Tales From the Spaceport Bar

by George H. Scithers

  "I’m a little low on cash,” Ishmael muttered.

  Mors Longa said, "That’s all right. Money’s not the only coin of the realm around here. We can use some stories we haven’t heard before. Let’s hear the strangest story you can tell us, for openers, and I’ll undertake to keep you in Irish while you talk. Eh?” "Fair enough,” said Ishmael. He thought a moment. "All right. I have a good one for you. I have a really good one, if you don’t mind them weird. It’s about my uncle Timothy and his tiny twin brother, that he carried around under his arm all his life. Does that interest you?”

  "Most assuredly it does,” I said.

  "Seconded,” said Mors Longa. He grinned with a warmth I had not seen on his face for a long time. "Set them up,” he said to Charley Sullivan. "On me. For the house.”

  Robert Silverberg has been publishing science fiction for more than thirty years now. Among his best-known books are Nightwings, Dying Inside, and Lord Valentine’s Castle. He has written nearly as much in the field as anyone ever has, and nearly as many kinds of stories as are possible. Consequently, when the editors of this anthology couldn’t think of a Silverberg-written spaceport-bar story, we naturally assumed that there was one somewhere, and we asked Silverberg about it. Only there wasn’t one— not then; but there is now, for Silverberg promptly rose to the challenge.

  THE MAN WHO ALWAYS KNEW

  by Algis Budrys

  ... that was his only talent: knowing when and where...

  The small, thin, stoop-shouldered man sat down on the stool nearest the wall, took a dollar bill out of his wallet, and laid it on the bar. Behind their rimless glasses, his watery blue eyes fastened vacantly on a space somewhere between the end of his nose and the bottles standing on the back-bar tiers. An old porkpie hat was squashed down over the few sandy hairs that covered his bony skull. His head was buried deep in the collar of his old, baggy tweed overcoat, and a yellow muffler trailed down from around his neck. His knobby-knuckled hands played with the dollar bill.

  Harry, the barkeep, was busy mixing three Martinis for a table in the dining room, but as soon as the small man came in he looked up and smiled. And as soon as he had the three filled glasses lined up on a tray for the waiter to pick up, he hurried up to the end of the bar.

  "Afternoon, Mr. McMahon! And what’ll it be for you today?”

  The small man looked up with a wan sigh. "Nothing yet, Harry. Mind if I just sit and wait a minute?”

  "Not at all, Mr. McMahon, not at all.” He looked around at the empty stools. "Quiet as the grave in here this afternoon. Same thing over at the lab?”

  The small man nodded slowly, looking down at his fingers creasing the dollar bill. "Just a quiet afternoon, I guess,” he said in a tired voice. "Nothing’s due to come to a head over there until sometime next week.”

  Harry nodded to show he understood. It was that kind of a day. "Haven’t seen you for a while, Mr. McMahon—been away again?”

  The small man pleated the dollar bill, held one end between thumb and forefinger, and spread the bill like a fan. "That’s right. I went down to Baltimore for a few days.” He smoothed out the bill and touched the top of the bar. "You know, Harry, it wouldn’t surprise me if next year we could give you a bar varnish you could let absolute alcohol stand on overnight.”

  Harry shook his head slowly. "Beats me, Mr. McMahon. I never know what’s coming out of your lab next. One week it’s steam engines, the next it’s bar varnish. What gets me is where you find the time. Doing all that traveling and still being the biggest inventor in the world—bigger than Edison, even. Why, just the other day the wife and I went out and bought two of those pocket transceiver sets of yours, and Emma said she didn’t see how I could know you. 'A man as busy as Mr. McMahon must be,’ she said, 'wouldn’t be coming into the bar all the time like you say he does.’ Well, that’s a wife for you. But she’s right. Beats me, too, like I said.”

  The small man shrugged uncomfortably and didn’t say anything. Then he got a suddenly determined look on his face and started to say something, but just then the waiter stepped up to the bar.

  "Two Gibson, one Whiskey Sour, Harry.”

  "Coming up. Excuse me, Mr. McMahon. Mix you something while I’m down there?”

  The small man shook his head. "Not just yet, Harry.”

  "Right, Mr. McMahon.”

