Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "No," she said.

  "It's perfectly safe," he said.

  She filed a rough edge off her nail, second finger, right hand.

  "It's standard analytic procedure. I've used it dozens of times. I'm quite competent--"

  "No," she said.

  "But why not?" he asked.

  "You'll find out all about me," she said. "I'll have no secrets left."

  "But you shouldn't want to have any secrets from your psychoanalyst. I can't help you then."

  "Perhaps," she agreed. "But I want to have secrets from you," she said softly, and looked up quietly from her fingers, staring directly into his eyes, and her lips and her eyes underwent that mysterious synchronization once again. "I don't want you to know me like a book, with everything spelled out in black and white, but like a portrait, with hidden shades and nuances.... I want you to know me gradually, slowly...."

  "Mimi," he said, and paused. He pushed back from his desk, swiveled completely around and back to his original position, cracked two knuckles, tried to force some saliva into a suddenly dry mouth, and started to speak again. "Mimi, it's not unusual for a patient to develop a feeling of affection for her psychoanalyst. In fact, it's the usual--"

  "It's not like that with us, though, is it?" she asked, more quietly, more softly and deeply, than before.

  After a long pause he said, "No. No, it's not."

  And so they sat there while the daylight faded outside them and the twilight crawled up sixty-three floors to encircle their window and continue unhesitatingly upward.

  * * * * *

  "What are we going to do?" she asked.

  "We're not going to do anything, Mimi," he finally said. "When I'm with you, it's all so light and fantastic and funny, that I forget. But it would be unforgivable to fall in love with a patient, and the wife of a patient. I can't do it. We'll have to stop right away. I'm no good as an analyst to you anymore, anyway. I'm sorry, I'll send you to someone else. And now you'd better go."

  She stood up, walked around his desk, and put her hands lightly on his neck. "You're such a dear," she said. "I'll always love you. I've never seen you so serious before. We always laugh and talk and giggle when we're together, and I loved you then. But now that you're sad and serious and oh so pitiably tragic I love you more than I could ever tell you. But please don't worry, don't worry about a thing, darling. You'll see, it will all work out."

  "It can't work out, Mimi, there's absolutely no way on earth for it to work out. There's no solution at all."

  "Please don't worry, darling," she said, picking up her gloves. "I can't bear to see you looking so tragic. Life isn't so serious, especially as you're loved." She walked out and closed the door behind her. Victor sat quite still. He could barely hear her saying "Margaret, wake up, Margaret, it's time to go home," through the thick wooden door.

  * * * * *

  The phone rang in his office three days later. He was alone at the time, going over some notes he had just taken with another patient. Margaret was out, presumably peering through the floor of the ladies' lounge down the hall, and he picked up the receiver himself.

  "Victor, come quick," Mimi screamed through the wires. "He's trying to kill me!"

  She said more, but he heard none of it. His fingers went numb, the phone dropped, he was out of his seat and skidding around the desk before it hit the carpeted floor. He had to wait at the elevator. He thought for one silly moment of racing to the exit and running down sixty-three floors, then compromised on stamping his feet and slamming one fist into the other palm and striding up and down while three other men and two women also waiting for the elevator stared at him. He thought of calling the police just as the elevator door opened, and he nearly turned and left it, but couldn't and leaped in just as the doors were closing. "I'm Dr. Quink," he shouted at the elevator operator. "This is an emergency. Take me straight down."

  The elevator went straight down. The doors opened on the ground floor and Victor shot out, leaving behind two nearly mortally sick women and several acid comments to the effect that he was probably late for a matinee. "I couldn't take any chances," apologized the elevator operator, "it might really have been an emergency."

  It wasn't raining in New York that day, so he was able to get a cab immediately. He took it to his parking lot and roared off from there. He sped through the city traffic, incurring the widespread wrath and disapproval of the police department. A patrol car caught up with him on Grand Central Parkway and forced him off the road. He explained who he was and that a madman was threatening to kill his wife, no, not his wife, the madman's wife, and that he didn't have time to sit here and talk about it. The police officer told him to follow him, and, siren blazing, they roared off once again.

