* * * *
New Writings in
SF: 22
Ed By Kenneth Bulmer
Proofed By MadMaxAU
* * * *
CONTENTS
Foreword by Kenneth Bulmer
An Honest Day’s Work by Harry Harrison
Evane by E. C. Tubb
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
Spacebird by James White
Three Enigmas by Brian W. Aldiss
Wise Child by John Rackham
The Rules of the Game by Donald A. Wollheim
Monitor by Sydney J. Bounds
The Time Wager by John Kippax
The Square Root of M C by Laurence James
The Inverted World by Christopher Priest
* * * *
FOREWORD
Kenneth Bulmer
This volume of New Writings in SF is at this moment unique in the series begun by John Carnell in 1964.
All the writers herein presented were closely connected in one way or another as editor, agent and friend with John Carnell, and in every case their comments accompanying their manuscripts said clearly that the writers believed the work he pioneered should not be allowed to fade away. The contribution John Carnell made to sf was immense and I am quite certain that all those many readers who have found pleasure and inspiration in New Writings in the past will be happy to know that the series will continue.
Science fiction is now a well-established part of life, and although many people cling to their own interpretations of what they mean by science fiction—from serious and imaginative sf to the horrors of sci-fi—everyone, I believe, is aware that we are living in a science fiction world, whether we will it or no. That sf itself can serve as an invaluable guide to the modern world and also to the world of the immediate future has led to the emergence of a type of sf devoted to just this kind of purpose. This sf is valuable. Equally valuable is the sf that seeks to stretch our imaginations in ways that the modern world has not yet got around to thinking about. This kind of mind-extending sf should not be confused with fantasy.
Up until fairly recently it was generally considered that a thorough grounding in Latin and Greek -was sufficient to equip a person to undertake a useful role in life. Nowadays, with computers demanding special languages—among which, I venture to suggest, Latin and Greek do not figure prominently—with electronics, physics, chemistry and all the specialised scientific disciplines required of an age wherein men walk upon the Moon and mine the oceans demanding total commitment, it would be folly to entrust complex modern problems to a man relying on ancient languages for his knowhow. And yet—and yet although the basic philosophy may have been overtaken by events, enough of truth remains to make us look with particular care at any world that denies that philosophy without providing acceptable and viable alternatives. In this rushing hurly-burly of an age humanity must of necessity be able to find some surcease from the continuous strain. If that respite also gives the probability of better responses to life —that is, opens closed eyes and minds to fresh possibilities, indicates new avenues of thinking, shows dead ends and futures no one would care to enter, provides a perspective—-then that refreshment is clearly of a value beyond price.
This function of recharging the vital batteries of the human psyche is only one of the virtues of sf; but it is one that should never be underestimated.
The practitioners of sf gathered into these pages collectively provide a considerable jolt, from the most sensible suggestion yet for the deployment of ballistic weapons by Arthur Clarke to the iconoclastic investigation of what we think of as reality in terms at once beautiful and irreverent by Brian Aldiss. It used to be said that humour was a quality sadly lacking in sf; but the field has never been as grey as it has been painted, and here both Harry Harrison and John Kippax use this elusive spirit of comedy to make their points in stories widely differing as to locale and intent. Sydney Bounds and James White continue our uneasy speculations on the possible reaction of humankind when meeting with other intelligences, while Donald Wollheim and John Rackham bring their investigations nearer home and suggest that if all around us we see life as a reality we must be prepared to open our minds a little further. That Laurence James chose to set his entertaining mystery story on this Earth,— don’t jump to a premature conclusion!—rather than on the planet of a distant solar system surely indicates we must uproot the seeds of our own destruction before they can germinate. A strange locale with infinite possibilities that will have the astrophysicists running for their slide-rules provides Christopher Priest with a setting challenging in its implications, and also sows its seeds of future controversy. Is the future symbiosis of man and machine an inevitable outcome of our increasing reliance on machinery of all kinds ? E. C. Tubb reminds us chillingly that in humanity’s attempts at progress we may find ourselves using the machine as a parasitoid.
Taking the Arthur Clarke piece as a conte in its own right, here are eleven new science fiction stories, never before published, ranging over a wide variety of the themes, ideas, imaginations and concerns of science fiction. There are many, many more excitements and entertainments in the unlimited scope of sf and New Writings in SF will be presenting the best of them in the volumes to come.
It is appropriate here to quote the last words John Carnell wrote in his last foreword for New Writings in SF, that for Number Twenty. ‘I have no doubt later volumes will have their fair share of light relief and the banishment of death, doom and destruction.’
I believe that to be true.