  Harry shook up the cocktails briskly. From the sound of it, Mr. McMahon had been about to say something important, and anything Mr. McMahon thought was important would be something you shouldn’t miss.

  He bumped the shaker, dropped the strainer in, and poured the Gibsons. He just hoped Mr. McMahon hadn’t decided it wasn’t worth talking about. Let’s see what Emma would have to say if he came home and told her what Mr. McMahon had told him, and a year or two later something new— maybe a new kind of home permanent or something—came out. She’d use it. She’d have to use it, because it would just naturally be the best thing on the market. And every time she did, she’d have to remember that Harry had told her first. Let’s see her say Mr. McMahon wasn’t a steady customer of his then! Bar varnish wasn’t in the same league.

  The small man was looking into space again, with a sad little smile, when Harry got back to him. He was pushing the dollar bill back and forth with his index fingers. A bunch of people came in the door and Harry muttered under his breath, but they didn’t stop at the bar. They went straight from the coatrack to the dining room, and Harry breathed easier. Maybe he’d have time to hear what Mr. McMahon had to say.

  "Well, here I am again, Mr. McMahon.”

  The small man looked up with a sharp gleam in his eyes. 'Think I'm pretty hot stuff, eh, Harry?”

  "Yes, sir,” Harry said, not knowing what to make of it.

  "Think I’m the Edison of the age, huh?”

  "Well—gosh, Mr. McMahon, you are better than Edison!”

  The small man’s fingers crumpled up the dollar bill and rolled it into a tight ball.

  "The Perfect Combustion Engine, the Condensing Steam Jet, the Voice-Operated Typewriter, the Discontinuous Airfoil—things like that, eh?” the small man asked sharply.

  "Yes, sir. And the Arc House, and the Minute Meal, and the Lintless Dustcloth—well, gosh, Mr. McMahon, I could go on all day, I guess.”

  "Didn’t invent a one of them,” the small man snapped. His shoulders seemed to straighten out from under a heavy load. He looked Harry in the eye. "I never invented anything in my life.”

  'Two Gibson and another Whiskey Sour, Harry,” the waiter interrupted.

  "Yeah—sure.” Harry moved uneasily down the bar. He tilted the Gin bottle slowly, busy turning things over in his mind. He sneaked a look at Mr. McMahon. The small man was looking down at his hands, curling them up into fists, and smiling. He looked happy. That wasn’t like him at all.

  Harry set the drinks up on the waiter’s tray and got back up to the end of the bar.

  "Mr. McMahon?”

  The small man looked up again. "Yes, Harry?” He did look happy—happy all the way through, like a man with insomnia who suddenly feels himself drifting off to sleep.

  "You were just saying about that varnish—” "Fellow in Baltimore. Paints signs for a living. Not very good ones; they weather too fast. I noticed him working the last time I was down that way.”

  "I don’t follow you, Mr. McMahon.”

  The small man bounced the balled-up dollar bill on the bar and watched it roll around. "Well, I knew he was a conscientious young fellow, even if he didn’t know much about paint. So, yesterday I went back down there, and, sure enough, he’d been fool-

  ing around—just taking a little of this and a little of that, stirring it up by guess and by gosh—and he had something he could paint over a sign that would stand up to a blowtorch.”

  "Golly, Mr. McMahon. I thought you said he didn’t know much about paint.”

  The small man scooped up the bill and smoothed it out. "He didn’t. He was just fooling around. Anybody else would have just c
ome up with a gallon of useless goo. But he looked like the kind of man who’d happen to hit it right. And he looked like the kind of man who’d hit it sometime about yesterday. So I went down there, made him an offer, and came back with a gallon of what’s going to be the best varnish anybody ever put on the market.”

  Harry twisted his hands uncomfortably in his pockets. "Gee, Mr. McMahon—you mean you do the same thing with everything else?”

  "That’s right, Harry.” The small man pinched the two ends of the dollar bill, brought them together, and then snapped the bill flat with a satisfied pop! "Exactly the same thing. I was on a train passing an open field once, and saw a boy flying model airplanes. Two years later, I went back and, sure enough, he’d just finished his first drawings on the discontinuous airfoil. I offered him a licensing fee and a good cash advance, and came home with the airfoil.” The small man looked down sadly and reminiscently. "He used the money to finance himself through aeronautical engineering school. Never turned out anything new again.”