  It occurred to both of them nearly simultaneously that Victor couldn't possibly follow the police officer, it had to be the other way around, and so Victor took the lead, the red siren hanging on behind. But when Victor left the parkway he saw in his mirror no flashing red light, somewhere he had lost the police. He touched the brake a second, for the first time in the past fifteen minutes, then accelerated again and hurried on. He had not the time to wait.

  The door to the Fairfield's home was unlocked and he burst in without ringing. "Mimi," he cried, then, hearing vague noises from the upstairs bedroom, he hurried there.

  * * * * *

  He didn't find Mimi there. Donald Fairfield was alone in the bedroom, and the bedroom was a mess, and there was a gun in Donald Fairfield's hand.

  Victor stopped in the doorway, a gas pain shooting up his side. He thought at that moment, inanely, he should play more handball.

  "Galileo," Donald Fairfield said, "it came to me just a few moments ago. Galileo. It was on the tip of my tongue all the time, I just couldn't think of it. What were we saying about him, do you remember? What brought it up?"

  Victor braced himself up against the doorway, breathing hard. He stared at the gun in Donald's hand. Donald followed his gaze down his side to the gun, and seemed surprised when he saw it. "Oh, yes. She's in the bathroom," he said, waving his gun towards the closed door. "She's locked the door."

  Victor belched.

  "For God's sake," said Donald. "There's a time and a place for everything."

  Victor crossed to the door. "Mimi," he called. "Mimi, it's me, Victor."

  The lock clicked, the door opened, and Mimi walked out and folded herself into his arms. He held her until she stopped shaking, then until he himself stopped shaking and until his breath came more easily. He kept all the while his back toward Donald and the gun, and his arms folded around her so that she was safe from him. Then he turned and calmly as he could, he asked what in the holy hell was going on.

  "He wants me to go back with him, right now," Mimi said. She was shivering in his arms. "I'm not going, I'm not going with him."

  "Of course, you're not," Victor said. He turned back to Donald. "What's the rush all of a sudden?" he asked. "What's the big emergency?" he smiled.

  "Don't turn on the personality, Dr. Quink," Fairfield said. "It's too complicated to explain, but time's run out on us. We've got to go tonight, and I'm taking her with me dead or alive, I don't give a damn which way anymore, she's coming with me dead or alive."

  Victor let go of Mimi and took a step toward him, but the hand with the gun came up and gun was pointed straight at him, and the voice was flat and tired and desperate, "I can't leave her here, you can see what it would mean. They're very strict about time traveling, they have to be, and she can't stay here. She hasn't lost her memory, she knows damned well where she comes from, and she's going back now, one way or the other. I don't know what'll happen to me when we get back if I kill her, but it's my decision and I can't let her stay behind, no matter what." His voice started to rise and the words began to come faster. He was working himself up dangerously near the breaking point.

  "If you'll just calm down for a few moments," Victor tried, "I'm sure we can talk this out sensibly enough."


  "It won't work, Dr. Quink, it won't work. You're trying to talk it out like I'm nuts, you're trying to reassure me, but it won't work because you can't. Because I'm not nuts! I'm telling the truth and she knows it! Damn you, Mimi, tell him!"

  * * * * *

  "All right! All right, I'll tell him," she cried. "And I'll tell you, too. And I'm not going back with you, you'll see. Because I planned this from the start. My God, what a day," she sighed, and sat down on the bed. "Now listen, both of you, you, too, Donald, because you don't know it all either."

  "He's not crazy, Victor, we do come from the future. I was reading about all the Nobel prize winners, darling, and of course, I came across you, and right from the beginning you fascinated me. Do you know you were the first psychiatrist ever to win the award, and then you won it twice? Oh, I can tell you, I was terribly impressed! And when I saw your picture, you know the one, the portrait by Videl in the Museum of Ancient--oh, but of course, it hasn't been done yet. You have gray sideburns then, and there's not a touch of gray in your hair now. Anyway, you look absolutely distinguished with gray, it's certainly your color. And I thought you were just the handsomest Nobel winner I had ever seen, and darling, you are, not the slightest doubt about it. Don't you think so, Donald?"