Kenneth Bulmer
Horsmonden,
September, 1972
<
* * * *
AN HONEST DAY’S WORK
Harry Harrison
The image of the grim-jawed hero with steely eyes has become tarnished in this latter half of the twentieth century. Pride in manual skills in a culture clearly being taken-over by automation collapses so that ‘satisfaction from a good job well done’ is more and more obtainable only from avocations, not vocations. Harry Harrison in rumbustious fashion sets about demolishing notions of duty and glory and interstellar invasion as well as the dignity of labour and the rate for the job.
* * * *
‘I do my job, that’s all. And that’s all that anyone can expect.’ Jerry’s jaw set hard with these words, set as firmly as his voice as he bit deep into the scarred stem of the old pipe.
‘I know that, Mr. Cruncher,’ the Lieutenant said. ‘No one is asking you to do anything more than that, or to do anything wrong.’ He was dusty and one of the pocket flaps had been torn off his uniform. There was a wild look in his eye and he had a tendency to talk too fast. “We tracked you down through BuRecCent and it wasn’t easy, there were good men lost ...’ His voice started to rise and he drew himself up with an effort. ‘We would like your co-operation if we could get it.’
‘Not the sort of thing I like to do. It could lead to trouble.’
* * * *
The trouble was that no one expected it, or rather the people who expected it had expected something altogether different and had made their plans accordingly and fed them to the computer which had drawn up programs covering all possible variations of the original. However the Betelgeuseans had a completely different plan in mind so they therefore succeeded far beyond what was possibly their own wildest dreams. The trade station they had set up in Tycho crater on the Moon was just that, a trade station, and had nothing to do at all with the events that followed. Records of the Disaster are confused, as well they might be under the circumstances, and the number of aliens involved in the first phase of the invasion was certainly only a fraction of t
he exaggerated figures that were being tossed around by excited newsmen, or worried military personnel who felt that there must be that number of attacking aliens to wreak the damage that was done. The chances are that there were no more than two, three maximum, ships involved; a few hundred Betelgeuseans at the most. A few hundred to subjugate an entire planet—and they came within a hair of succeeding.
* * * *
‘Colonel, this is Mr. Cruncher who has volunteered...’
‘A civilian! Will you get him the hell out of here and blindfold him first, you unutterable fool. This headquarters is double-red-zed top security...!’
‘Sir, the security doesn’t matter any more. All of our communications are shut down, we’re sealed off from the troops.’
‘Quiet, you fool!’ The Colonel raised his clenched fists, his skin flushing, a wild light in his eyes. He still did not want to believe what had happened, possibly could not believe. The lieutenant was younger, a reserve officer; as much as he disliked it he could face the facts.
‘Colonel, you must believe me. The situation is desperate, and desperate times call for desperate solutions...’
‘Sergeant! Take this lieutenant and this civilian to the target range and shoot them for violating security during an emergency.’
‘Colonel, please...’
‘Sergeant, that is an order!’
The Sergeant, who was only four months short of retirement and had a pot belly to prove it, looked from one officer to the other. He was reluctant to make a decision but he had to. He finally rose and went to the toilet, locking the door behind him. The Colonel, who had been following his movements in eye-bulging silence, gasped, his face a bright scarlet, and groped for his sidearm. Even as he drew it from the holster he gurgled and fell face first upon the desk, then slid slowly to the floor.
‘Medic!’ the Lieutenant shouted and ran and opened the Colonel’s collar. The medic took one look and shook his head gloomily. ‘The big one. He’s had it. Always had a dicey ticker.’
The Sergeant came out of the toilet and helped the Lieutenant to pull a gas cape over the corpse. Jerry Cruncher stood to one side and looked on in silence, sucking on his pipe.
‘Please, Mr Cruncher,’ the Lieutenant said pleadingly, ‘you must help us. You’re our last hope now.’
Now when we look back at Black Sunday when the Disaster began we can marvel at the simplicity of the Betelgeusean plan and understand why it came within a hair’s breadth of succeeding. Our armies and spaceborne tanks were poised and waiting, all instruments and attention firmly fixed on the massive bulk of the ‘so called’ trade station which was, indeed, just a trade station. On Earth a complex spiderweb of communication networks linked together the host of defenders, a multilevel net of radio and laser links, buried coaxial cables and land lines, microwave and heliograph connections. It was foolproof and unjammable and perfect in every way except for the fact that all global communications were channelled through the two substations and ComCent in Global City. These three stations, wonderfully efficient, handled all the communications with the armed forces on Earth, below the ground, on the Moon and in space.
They were knocked out. Betelgeusean commando squads in field armour dropped one null-G on to each centre and the battle could not have lasted more than half an hour. When it was over the three communications centres had been taken and the war was lost before it began. Headquarters were cut off from units, individual units from each other, tanks from tank commanders, spaceships from their bases. Radar central on the far side of the Moon very quickly discovered the blips of the invasion fleet swooping in from beyond Saturn. But there was no way they could tell anyone about it.