  "Gosh, Mr. McMahon. I don’t know what to say. You mean you travel around the country just looking for people that are working on something new?” The small man shook his head. "No. I travel around the country, and I stumble across people who’re going to accidentally stumble across something good. I've got secondhand luck.” The small man rolled the bill up between his fingers, and smiled with a hurt twist in his sensitive mouth. "It’s even better than that. I know more or less what they’re going to stumble across, and when they’re going to.” He bent the tube he’d made out of the bill. "But I can’t develop it myself. I just have to wait. I've only got one talent.”

  "Well, gee, Mr. McMahon, that’s a fine thing to have.”

  The small man crushed the dollar bill. "Is it, Harry? How do you use it directly? How do you define it? Do you set up shop as McMahon and Company—Secondhand Luck Bought and Sold? Do you get a Nobel Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Luck?”

  "You’ve got a Nobel Prize, Mr. McMahon.”

  'Tor a cold cure discovered by a pharmacist who mislabeled a couple of prescriptions.”

  "Well, look, Mr. McMahon—that’s better than no Nobel Prize at all.”

  The small man’s sensitive mouth twisted again. "Yes, it is, Harry. A little bit.” He almost tore the dollar bill. "Just a little bit.” He stared into space.

  "Mr. McMahon. I wouldn’t feel so bad about it if I was you. There’s no sense to taking it out on yourself,” Harry said worriedly.

  The small man shrugged.

  Harry shuffled his feet. "I wish there was something I could do for you.” It felt funny, being sorry for the luckiest man in the world.

  The small man smoothed the dollar out again.

  "Two Whiskey Sour, and another Gibson,” the waiter said. Harry moved unhappily down the bar and began to mix, thinking about Mr. McMahon. Then he heard Mr. McMahon get off his stool and come down the bar.

  He looked up. The small man was standing opposite him, and looking down at the bar. Harry looked down too, and realized he’d been trying to make a Whiskey Sour with Gibson liquor. It looked like nothing he’d ever seen before.

  Mr. McMahon pushed the dollar bill across the

  bar. He reached out and took the funny-looking drink. There was a sad-happy smile on his face. "That’s the one I wanted, Harry,” he said.

  Algis Budrys tells us that he wrote this for fun and money, and that its not his usual kind of thing. Ifs also notable for having appeared in Astounding Science Fiction Stories, one of the very few bar stories to do so.

  The author has also written Rogue Moon, Michaelmas, and Who? He has edited books, Magazines, and trade journals, worked in public relations, and even written a screenplay (Dinosarus! 1957). Since the 1960s, he has been one of the most respected critics in science fiction. His most recent book, Benchmarks: Galaxy Bookshelf by Algis Budrys, is a collection of his columns from Galaxy Science Fiction.

  INFINITE RESOURCES

  by Randall Garrett

  The ultimate reduction of all parallel-universe stories...

  At the bar of the Green Lizard Lounge, Dr. Rumfort was saying: "In my forthcoming monograph to the Journal, I show that it is mathematically possible to describe a six-dimensional continuum in which—” His voice trailed off as he noticed that Latimer was no longer listening.

  Irritated, he swiveled his head to follow Latimer’s gaze.

  The oddly dressed gentleman was wearing a long blue cutaway coat, a pair of white shorts that half covered his thighs, long crimson hose that came up to his knees, and a soft white shirt that had no collar. His head was completely shaved.

  On his back, he carried something that looked like a walkie-talkie radio with a peculiar antenna.

  "What is it?” whispered Latimer.

  Rumfort frowned. "A nut,” he said, turning back to his drink.

  The man peered around in the dimness of the bar and then headed directly towards Latimer. "Oh, I do say,” he said worriedly, ’'could you very possibly be Dr. Oswald Latimer?”

  Latimer nodded, grinning. "I am.”

  "The Dr. Latimer? The expert on the mathematics of infinity?”

  "That’s me.” Latimer was still grinning.

  ’Thank heavens I’ve found you!” he breathed. "I have the honor to be Professor George Featherby, of Columbia.”

