Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  * * * * *

  Bozzy was kissing her when the lobby buzzer sounded three long rings.

  "There's your cab," Kate said, rising.

  He followed her to the living room. Projected on one wall was a picture of the cabman facing the lobby annunciator, fifty-three stories down. The man was tall, fat, and in need of a shave, yet he wore purple tights with pink and green trim.

  Bozzy shuddered. "Who in the world concocted that rig?"

  "Your wife, sir," the cabman answered.

  "It's beautiful," said Bozzy. "I'll be right down."

  He wasn't, though. Kate told the kids he was leaving, and they trooped out of the bathroom to say good-by.

  Bozzy could tell Ralph was the one being bathed only because he was naked--all three were equally wet, and equally anxious to embrace their Daddy. He had to make himself a new robe while the cab meter ticked and Kate jittered.

  But once started, the drive between balconied buildings and intervening plazas went fast enough. Bozzy wasn't over half an hour late in reaching Mr. Kojac's apartment building.

  The old man waited in the street, looking spare, spruce, and impatient.

  "I do wish," he said, easing himself into the cab, "that you had a less anti-social attitude. Now you'll have to claim I delayed you."

  "I'm sorry, sir," Bozzy mumbled. "It's kind of you to take the blame."

  He thought it was also typical. He had understudied Mr. Kojac for the preceding two years, and felt there was no one else in the world for whom he could have as much respect.

  "Actually, sir," he explained, "I was delayed by the children."

  "An excuse, Boswell! Whether conscious or subconscious, nothing more than an excuse! Distaste for today's ceremonial is smeared over your face like so much bread-and-jelly."

  Unconsciously, Bozzy wiped his cheeks.

  Mr. Kojac laughed. "You're guilt-ridden and that's plain absurd. All young men in your position have to go through exactly the same thing. You must simply make up your mind to do what society requires."

  "All I can think of is your kindness," Bozzy blurted. "People should replace those they hate!"

  "But the understudy system wouldn't work, then," Mr. Kojac pointed out. "You can't learn from a man who upsets you."

  Bozzy nodded miserably.

  * * * * *

  In silence, he let himself be carried toward the furniture factory, till Mr. Kojac asked, "Did you bring the stimulants?"

  "Oh, yes, sir. Excuse me. I should have offered them sooner." With embarrassed clumsiness, he fished from a pocket in his under-wear the pills required by custom. "Here you are, sir," he said in ritual form. "Big pills make troubles little."

  Mr. Kojac smiled. "I don't need any," he said gently. "You do. Take one."

  "That isn't proper!"

  "No one will know. Go ahead."

  He would feel like a fool to take a pill brought only for Mr. Kojac's use. He would feel much more like a fool if he broke down during the ceremony--might even lose his job.

  He took the pill, finally, and immediately felt sorry. He was still tense and twitchy when they reached the factory.

  As custom demanded, everyone was out of sight. Nobody met them at the gate, or observed their silent progress up the escalator to the personnel office. Noiselessly, through empty soundproof offices, they walked together to the ceremonial chamber.

  The door they used was the room's only entrance. It was hooked open invitingly. Within was a small conference table of imitation oak, and six chairs of imitation leather. Ceiling, walls, and floor were plastic sheets in soft, sandy shades that harmonized with the furniture's rich browns.

  On the table were four wristlets, four anklets, and two belts, all made of iron links and stamped with either Bozzy's or Mr. Kojac's name. As he had been told to do, Bozzy picked out and put on his own set while Mr. Kojac rested in the armchair at the head of the table. Then, breathing noisily, he knelt before Mr. Kojac and fastened the old man's anklets.

  He rose, grunting. Mr. Kojac held out first the left hand, then the right, while Bozzy put the wristlets on him. Their cheeks accidentally touched while Bozzy fastened the belt. He thought of his father and was irrationally tempted to plant a kiss, as if he were four instead of forty.

  He stifled the impulse and shook hands instead.

  "Good luck," Mr. Kojac said.

  * * * * *

  The procedure did not call for that remark, and so, for a second, Bozzy forgot what came next. Then, helped by the stimulant pill, he focused his thoughts, crossed the room, and turned a lighted red switch that glowed by the door.

