Tales From the Spaceport Bar

by George H. Scithers

  "All this time,” I said, "I’ve been thinking that you talk just like everyone else. But you don’t. It’s not just tiie trace of accent. Other people don’t say probability density or theorem of multiple world lines or on the order of.”

  "No, they don’t.”

  "Then we must both be mathematicians!” I smiled back at him.

  "No,” he said.

  "But then—” But I backed away from the problem, or from the answer. "My glass is empty. Could you use a refill?”

  'Thanks, I could.”

  I fixed it with the bartender. "Funny thing,” I told the brown-haired man. "I always thought the blurring effect of fog came from water droplets in the air.”

  "Bosh,” he said. "Bosh and tish. The water’s there, all right, whenever the fog rolls in. I can’t explain it. The condensation must be a side effect from the blurring of the world lines. But that’s not interfering with your vision. Water’s transparent.”

  "Of course. How could I have forgotten that?”

  "I forgot it myself, a long time ago.” The Scotch was beginning to reach him, I think. He had an accent, and it was growing stronger. "That’s why I’m here. That’s why I stopped you. Because you’d remember.”

  The bartender brought us our drinks. His big shoulders were hunched inward against the damp grey light that seeped in the windows.

  I sipped at the burning hot glass. Irish Whiskey and strong black coffee poured warmth through me, to counteract the cold beyond the walls. A customer departed, and the fog swirled and swallowed him.

  "I walked into the fog one afternoon,” said the brown-haired man. "The fog was thick, like tonight. A cubic mile of cotton, as we say. I was just going out for a pouch of snuff. When I reached the tobacconist’s, he tried to sell me a bundle of brown paper sticks with a Spanish trademark.”

  "Uh-huh. What did you do?”

  "Tried to get home, of course. Things changed oddly while I wandered in the fog. When it cleared and left me stranded, even my money was no good. The worst of it was that I couldn’t even tell my story. Nobody could read my mind to see that I was sane. It was find another fog bank or try to make a life for myself.”

  "With no money?”

  "Oh, I sold my ring and found a poker game.”

  "Oh. Oh!"

  ’That was a year ago. It’s worked out well enough. I thought I might invent something, like the zipper, but that fell through. You’re far ahead of us in the physical sciences. But money’s no problem. Sometimes there’s a fixed horse race. Sometimes I find a poker game, or a crooked crap game where they’ll let me bet the right way.”

  "Sounds great.” But not very honest, I thought. "You disapprove?” My companion’s voice had suddenly gone thin and cold.

  "I didn’t say that.”

  "I compensate for what I take,” the brown-haired man said angrily. "I know how to untwist a sick man’s mind. If a player sits down with emotional problems, I can help him. If he really needs the money, I can see that it comes to him.”

  "Why don’t you become a psychiatrist?”

  He shook his head. "It would take years, and then I’d never be able to hold a patient long enough to do myself any good. He’d get well too fast. Besides that, I hate certain people: I’d want to harm them instead of helping them.

  "Anyway, I don’t go out in the fog anymore. I like it here. I stopped , you because you’re one of those who remember.”

  "You said that before. What exactly—?”

  "After all, people are constantly walking into fogs. Why is it that we don’t hear more about people wandering in from alternate world lines? It’s because their memories adjust.”

  "Ah.”

  "I caught it happening once. A girl from somewhere else... I didn’t catch the details; they faded too fast. I got her a job as a go-go dancer. I think she was a prize concubine in someone’s harem before she ran into the fog.

  "Their memories adjust. They forget their friends, their relatives, their husbands and wives in the old world line. They remember what man is king or president or chairman in the new. But not us. You and I are different. I can recognize the rare ones.”

  "Because you can read minds.” Sarcastically. Part of me still disbelieved; yet... it fit too well. The brown-haired man talked like a mathematics professor because he was talking to me, and I was a mathematics professor, and he was reading my mind.

  He looked thoughtfully into his glass. "It’s funny, how many sense the truth. They won’t walk or drive in the fog if they can help it. At the bottom of their minds, they know that they might return home to find a Romish camp, or a Druidic dancing ground, or the center of a city, or a sand dune. You knew it yourself. The top of your mind thinks I’m an entertaining liar. The deepest part of you knew it all before I spoke.”

