken.

  <>

  * * * *

  DIGGING THE WEANS

  by Robert Nathan

  From Hollywood to Harper’s, via Far Future Transit.

  Ray Russell, from the eminence of his editorial chair in the newest and shiniest of publishing successes, may sneer (past the glossy heads of waiting ranks of would-be Playmates) at Hollywood and anything it has to offer.

  Robert Nathan, one of the most durable successes in the fantasy business, from his home in Hollywood (circa 3500?), surveys the rest of the continent (standing on tiptoe, perhaps, to see past the shaggy, scaled, and betentacled crania of the “creatures”) with at least equivalent scorn.

  * * * *

  The inscription on the north wall of the temple at Pound-Laundry on the east coast of the Great West Continent has finally been deciphered by the team led by Sr. B’Han Bollek. This work brings us certain assurance of the theory expressed by Bes Nef, Hanh Shui, and Nat Obelgerst-Levy that a people of considerable numbers and power formerly inhabited this salt and desolate land. It is a triumph for those archaeologists who have been working ever since the fortunate discovery of an ivory cross and string of beads at the northeast, or “Bosstin” tumulus, along with a rusted iron wheel which seems to have been designed to run along some kind of track or trolley. These artifacts, as everyone knows, are now in the museum at Kenya.

  What we have been unable to discover is the fate of these ancient people. That they perished in some sort of upheaval many thousands of years ago is clear from the inscription itself, which Sr. B’Han Bollek translates as follows: “nor [for north?] rain nor hail nor snow . . .” there are some hieroglyphics missing, and the inscription ends with the phrase ... “their appointed rounds.”

  However, it must be remembered that the r and the w are readily interchangeable, both in Hittite and in ancient Hivite, and Bes Nef prefers the reading: “their pointed wounds.” This naturally suggests a catastrophe, possibly an invasion from the east, a belief, I may add, greatly encouraged by the findings in the Valley of the Sun, which will be discussed later. On the other hand, if, as some believe, including B’Han Bollek, that the phrase should be read: “their appointed rounds,” the meaning of the full inscription might well be as follows: “The north rain, the hail and the snow [also from the north] have accomplished their appointed ‘rounds’ [or tasks]” . . . namely, have annihilated the inhabitants.

  So much, then, we do know; but very little else is known of these ancient peopl
e. Professor Shui believes that they may have been Brythons, and related to the still older, Druidic culture whose stones are still to be seen in the East Island. Professor Shui bases this theory upon a certain similarity in the two glyphs, the Brythonic “bathe” and the Wean “bath”; but his theory necessarily comes to grief when one examines the glyph for “that which rises”—the Brythonic “lift” and the Wean “elevator” having obviously no common root.

  I have called these people the Weans, because certain archaeological findings incline us to the belief that they called their land the We, or the Us; actually, in the southern part of the continent, the word Weuns (or Weans) does appear, as well as the glyph for Wealls, and the word They-uns.