  He heard a muffled clank as iron links froze to the magnetized armchair, sounding the signal for his speech.

  "Sir," he intoned, "the Company takes this opportunity to express its deep and heart-felt appreciation of the thirty-five years you have devoted to serving the Company, the furniture industry generally, and that great public, our customers."

  Without looking at Mr. Kojac, he bowed, turned, went out, and released the catch holding the door open. It closed automatically, and automatically set in motion the rest of the ceremony.

  From somewhere out of sight, fat Mr. Frewne waddled over and briefly shook Bozzy's hand.

  "You've done fine," he wheezed. "A little late getting started, but that's to be expected. Every-thing's fine--just fine!"

  Praise seemed a miscue. Bozzy didn't quite know how to answer.

  "Sir," he asked, mopping his forehead, "what about Mr. Kojac?"

  "Oh, he's all right," Mr. Frewne said. "Those fumes are fast. We can leave the rest to the undertaker."

  He slapped Bozzy on the back and pushed him down the corridor. "Come on into my office, boy. I'll pour you a drink--pour us each one, as a matter of fact. And hand over your iron jewelry, son. You won't need that stuff again for thirty-five years."

  * * *

  Contents

  TREE, SPARE THAT WOODMAN

  By Dave Dryfoos

  The single thing to fear was fear--ghastly, walking fear!

  Stiff with shock, Naomi Heckscher stood just inside the door to Cappy's one-room cabin, where she'd happened to be when her husband discovered the old man's body.

  Her nearest neighbor--old Cappy--dead. After all his wire-pulling to get into the First Group, and his slaving to make a farm on this alien planet, dead in bed!

  Naomi's mind circled frantically, contrasting her happy anticipations with this shocking actuality. She'd come to call on a friend, she reminded herself, a beloved friend--round, white-haired, rosy-cheeked; lonely because he'd recently become a widower. To her little boy, Cappy was a combination Grandpa and Santa Claus; to herself, a sort of newly met Old Beau.

  Her mouth had been set for a sip of his home brew, her eyes had pictured the delight he'd take in and give to her little boy.

  She'd walked over with son and husband, expecting nothing more shocking than an ostentatiously stolen kiss. She'd found a corpse. And to have let Cappy die alone, in this strange world ...

  She and Ted could at least have been with him, if they'd known.

  But they'd been laughing and singing in their own cabin only a mile away, celebrating Richard's fifth birthday. She'd been annoyed when Cappy failed to show up with the present he'd promised Richard. Annoyed--while the old man pulled a blanket over his head, turned his round face to the wall, and died.

  Watching compassionately, Naomi was suddenly struck by the matter-of-fact way Ted examined the body. Ted wasn't surprised.

  "Why did you tell Richard to stay outside, just now?" she demanded. "How did you know what we'd find here? And why didn't you tell me, so I could keep Richard at home?"

  She saw Ted start, scalded by the splash of her self-directed anger, saw him try to convert his wince into a shrug.

  "You insisted on coming," he reminded her gently. "I couldn't have kept you home without--without saying too much, worrying you--with the Earth-ship still a year away. Besides, I didn't know for sure, till we saw the tree-th
ings around the cabin."

  The tree-things. The trees-that-were-not. Gnarled blue trunks, half-hidden by yellow leaf-needles stretching twenty feet into the sky. Something like the hoary mountain hemlocks she and Ted had been forever photographing on their Sierra honeymoon, seven life-long years ago.

  Three of those tree-things had swayed over Cappy's spring for a far longer time than Man had occupied this dreadful planet. Until just now ...

  The three of them had topped the rise that hid Cappy's farm from their own. Richard was running ahead like a happily inquisitive puppy. Suddenly he'd stopped, pointing with a finger she distinctly recalled as needing thorough soapy scrubbing.

  "Look, Mommie!" he'd said. "Cappy's trees have moved. They're around the cabin, now."

  He'd been interested, not surprised. In the past year, Mazda had become Richard's home; only Earth could surprise him.

  But, Ted, come to think of it, had seemed withdrawn, his face a careful blank. And she?

