The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 1

by Gordon Van Gelder

  “A communist, are you?” said the young man. “Now will you please let me—”

  “No,” said Mr. Johnson insistently, “how much?”

  “Dollar fifty,” said the young man. “And now will you—”

  “You like adventure?”

  The young man stared, and, staring, found himself caught and held by Mr. Johnson’s genial smile; he almost smiled back and then repressed it and made an effort to tear away. “I got to hurry” he said.

  “Mystery? Like surprises? Unusual and exciting events?”

  “You selling something?”

  “Sure,” said Mr. Johnson. “You want to take a chance?”

  The young man hesitated, looked longingly up the avenue toward what might have been his destination and then, when Mr. Johnson said, “I’ll pay for it,” with his own peculiar convincing emphasis, turned and said, “Well, okay. But I got to see it first, what I’m buying.”

  Mr. Johnson, breathing hard, led the young man over to the side where the girl was standing; she had been watching with interest Mr. Johnson’s capture of the young man and now, smiling timidly, she looked at Mr. Johnson as though prepared to be surprised at nothing.

  Mr. Johnson reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. “Here,” he said, and handed a bill to the girl. “This about equals your day’s pay.”

  “But no,” she said, surprised in spite of herself. “I mean, I couldn’t.”

  “Please do not interrupt,” Mr. Johnson told her. “And here” he said to the young man, “this will take care of you” The young man accepted the bill dazedly, but said, “Probably counterfeit,” to the young woman out of the side of his mouth. “Now,” Mr. Johnson went on, disregarding the young man, “what is your name, miss?”

  “Kent,” she said helplessly. “Mildred Kent.”

  “Fine,” said Mr. Johnson. “And you, sir?”

  “Arthur Adams,” said the young man stiffly.

  “Splendid,” said Mr. Johnson. “Now, Miss Kent, I would like you to meet Mr. Adams. Mr. Adams, Miss Kent.”

  Miss Kent stared, wet her lips nervously, made a gesture as though she might run, and said, “How do you do?”

  Mr. Adams straightened his shoulders, scowled at Mr. Johnson, made a gesture as though he might run, and said, “How do you do?”

  “Now this” said Mr. Johnson, taking several bills from his wallet, “should be enough for the day for both of you. I would suggest, perhaps, Coney Island—although I personally am not fond of the place—or perhaps a nice lunch somewhere, and dancing, or a matinee, or even a movie, although take care to choose a really good one; there are so many bad movies these days. You might,” he said, struck with an inspiration, “visit the Bronx Zoo, or the Planetarium. Anywhere, as a matter of fact,” he concluded, “that you would like to go. Have a nice time.”

  As he started to move away, Arthur Adams, breaking from his dumbfounded stare, said, “But see here, mister, you can’t do this. Why—how do you know—I mean, we don’t even know—I mean, how do you know we won’t just take the money and not do what you said?”

  “You’ve taken the money,” Mr. Johnson said. “You don’t have to follow any of my suggestions. You may know something you prefer to do—perhaps a museum, or something.”

  “But suppose I just run away with it and leave her here?”

  “I know you won’t,” said Mr. Johnson gently, “because you remembered to ask me that. Goodbye,” he added, and went on.

  As he stepped up the street, conscious of the sun on his head and his good shoes, he heard from somewhere behind him the young man saying, “Look, you know you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” and the girl saying, “But unless you don’t want to...” Mr. Johnson smiled to himself and then thought that he had better hurry along; when he wanted to he could move very quickly, and before the young woman had gotten around to saying, “Well, I will if you will,” Mr. Johnson was several blocks away and had already stopped twice, once to help a lady lift several large packages into a taxi and once to hand a peanut to a seagull. By this time he was in an area of large stores and many more people and he was buffeted constantly from either side by people hurrying and cross and late and sullen. Once he offered a peanut to a man who asked him for a dime, and once he offered a peanut to a bus driver who had stopped his bus at an intersection and had opened the window next to his seat and put out his head as though longing for fresh air and the comparative quiet of the traffic. The man wanting a dime took the peanut because Mr. Johnson had wrapped a dollar bill around it, but the bus driver took the peanut and asked ironically, “You want a transfer, Jack?”