  "I just don’t like fog,” I said. I looked out the window, toward my hotel, which was just across the street. I saw only wet chaos and a swirling motion.

  "Wait until it clears.”

  "Maybe I will. Refill?’

  "Thanks.”

  Somehow I found myself doing most of the talking. The brown-haired man listened, nodded occasionally, asked occasional questions.

  We did not mention fog.

  "I need an ordered universe,” I said at one point. "Why else would I have studied math? There’s never an ambiguity in mathematics.”

  "Whereas in interpersonal relationships...”

  "Yes! Exactly!”

  "But mathematics is a game. Abstract mathematics doesn’t connect with the real universe except by coincidence or convenience. Like the imaginary number system: it’s used in circuit design, but it certainly wasn’t intended for that.”

  "No, of course not.”

  "So that’s why you never got married?”

  "Right,” I said sadly. "Ordered universe. Hey, I never knew that. Did I?”

  "No.”

  The fog cleared about one o’clock. My brownhaired friend accompanied me out.

  "Mathematics doesn’t fit reality,” he was saying. "No more than a game of bridge. The real universe is chaotic.”

  "Like in-ter-personal re-lation-ships.”

  "Maybe you’ll find them easier now.”

  "Like fog. Well, maybe I will. I know some new things about myself... where’s my hotel?”

  There was no hotel across the street.

  Suddenly I was cold sober, and cold scared.

  "So,” said my drinking partner. "You must have lost it earlier. Was it foggy when you crossed the street?”

  "Thick as paste. Oh, brother. Now what do I do?” "I think the fog’s starting to roll in again. Why not wait? The bar won’t close until four.”

  "They close at two in my world.” In my world. When I admitted that, I made it real.

  "Then maybe you should stay in this one. At least the bartender took your money. Which reminds me. Here.” He handed me my wallet.

  He must have picked my pocket earlier. "For services rendered,” he said. "But it looks like you’ll need the money.”

  I was too worried to be angry. "My money passes, but my checks won’t. I’ve got half a term of teaching to finish at Berkeley... and tenure, dammit! I’ve got to get back.”

  "I’m going to run for it,” said the brown-haired man. "Try the fog if you like. You might find your way home.” And off he went, running to beat the fog. It was drifting in in grey tendrils as I went back into the bar.

  An hour later the fog was a cubic mile of cotton, as they say. I walked into it.

  I intended to circle the block where I had left my hotel. But there was no way to get my bearings, and the outlines of the block would not hold still. Sight was gone, sound was strangely altered and muffled. I walked blind and half deaf, with my arms outstretched to protect my face, treading lightly for fear of being tripped.

  One thing, at least, the brown-haired man had failed to warn me about. I walked up to a pedestrian-sized grey blur to ask directions, and when I reached it, it wasn’t human. It watc
hed me dispassionately as I sidled off.

  I might have drifted away from the area. The hotel varied from an ancient barrow to a hot springs (I smelled warm, pungent steam) to a glass-sided skyscraper to a vertical slab of black basalt to an enormous pit with red-glowing rock at the bottom. It never became a hotel.

  The mist was turning white with dawn. I heard something coming near: the putt-putt-putt of a motor scooter, but distorted. Distorted to the clop-clop-clop of a horse’s hooves...and still approaching. It became a pad-pad-pad-pad, the sound of something heavy and catlike. I stood frozen.....

  The fog blew clear, and the sound was two sets of footsteps, two oddly dressed men walking toward me. It was dawn, and the fog was gone, and I was stranded.

  In eerie silence the men took me by the elbows turned me about, and walked me into the building which had been my hotel. It had become a kind of hospital.

  At first it was very bad. The attendants spoke an artificial language, very simple and unambiguous, like deaf-mute sign language. Until I learned it, I thought I had been booked into a mental hospital.

  It was a retraining center for people who can’t read minds.