  "He's charming," Donald replied. "Just terribly, terribly charming. Would you mind getting on with it?"

  "Please," Victor started to interrupt.

  "Don't be modest, darling," Mimi went on. "So then I read a biography, and then another, and soon I was doing nothing but studying you. I fell in love with you, dear, I fell in love with you a thousand years after you were dead. You never married, you know, and you needed me, and I guess that helped, but at any rate I fell, and I fell all the way.

  "We're not married, Donald and I. There's no sex then, so there's no need for marriage. Right, Donald? Right. But he was coming here on vacation and he was nice enough to take me along, and we had to fit in, so we came as husband and wife. Just a matter of convenience, really. But then we were here for all those months, and I didn't get to meet you, and something about this age just got into my bones, I loved it so, people really live now, not like back home. And I nearly forgot about you, Victor dear, although I can't understand that now, and all I wanted was to live here like a normal person, a normal wife. But he couldn't understand that. At any rate, I went native, I went whole hog native.

  "And then it was time to go home. But I wasn't going. So I made up this story about forgetting everything and I pretended I thought he was nuts or something and he went and got you and suddenly there you were in my living room and it all came back, darling, it came back so fast and strong I thought I'd die on the spot. And I love you now, darling, I love you now and forever, and I won't go back alive, I swear that."

  * * * * *

  "Mimi," Donald begged, "think of the future. If you don't go back it'll be all upset. We can't have people just popping up in the past from the future, there has to be discipline. It's one thing to come here quietly for a few months of harmless vacation, and then just as quietly to disappear. But to settle down brazenly in another time, to ... to immigrate, as it were, well, it just can't be done. There's no precedent, just none at all. Nobody would think of doing such a thing. Why, who knows what would happen if you stayed here? It could upset the whole pattern of the future!"

  "The future will just have to take care of itself," Mimi answered. "I love him, and you can't argue with that. There's nothing you can say that can argue with that. I don't care poof for the future."

  * * * * *

  Victor sat down quietly on the edge of the bed, he felt a bit weak around the general vicinity of the knees. Mimi stood up and strode over to the window, her back to the conversation. "Mimi," Donald pleaded, "just think of what you're doing. You'll lose your immortality, for one thing. You know, it's not something you're just born with, it's the result of careful medical science. Why, almost anything could happen to you here. They have all sorts of ugly diseases. And if you should last just a few years longer, just maybe fifty or sixty more years, your heart will almost certainly pop off. They don't have any sort of arterial rejuvenation now, nothing at all. You're trading immortality for a mere moment."

  "I don't give a damn or a wild pig's snort," she replied.

  "Don't be vulgar," Donald said. "Let's keep this on a civilized plane."

  "That's not vulgarity," she answered. "It's poetry. 'I don't give a damn or a wild pig's snort, but you cut just one strand and the fashions be damned, I swear that I'll boil three in lime!'"

  "Lime?" Victor asked rather weakly.

  "I think so, dear," Mimi said. "Would you care for a martini?"

  "How about the toilet!" Donald suddenly thundered. "How about that, hey?"

  "I beg your pardon," Mimi replied.

  "The toilets, the toilets," he repeated impatiently. "Do you want to spend the rest of your short life with this old-fashioned plumbing?" He waved wildly toward the tile bathroom. "It's all right roughing it for a few months like we did, but can you honestly imagine spending the rest of your life under such vile conditions? Ha, you didn't think of that, did you?" he continued when he saw the sudden stricken expression on her face. "You don't like the idea, do you?"

  Mimi clenched her fists at her side and stamped her little foot. "I don't care," she spit out, "I absolutely do not care! I will stay with him, I will, I will, I will." She turned and looked at the bathroom that opened off the bedroom, and blanched for one moment, then she shut her eyes, gave another kick, and insisted. "I will, I will, I will!"