  On a busy corner Mr. Johnson encountered two young people—for one minute he thought they might be Mildred Kent and Arthur Adams—who were eagerly scanning a newspaper, their backs pressed against a storefront to avoid the people passing, their heads bent together. Mr. Johnson, whose curiosity was insatiable, leaned onto the storefront next to them and peeked over the man’s shoulder; they were scanning the “Apartments Vacant” columns.

  Mr. Johnson remembered the street where the woman and her little boy were going to Vermont and he tapped the man on the shoulder and said amiably, “Try down on West Seventeen. About the middle of the block, people moved out this morning.”

  “Say, what do you—” said the man, and then, seeing Mr. Johnson clearly, “Well, thanks. Where did you say?”

  “West Seventeen,” said Mr. Johnson. “About the middle of the block.” He smiled again and said, “Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” said the man.

  “Thanks,” said the girl, as they moved off.

  “Goodbye,” said Mr. Johnson.

  He lunched alone in a pleasant restaurant, where the food was rich, and only Mr. Johnson’s excellent digestion could encompass two of their whipped-cream-and-chocolate-and-rum-cake pastries for dessert. He had three cups of coffee, tipped the waiter largely, and went out into the street again into the wonderful sunlight, his shoes still comfortable and fresh on his feet. Outside he found a beggar staring into the windows of the restaurant he had left and, carefully looking through the money in his pocket, Mr. Johnson approached the beggar and pressed some coins and a couple of bills into his hand. “It’s the price of the veal cutlet lunch plus tip,” said Mr. Johnson. “Goodbye.”

  After his lunch he rested; he walked into the nearest park and fed peanuts to the pigeons. It was late afternoon by the time he was ready to start back downtown, and he had refereed two checker games and watched a small boy and girl whose mother had fallen asleep and awakened with surprise and fear which turned to amusement when she saw Mr. Johnson. He had given away almost all of his candy, and had fed all the rest of his peanuts to the pigeons, and it was time to go home. Although the late afternoon sun was pleasant, and his shoes were still entirely comfortable, he decided to take a taxi downtown.

  He had a difficult time catching a taxi, because he gave up the first three or four empty ones to people who seemed to need them more; finally, however, he stood alone on the corner and—almost like netting a frisky fish—he hailed desperately until he succeeded in catching a cab which had been proceeding with haste uptown and seemed to draw in towards Mr. Johnson against its own will.

  “Mister,” the cab driver said as Mr. Johnson climbed in, “I figured you was an omen, like. I wasn’t going to pick you up at all.”

  “Kind of you,” said Mr. Johnson ambiguously.

  “If I’d of let you go it would of cost me ten bucks,” said the driver.

  “Really?” said Mr. Johnson.

  “Yeah,” said the driver. “Guy just got out of the cab, he turned around and give me ten bucks, said take this and bet it in a hurry on a horse named Vulcan, right away.”

  “Vulcan?” said Mr. Johnson, horrified. “A fire sign on a Wednesday?”

  “What?” said the driver. “Anyway, I said to myself if I got no fare between here and there I’d bet the ten, but if anyone looked like they needed the cab I’d take it as an ome
n and I’d take the ten home to the wife.”

  “You were very right,” said Mr. Johnson heartily. “This is Wednesday, you would have lost your money. Monday, yes, or even Saturday. But never never never a fire sign on a Wednesday. Sunday would have been good, now.”

  “Vulcan don’t run on Sunday,” said the driver.

  “You wait till another day,” said Mr. Johnson. “Down this street, please, driver. I’ll get off on the next corner.”

  “He told me Vulcan, though,” said the driver.

  “I’ll tell you,” said Mr. Johnson, hesitating with the door of the cab half open. “You take that ten dollars and I’ll give you another ten dollars to go with it, and you go right ahead and bet that money on any Thursday on any horse that has a name indicating... let me see, Thursday... well, grain. Or any growing food.”

  “Grain?” said the driver. “You mean a horse named, like, Wheat or something?”

  “Certainly,” said Mr. Johnson. “Or, as a matter of fact, to make it even easier, any horse whose name includes the letters C, R, L. Perfectly simple.”