  "Very pretty," she'd said, and stuffed the tag-end of fear back into the jammed, untidy mental pigeon-hole she used for all unpleasant thoughts. "Don't run too far ahead, dear."

  But now she had to know what Ted knew.

  "Tell me!" she said.

  "These tree-things--"

  "There've been other deaths! How many?"

  "Sixteen. But I didn't want to tell you. Orders were to leave women and children home when we had that last Meeting, remember."

  "What did they say at the Meeting? Out with it, Ted!"

  "That--that the tree-things think!"

  "But that's ridiculous!"

  "Well, unfortunately, no. Look, I'm not trying to tell you that terrestrial trees think, too, nor even that they have a nervous system. They don't. But--well, on Earth, if you've ever touched a lighted match to the leaf of a sensitive plant like the mimosa, say--and I have--you've been struck by the speed with which other leaves close up and droop. I mean, sure, we know that the leaves droop because certain cells exude water and nearby leaves feel the heat of the match. But the others don't, yet they droop, too. Nobody knows how it works ..."

  "But that's just defensive!"

  "Sure. But that's just on Earth!"

  "All right, dear. I won't argue any more. But I still don't understand. Go on about the Meeting."

  "Well, they said these tree-things both create and respond to the patterned electrical impulses of the mind. It's something like the way a doctor creates fantasies by applying a mild electric current to the right places on a patient's brain. In the year we've been here, the trees--or some of them--have learned to read from and transmit to our minds. The range, they say, is around fifty feet. But you have to be receptive--"

  "Receptive?"

  "Fearful. That's the condition. So I didn't want to tell you because you must not let yourself become afraid, Naomi. We're clearing trees from the land, in certain areas. And it's their planet, after all. Fear is their weapon and fear can kill!"

  "You still--all you men--should have let us women know! What do you think we are? Besides, I don't really believe you. How can fear kill?"

  "Haven't you ever heard of a savage who gets in bad with his witch-doctor and is killed by magic? The savage is convinced, having seen or heard of other cases, that he can be killed. The witch-doctor sees to it he's told he will be killed. And sometimes the savage actually dies--"

  "From poison, I've always thought."

  "The poison of fear. The physical changes that accompany fear, magnified beyond belief by belief itself."

  "But how in the world could all this have affected Cappy? He wasn't a savage. And he was elderly, Ted. A bad heart, maybe. A stroke. Anything."

  "He passed his pre-flight physical only a year ago. And--well, he lived all alone. He was careful not to let you see it, but I know he worried about these three trees on his place. And I know he got back from the Meeting in a worried state of mind. Then, obviously, the trees moved--grouped themselves around his cabin within easy range. But don't be afraid of them, Naomi. So long as you're not, they can't hurt you. They're not bothering us now."

  "No. But where's Richard?"

  Naomi's eyes swept past Ted, encompassing the cabin. No Richard! He'd been left outside ...

  Glass tinkled and crashed as she flung back the cabin door. "Richard! Richard!"

  Her child was not in sight. Nor within earshot, it seemed.

  "Richard Heckscher! Where are you?" Sanity returned with the conventional primness. And it brought her answer.

  "Here I am, Mommie! Look-at!"

  He was in a tree! He was fifteen feet off the ground, high in the branches of a tree-thing, swaying--

  For an instant, dread flowed through Naomi as if in her bloodstream and something was cutting off her breath. Then, as the hands over mouth and throat withdrew, she saw they were Ted's. She let him drag her into the cabin and close the broken door.

  "Better not scare Richard," he said quietly, shoving her gently into a chair. "He might fall."

  Dumbly she caught her breath, waiting for the bawling out she'd earned.

  But Ted said, "Richard keeps us safe. So long as we fear for him, and not ourselves--"

  That was easy to do. Outside, she heard a piping call: "Look at me now, Mommie!"

  "Showing off!" she gasped. In a flashing vision, Richard was half boy, half vulture, flapping to the ground with a broken wing.

  "Here," said Ted, picking up a notebook that had been on the table. "Here's Cappy's present. A homemade picture book. Bait."