  Rumfort swiveled his head around again. "Ridiculous! There’s no such person at Columbia!” He had never approved of the manner in which Latimer took up with strangers so easily.

  "Oh, no, of course not,” Featherby said. "Not in this continuum. Dr. Latimer, do you mind if I ask a few questions?”

  Rumfort butted in before Latimer had a chance to answer.

  "What do you mean, 'in this continuum1?”

  Featherby beamed broadly. "Well, you see, I’m not actually from this space-time continuum. This apparatus”—he jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the pack on his back—"this apparatus is capable of shifting its wearer from one of an infinite series of universes to another.”

  Dr. Rumfort snorted again.

  Latimer, who was enjoying the screwy little man immensely, nodded his understanding. "Yes. Dr. Rumfort, here, was just saying that he has proved mathematically that there are such things as parallel continua.”

  Rumfort almost choked on his drink. "That, sir, was only an exercise in mathematics! It does not necessarily pertain to the real universe!”

  "Ah, there, old chap,” smiled Featherby, "but it does, you know!”

  "Ridiculous!” Rumfort snapped. He turned back to his drink, thus dismissing the subject entirely. Then he pulled a notebook and pencil out of his pocket and began to scribble furiously.

  "That’s very interesting,” said Latimer to Featherby. "I suppose each continuum is different from the others, eh?”

  "Oh, no! Rather not! Infinite number of universes, you know, so there’s an infinite number of ’em all exactly alike. Of course, there’s an infinite number of ’em that are different, too, so you’re right, in a way. But, then, that’s why I’ve come to you, you know.”

  Latimer didn’t know, but he nodded and lit a cigarette. "Go on.”

  "Well, sir, you see, I’m lost. Lost! I hadn’t learned how to control this blasted thing at first, and I got myself too far away from my own continuum.” Featherby looked desolate. "Ours is rather different from this, you see. But I finally heard of you in another continuum. Unfortunately, you’d been killed in an—uh—is it automobile?—yes, automobile accident in 1952. So I had to come looking for you in one where you’d survived.”

  Latimer blinked. He still had a deep scar on his chest from that accident. Then he grinned again; the little guy had read the papers, of course. "I’m glad you found me. How can I help you?”

  "Well, sir, I understand you know a great deal about the mathematics of infinity; I thought perhaps you might tell me, if you could, how to get home.”

  Latimer looked at the ceiling, chuckling inwardly.

  "Well,
you say there are an infinite number of universes. That would, as you say, imply an infinite number of different universes, each of which is infinitely duplicated, identically.

  "I should say that it would be a first-order, or aleph-null, infinity. For instance, a line has an infinite number of points on it, a plane contains an infinite number of lines, and a solid contains an infinite number of planes. That should, it would seem, indicate that a solid had infinity-cubed points in it. But infinity cubed is still infinity, so a line has the same number of points as a solid.”

  "Yes, yes,” said Featherby impatiently. "I know all that! You’re talking to a professor of physics! — Pardon me, but I am impatient, you know.” He looked contrite.

  'The point I’m getting at,” said Latimer, unruffled, "is that you really don’t have to get back to the same universe you left. If the one you go back to is identical, you wouldn’t know the difference. Hmmmmm—still— By George!” His face broke into a grin.

  "What is it? What?” Featherby asked.

  "Why, don’t you see? That implies that there are an infinite number of Featherbys galloping all over the metauniverse! Also, there are an infinite number of Featherbys who stayed home. If you got into one of those continua, there’d be two of you. And if—”

  "Oh, my God!” said Featherby, turning white. "How horrible!”

  "Oh, come now,” said Latimer, "it’s not as bad as all that. Really, if—”

  "Just a minute!” bellowed Dr. Rumfort, who had finished his writing in the notebook. He looked straight at Featherby. "You’re a liar, and I can prove it!”

  "A liar?” Featherby exploded. "A liar, sir? I demand satisfaction, sir! My dueller will meet yours at any time you stipulate! I— Oh, dear!”

  "What’s the matter?” asked Latimer.

  "Dear me! This is awkward! I forgot I hadn’t brought my private dueller along. And I can’t fight one myself, you know!”