  I was inside for a month, and then an outpatient for another six. Quick progress, they say; but then, I hadn’t suffered organic brain damage. Most patients are there because of damage to the right parietal lobe.

  It was no trouble to pay the hospital fees. I hold patents on the pressure spray can and the butane lighter. Now I’m trying to design a stapler.

  And when the fog is a cubic mile of cotton, as we say, I stay put until it goes away.

  Larry Niven cryptically says about "For a Foggy Night” that "it's the story Jerry Pournelle quotes when he’s telling people why he collaborates with me. Jerry isn’t crazy enough to write certain stories. I am.”

  Crazily or otherwise, Mr. Niven has written The Integral Trees solo, and. collaborated with Dr. Pournelle on Footfall.

  THEY LOVED ME IN UTICA

  by Avram Davidson

  It could have happened this way; it really could....

  The room was dirty and badly lit and it smelled strongly of cheap, greasy food and of something else, which the girl noticed as soon as she came in.

  "You’re at the Wine again, huh? You can’t wait till after the performance?”

  "And what the hell is the idea, may I ask, of telling everybody you’re my daughter? My daughter, for crying out loud! Who do you think is going to believe that?” he wanted to know.

  They were at it again.

  Nobody was supposed to believe it, she said. It was just a convention. As a matter of fact, it would stand a better chance of being believed if the story was that she was his granddaughter, but she wanted to save his face.

  If this meant that he was supposed to look on with fatherly approval while some young punk made a play for her, he said, in that case, he didn’t want his face saved, and she could forget the whole idea. Convention! That was a hot one! Since when was she getting so conventional? As if anyone in this burg gave a damn if they were married or not.

  "I went over great in Utica,” he said. "Capacity house. They loved me in Utica.” He drank some more of the Sneaky Pete. The girl, who had opened her mouth, closed it again. She cocked her head and shook it, half-annoyed, half-pitying. He was. apt to go off on tangents like that, more and more every day. The guy was going to pieces fast. But she still thought she’d be able to pull him together again. All he needed was a little success—^-although, of course, a big one wouldn’t hurt, either. Not in a one-night stand like this, of course. But if he went over good here, if he just got his self-confidence back, if he’d stay away from the Wine, if—

  He was still a good-looking guy, with lots of stuff none of these young studs had. His voice was still good, even if he couldn’t take the high notes. She noted that he’d cut himself shaving again, and this, for some reason, annoyed her.

  You mean you don’t care if we’re married or not!” she snapped. "All I am to you is a traveling shack-up job.” But her heart wasn’t in it, and he could tell it wasn’t.

  "Now, honey,” he said. "Don’t pick at me, sweetie. I’m a sick man. There’s nothing the matter with a little light Wine. It’s like medicine, it’s good for you. Have some.”

  But she said, No, thank you. "How about going over your material some more?” she suggested.

  He shrugged. "I don’t need to go over it. Once I learn a thing I never forget it. The rhapsodies—” "Will you for heaven’s sake please forget the rhapsodies?”

  "—and the hymns—”

  "Forget the hymns too! 'All new material’ is what you’re giving them here, remember?” Yes, he remembered. But he still had his doubts. The ballads were okay; though, boy! what a lie to call them "new”! Maybe they were new here, but, golly, he was singing them before the war—not the last war, the one before it. But he gave them up when the rhapsodies started going over so good.

  Then, seeing her frown, he hastily said, "But they’re good stuff, the ballads. I had good material, nobody had better. They don’t write material like that anymore.”

  He brooded over his cup. The girl could hear the crowd (if you could call that handful of yokels a crowd!), and this reminded her that the guy’s act was supposed to open. "Okay, so you know the stuff. So let’s hear it. The strings in tune?” He ran his fingers over them, nodded. He was still in the dumps. "Hey, you never told me where you picked up the ballads.” Not that she really cared.

  The guy shrugged. "Who the hell knows. Here, there. One of them—this one—” He sang the opening line. His voice was a little husky, but it was warm and sweet. "I was knocking it off with this hoofer, see...But you don’t want to hear about that— In those days I used to figure, once you’re in big time, you’re always in. What did I know? Never figured I’d be singing for cakes in the boondocks again. But that’s the way it is. You’re only as good as your last season, kid. Gee, this past winter was the toughest I ever remember. I used to go down to the islands every winter. Haven’t been able to afford it for years.”