  "Let me use it!" she said. "Richard may have seen I was scared just now."

  Outside again, under the tree, she called, "Here's Cappy's present, Richard. He's gone away and left it for you."

  Would he notice how her voice had gone up half an octave, become flat and shrill?

  "I'm coming down," Richard said. "Let me down, tree."

  He seemed to be struggling. The branches were cagelike. He was caught!

  Naomi's struggle was with her voice. "How did you ever get up there?" she called.

  "The tree let me up, Mommie," Richard explained solemnly, "but he won't let me down!" He whimpered a little.

  He must not become frightened! "You tell that tree you've got to come right down this instant!" she ordered.

  She leaned against the cabin for support. Ted came out and slipped his arm around her.

  "Break off a few leaves, Richard," he suggested. "That'll show your tree who's boss!"

  Standing close against her husband, Naomi tried to stop shaking. But she lacked firm support, for Ted shook, too.

  His advice to Richard was sound, though. What had been a trap became, through grudging movement of the branches, a ladder. Richard climbed down, scolding at the tree like an angry squirrel.

  * * * * *

  Naomi thought she'd succeeded in shutting her mind. But when her little boy slid down the final bit of trunk and came for his present, Naomi broke. Like a startled animal, she thrust the book into his hands, picked him up and ran. Her mind was a jelly, red and quaking.

  She stopped momentarily after running fifty yards. "Burn the trees!" she screamed over her shoulder. "Burn the cabin! Burn it all!" She ran on, Ted's answering shouts beyond her comprehension.

  Fatigue halted her. At the top of the rise between Cappy's farm and their own, pain and dizziness began flowing over her in waves. She set Richard down on the mauve soil and collapsed beside him.

  When she sat up, Richard squatted just out of reach, watching curiously. She made an effort at casualness: "Let's see what Daddy's doing back there."

  "He's doing just what you said to, Mommie!" Richard answered indignantly.

  Her men were standing together, Naomi realized. She laughed. After a moment, Richard joined her. Then he looked for his book, found it a few paces away, and brought it to her.

  "Read to me, Mommie."

  "At home," she said.

  Activity at Cappy's interested her now. Wisps of smoke were licking around the trees. A t
ongue of flame lapped at one while she watched. Branches writhed. The trees were too slow-moving to escape ...

  But where was Ted? What had she exposed him to, with her hysterical orders? She held her breath till he moved within sight, standing quietly by a pile of salvaged tools. Behind him the cabin began to smoke.

  Ted wasn't afraid, then. He understood what he faced. And Richard wasn't afraid, either, because he didn't understand.

  But she? Surreptitiously Naomi pinched her hip till it felt black and blue. That was for being such a fool. She must not be afraid!

  "Daddy seems to be staying there," she said. "Let's wait for him at home, Richard."

  "Are you going to make Daddy burn our tree?"

  She jumped as if stung. Then, consciously womanlike, she sought relief in talk.

  "What do you think we should do, dear?"

  "Oh, I like the tree, Mommie. It's cool under there. And the tree plays with me."

  "How, Richard?"

  "If I'm pilot, he's navigator. Or ship, maybe. But he's so dumb, Mommie! I always have to tell him everything. Doesn't know what a fairy is, or Goldilocks, or anything!"

  He clutched his book affectionately, rubbing his face on it. "Hurry up, Mommie. It'll be bedtime before you ever read to me!"

  She touched his head briefly. "You can look at the book while I fix your supper."

  * * * * *

  But to explain Cappy's pictures--crudely crayoned cartoons, really--she had to fill in the story they illustrated. She told it while Richard ate: how the intrepid Spaceman gallantly used his ray gun against the villainous Martians to aid the green-haired Princess. Richard spooned up the thrills with his mush, gazing fascinated at Cappy's colorful and fantastic pictures, propped before him on the table. Had Ted been home, the scene might almost have been blissful.

  It might have been ... if their own tree hadn't reminded her of Cappy's. Still, she'd almost managed to stuff her fear back into that mental pigeon-hole before their own tree. It was unbelievable, but she'd been glancing out the window every few minutes, so she saw it start. Their own tree began to walk.