  * * * * *

  Donald sighed and slapped his hands at his side. He turned around, hesitated for a few seconds, then said to the wall, "I've tried. I've tried everything I could think of." He turned again and faced them, and he raised his gun. "You're coming, Mimi. One way or another, you're coming."

  So quietly he hardly realized what he was doing, but thankful that the gas pain had vanished, Victor stepped between the gun and the girl. "You'll have to kill me, Donald," he said. "You won't take her out of here without killing me, I promise you that, and what will that do to your future? A man from the future killing somebody here? Oh, no, that'll upset everything. And before I've become famous? Your whole history will be changed. You'd better think twice, Donald."

  The gun wavered, and lowered.

  "Would you care for a martini, Donald, dear?" Mimi asked.

  Donald turned and ran from the room. They heard his feet slipping down the stairs, they heard the front door slam behind him.

  Victor started after him, but Mimi held him back. "What are you going to do," she cried, "chase after him? What will you do when you catch him? You're needed more here. After all," she continued, "think what I just went through? I'm a nervous wreck, almost getting carted off to God knows where like that. I need the care of a competent physician."

  He turned back to her in a daze, she clucked and patted his cheek, and pushed him down onto the bed. She pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his face. "Aren't you proud of me?" she said. "Wasn't that fast thinking? How did you like that little story I told? It really threw him, didn't it? He didn't know what to think."

  "You mean," Victor stammered, "you mean you didn't mean it, you just made it up? Just like that?"

  "Darling," she began to giggle, "you didn't believe that wild story? About the future? Oh, darling, you couldn't possibly believe it."

  "Of course not," he said. "Of course not. Quick thinking, Mimi, yes, very quick thinking. It was a convincing story, you know. Very good. But, my God! I've got to catch him."

  "Don't be silly," she said, pushing him down. "You'll never find him, you'll never see him again. He'll be lost in the crowd. One more screwball in New York, they'll never notice him. He'll fit right in. He may even become President some day, or at least Dean of Students at some small New England College. You just take my word for it, darling, and relax a moment. I'll rush downstairs and bring you up a martini. We deserve one. He'll be all right now. As
long as he's made up his mind that he can leave me here, he'll trot off somewhere and dig up another neurosis, or psychosis, or whatever. He's not dangerous anymore. And you heard him say we were never married, and we have no marriage certificate, so I guess we're not. Can't we just forget about him, just as if he never existed? Maybe he never did exist. Maybe he was just a figment of our imagination. Maybe he was just an instrument of kismet to bring us together. Maybe he was just a wandering minstrel, or a memory looking for a chance to be real?"

  "Maybe you'd better not talk so much, but just bring up the martini. Better bring a pitcher. Green ones."

  And so she did. Their first honeymoon they spent in Bermuda; they took their second on a trip to Sweden ten years later, when Victor went to accept his first Nobel prize.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE CIRCUIT RIDERS

  by R. C. FitzPatrick

  On the Board, they were just little lights that glowed. But out there in the night of the city-jungle, they represented human passions-- virulent emotions-- and deadly crimes-to-be ...

  He was an old man and very drunk. Very drunk or very sick. It was the middle of the day and the day was hot, but the old man had on a suit, and a sweater under the suit. He stopped walking and stood still, swaying gently on widespread legs, and tried to focus his eyes. He lived here ... around here ... somewhere around here. He continued on, stumbling up the street.

  He finally made it home. He lived on the second floor and he dragged himself up the narrow staircase with both hands clutching the railing. But he was still very careful of the paper bag under his arm. The bag was full of beer.

  Once in the room, he managed to take off his coat before he sank down on the bed. He just sat there, vacant and lost and empty, and drank his beer.

  * * * * *

  It was a hot, muggy, August afternoon--Wednesday in Pittsburgh. The broad rivers put moisture in the air, and the high hills kept it there. Light breezes were broken-up and diverted by the hills before they could bring more than a breath of relief.