  “Tall corn?” said the driver, a light in his eye. “You mean a horse named, like, Tall Corn?”

  “Absolutely,” said Mr. Johnson. “Here’s your money.”

  “Tall Corn,” said the driver. “Thank you, mister.”

  “Goodbye,” said Mr. Johnson.

  He was on his own corner and went straight up to his apartment. He let himself in and called “Hello?” and Mrs. Johnson answered from the kitchen, “Hello, dear, aren’t you early?”

  “Took a taxi home,” Mr. Johnson said. “I remembered the cheesecake, too. What’s for dinner?”

  Mrs. Johnson came out of the kitchen and kissed him; she was a comfortable woman, and smiling as Mr. Johnson smiled. “Hard day?” she asked.

  “Not very,” said Mr. Johnson, hanging his coat in the closet. “How about you?

  “So-so,” she said. She stood in the kitchen doorway while he settled into his easy chair and took off his good shoes and took out the paper he had bought that morning. “Here and there,” she said.

  “I didn’t do so badly,” Mr. Johnson said. “Couple young people.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I had a little nap this afternoon, took it easy most of the day. Went into a department store this morning and accused the woman next to me of shoplifting, and had the store detective pick her up. Sent three dogs to the pound—you know, the usual thing. Oh, and listen,” she added, remembering.

  “What?” asked Mr. Johnson.

  “Well,” she said, “I got onto a bus and asked the driver for a transfer, and when he helped someone else first I said that he was impertinent, and quarreled with him. And then I said why wasn’t he in the army, and I said it loud enough for everyone to hear, and I took his number and I turned in a complaint. Probably got him fired.”

  “Fine,” said Mr. Johnson. “But you do look tired. Want to change over tomorrow?”

  “I would like to,” she said. “I could do with a change.”

  “Right,” said Mr. Johnson. “What’s for dinner?”

  “Veal cutlet.”

  “Had it for lunch,” said Mr. Johnson.

  Return to Table of Contents

  A Touch of Strange - Theodore Sturgeon

  Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985) published a story in our first issue and a tale of his appeared posthumously in our fiftieth anniversary issue. In between, about a dozen of his beautiful, well-crafted tales about love, alienation, and syzygy graced our pages. For our thirtieth anniversary, we surveyed our readers and Mr. Sturgeon’s “And Now the News...” proved to be one of our most popular stories, but for this anthology, I felt “A Touch of Strange” was a better fit.

  He left his clothes in the car and slipped down to the beach.

  Moonrise, she’d said.

  He glanced at the eastern horizon and was informed of nothing. It was a night to drink the very airglow, and the stars lay lightless like scattered talc on the background.

  “Moonrise,” he muttered.

  Easy enough for her. Moonrise was something, in her cosmos, that one simply knew about. He’d had to look it up. You don’t realize—certainly she’d never realize—how hard it is, when you don’t know anything about it, to find out exactly what time moonrise is supposed to be, at the dark of the moon. He still wasn’t positive, so he’d come early, and would wait.

  He shuffled down to the whispering water, finding it with ears and toes. “Woo.” Catch m’ death, he thought. But it never occurred to him to keep her waiting. It wasn’t in her to understand human frailties.

  He glanced once again at the sky, then waded in and gave himself to the sea. It was chilly, but by the time he had taken ten of the fine strong strokes which had first attracted her, he felt wonderful. He thought, oh well, by the time I’ve learned to breathe under water, it should be no trick at all to find moonrise without an almanac.

  He struck out silently for blackened and broken teeth of rock they call Harpy’s Jaw, with their gums of foam and the floss of tide-risen weed bitten up and hung for the birds to pick. It was oily calm everywhere but by the Jaw, which mumbled and munched on every wave and spit the pieces into the air. He was therefore very close before he heard the singing. What with the surf and his concentration on flanking the Jaw without cracking a kneecap the way he had that first time, he was in deep water on the seaward side before he noticed the new quality in the singing: Delighted he trod water and listened to be sure; and sure enough, he was right.

  It sounded terrible.

  “Get your flukes out of your mouth,” he bellowed joyfully, “you baggy old guano-guzzler.”