* * * *
‘I have to ask my supervisor about it,’ Jerry Cruncher said, nodding solemnly at the thought. ‘This being my day off and all. And taking of unauthorised people into the tunnels. Can’t say he’s going to like it much.’
‘Mr. Cruncher,’ the Lieutenant said through tight-clamped teeth. ‘In case you have not heard there is a war on. You have just seen a man die because of this war. You cannot call your supervisor because the military override has rendered the civilian visiphone network inoperable.’
‘Can’t say I like that.’
‘None of us do. That is why we need your help. The enemy aliens have taken our communication centres and they must be recaptured. We have contacted the nearest combat units by messenger and they are attempting to retake the centres, but they are virtually impregnable.’
‘They are? How did those Beetlejuicians capture them then?’
‘Well, yes, it is Sunday, you know, minimum personnel, at 0800 hours the church coaches were leaving, the gates were open...’
‘Caught you with your pants down, hey?’ A wet suck on his pipe told the world what Jerry Cruncher felt about that, kind of efficiency. ‘So your lot is out and you want back in. So why bother a working man at home on a Sunday?’
‘Because, Mr. Cruncher, war does not recognise days of the week. And you are the oldest employee of CitSubMaint and probably the only man who can answer this question. Our communication centres have their own standby power sources, but they normally use city power. And the land lines and cables go out underground. Now, think carefully before you answer, can we get into these centres from underground? Particularly into ComCent?’
“Where is it?’ He tamped down the glowing tobacco with a calloused thumb, then sucked in the grey smoke happily.
‘At the junction of 18th Way and Wiggan Road.’
‘So that’s why there are so many cables in 104-BpL.’
‘Can we get into it?’
In the hushed silence that followed the burble of Jerry Cruncher’s pipe could be clearly heard. The Lieutenant stood, fists clenched tightly, and beside him the Sergeant and the Corpsman, as well as the operators who had left their silent communication equipment. All of them waited and listened in strained silence as Jerry Cruncher narrowed his eyes in thought, took the pipe from his mouth and exhaled a cloud of pungent smoke, then turned to face them.
‘Yep,’ he said.
They weren’t the best troops—but they were troops. Technicians and operators, MP’s and cooks, clerks and motor pool mechanics. But they were armed with the best weapons the armouries could provide and armoured as well with a sense of purpose. If they stood a little straighter or held their guns a little more firmly it was because they knew that the future of the world was in their hands. They marched with grim precision to the road junction where they had been instructed to wait and had been there no more than a few minutes when Jerry Cruncher showed up. He wore waterproofs and a hardhat, heavy gumboots that, came to his waist, while a worn and ancient toolbox was slung by a strap over one shoulder. His pipe was out, but still clamped in his jaw, as he moved his shrewd eyes over the waiting troops.
‘Not dressed right,’ he said.
‘Everyone is in combat uniform,’ the Lieutenant answered.
‘Not right for the tunnels. Gets mighty damp-’
‘Mr. Cruncher, these are volunteer soldiers. They may die for their world so they do not mind getting wet for it. May we go now?’
Shaking his head in solemn disapproval Jerry Cruncher led the way to a manhole in the road, into the socket of which he inserted a shining tool with which, in a practised movement, he flipped the heavy manhole lid aside.
‘Follow me then, single file. Last two men in slide that lid back on and watch out for your fingers. Here we go:
Automatic lights sprang on as they climbed down the ladder to the cool, green tunnel below. Wires, cables and pipes lined the walls and ceiling in a maze that only a Jerry Cruncher could make head or tail of. He slapped them affectionately as they passed.
‘Water main, steam main, 50,000 volt line, 220 local feeder, telephone, teletype, co-ax, ice water, pneumo-delivery, food dispenser supply, oxygen, sewer feeder.’ He chuckled happily. ‘Yep, we’ve got a little bit of everything down here.’
‘Medic!’ a voice calle
d from the rear of the file and the Corpsman hurried away.
‘They’ve found us!’ A Permanent KP wailed and there was a rattle of weapons readied.
‘Put those away!’ the Lieutenant shouted. ‘Before you kill each other. Get me a report. Sergeant, snap to it.’
They waited, weapons clenched and eyes rolling with anxiety, until the Sergeant returned. Jerry Cruncher hummed to himself tonelessly as he tapped various valves with a small ballpean hammer, then carefully tightened the gasket retainer on one.
‘Nothing much,’ the Sergeant said. ‘Burne-Smith got a finger mashed putting the lid back on.’
‘They never listen,’ Jerry Cruncher coughed disapprovingly.
‘Move it out,’ the Lieutenant ordered.
‘One thing we haven’t mentioned,’ Jerry Cruncher said, unmoving as a block of stone. ‘You guaranteed that my supervisor would see that I received my pay for this job.’
New Writings in SF 22 - [Anthology] Page 1