  He warmed up to his troubles. "... and then the sky-pilots started in on me. 'What’s with this guy?’ they complain. 'Who needs his hymns?’ I tell you, sweetie, once you’re down, they all jump on you. It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.” An idea rippled its way across his face. He threw a swift, sly glance in her direction.

  How would it be, he said; how would it be if he just threw in one, maybe two, of the rhapsodies? After all, they’d be expecting it. That was what made his rep.

  She looked at him and shook her head with a bitter little smile. "Some people never learn,” she said. "Can’t you face up to it that the old material is strictly from Oldsville? Just give the ballads everything you’ve got. And, oh, say, listen. The MC says to throw in a little narration. Some story connecting the songs together.”

  "Yeah, but doll. I mean, these ballads. Like there isn’t any story connecting them together. You know. There’s war bits, love bits, tragedies... but, uh, no story.”

  Then he’d have to vamp one, she said; make it up as he went along. Why, for crying out loud! she complained—he, of all people, shouldn’t have any trouble thinking up stories.

  "Boy!” she said. "When I remember the stories you told me! Hey. What’s with the tears bit all of a sudden?”

  It took a minute, but he got control of himself. Then he said, "My lamps are giving out on me, babe. I can’t even shave myself anymore. I can hardly make you out, over there. Don’t leave me, kid. What would I do?” She didn’t say a word. "Anything you want. A story to hold the songs together? All right. Sure. I can do that. But don’t run out on me. Don’t—”

  The MC knocked, and came in without waiting for an answer. There were Wine stains on his clothes, and his sandals were badly scuffed, but he had a measure of coarse handsomeness; a long look passed between him and the girl which the older man didn’t see.

  "You ready to go on, Grandpa?” he asked.

  "Who the h
ell are you calling 'Grandpa’?” the singer snapped, forget ,ing his troubles.

  The MC bowed, exaggeratedly. "Oh, pardon me,” he said. "Are you ready to go on now, O sweet singer, whose songs deserve the laurels for all times to come?”

  "That’s better. That’s the way to talk to the servant of the Muses... that’s what somebody once called me in Utica, you know. They loved me in

  Utica. Hand me my strings, hon. Sure I’m ready. And, say—listen, pal: Give me a big buildup, will you, huh?”

  "Yeah, yeah... sure— Oh, say, listen: Y’got a new name for your new act, so I can announce it?”

  The old man gaped and blinked and moved his mouth, started to give his head a shake, No.

  But swiftly the girl interposed. "A lot of these songs are about Troy, aren’t they? Or what’s the other name they used to call it? Ilium? Okay, then: so call your set the Troiad. Or the Iliad. What the hell’s the difference? —Here’s your lyre, Homer, honey....”

  We will let the inimitable Avram Davidson write his own inimitable biographical note:

  "Unlike Frank Harris, of whom it has been said, 'Frank Harris was born in two different countries on three different dates, and his name was not Frank Harris,’ it is generally agreed that Avram Davidson was born in Yonkers, New York, on April 23, 1923; although the practice of the Yonkers Chamber of Commerce in asking, 'Avram who?’ and then hanging up its phone is, admittedly, rather unhelpful. Mr. Davidson attended four colleges without getting any degrees higher than 98.6, served in the U.S. Navy and with the U.S. Marines, was for a few years editor o/'The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, has been a college professor and fish-liver inspector, was once the husband of Grania Davis, and is still the father of their conjoint son Ethan Davidson. Rumors that he once tried to strangle Harlan Ellison with a thuggee knot he dismisses as lies, spread by his political enemies. The story which you have just read had its genesis in a conversation with Randall Garrett; otherwise he doesn’t remember anything about it. Avram Davidson lives at the State Veterans Home in Retsil, Washington, where he sometimes re-fights the Battle of Trafalgar with the other old snuff-dippers.”