  “You don’t sound so hot yourself, chum,” came the shrill falsetto answer, “and you know what type fish-gut chum I mean.”

  He swam closer. Oh, this was fine. It wasn’t easy to find a for-real something like this to clobber her with. Mostly, she was so darn perfect, he had to make it up whole, like the time he told her her eyes weren’t the same color. Imagine, he thought, they get head-colds too! And then he thought, well, why not? “You mind your big bony bottom-feeding mouth,” he called cheerfully, “or I’ll curry your tail with a scaling-tool.” He could barely make her out, sprawled on the narrow seaward ledge—something piebald dark in the darkness. “Was that really you singin’ or are you sitting on a blowfish?”

  “You creak no better’n a straight-gut skua gull in a sewer sump,” she cried raucously. “Whyn’cha swallow that sea-slug or spit it out, one?”

  “Ah, go soak your head in a paddlewheel,” he laughed. He got a hand on the ledge and heaved himself out of the water. Instantly there was a high-pitched squeak and a clumsy splash, and she was gone. The particolored mass of shadow-in-shade had passed him in mid-air too swiftly for him to determine just what it was, but he knew with a shocked certainty what it was not.

  He wiggled a bare (i.e., mere) buttock-clutch on the short narrow shell of rock and leaned over as far as he could to peer into the night-stained sea. In a moment there was a feeble commotion and then a bleached oval so faint that he must avert his eyes two points to leeward like a sailor seeing a far light, to make it out at all. Again, seeing virtually nothing, he could be sure of the things it was not. That close cap of darkness, night or no night, was not the web of floating gold for which he had once bought a Florentine comb. Those two dim blotches were not the luminous, over-long, wide-spaced (almost side-set) green eyes which, laughing, devoured his sleep. Those hints of shoulders were not broad and fair, but slender. That salt-spasmed weak sobbing cough was unlike any sound he had heard on these rocks before; and the (by this time) unnecessary final proof was the narrow hand he reached for and grasped. It was delicate, not splayed; it was unwebbed; its smoothness was that of the plum and not the articulated magic of a fine-wrought golden watchband. It was, in short, human, and for a long devastated moment their hands clung together while their minds, in panic, prepared to do battle with the truth. At last they said in unison, “But y
ou’re not—”

  And let a wave pass, and chorused, “I didn’t know there was anybod—” And opened and closed their mouths, and said together, “Y’see, I was waiting for—”

  “Look!” he said abruptly, because he had found something he could say that she couldn’t at the moment. “Get a good grip, I’ll pull you out. Ready? One, two—”

  “No!” she said, outraged, and pulled back abruptly. He lost her hand, and down she went in mid-gasp, and up she came strangling. He reached down to help, and missed, though he brushed her arm. “Don’t touch me!” she cried, and doggy-paddled frantically to the rock on which he sat, and got a hand on it. She hung there coughing until he stirred, whereupon: “Don’t touch me!” she cried again.

  “Well all right,” he said in an injured tone. She said, aloud but obviously to herself, “Oh, dear...” Somehow this made him want to explain himself. “I only thought you should come out, coughing like that, I mean it’s silly you should be bobbing around in the water and I’m sitting up here on the...” He started a sentence about he was only trying to be... and another about he was not trying to be... and was unable to finish either. They stared at one another, two panting sightless blots on a spume-slick rock.

  “The way I was talking before, you’ve got to understand—” They stopped as soon as they realized they were in chorus again. In a sudden surge of understanding he laughed—it was like relief—and said, “You mean that you’re not the kind of girl who talks the way you were talking just before I got here. I believe you... And I’m not the kind of guy who does it either. I thought you were a—thought you were someone else, that’s all. Come on out. I won’t touch you.”

  “Well...”

  “I’m still waiting for the—for my friend. That’s all.”

  “Well...”

  A wave came and she took sudden advantage of it and surged upward, falling across the ledge on her stomach. “I’ll manage, I’ll manage,” she said rapidly, and did. He stayed where he was. They stayed where they were in the hollow of the rock, out of the wind, four feet apart, in darkness so absolute that the red of tight-closed eyes was a lightening.