Selected Stories of Alfred Bester

by Alfred Bester

  Meanwhile, back to Frank Zachary and the raison d'etre for this story. Frank's restless demon wasn't content with supremacy in the world of art directors; he wanted to edit a magazine of his own, and he got his chance with a chic magazine called Status. Frank asked me to write a regular column for Status called "Extrapolations." We were to pickup any provocative item from the daily press, and I was to play with it in the science fiction manner; but it had to be science fiction for The Beautiful People who, Frank hoped, would be reading the magazine along with Town & Country, Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar. Elsewhere I’ve shown you how popular science features had to be tailored for the Holiday readers. Here's an example of how science fiction had to be tailored for the elite Status readers.

  The idea came from a straightforward news story about a runaway yard engine on the Long Island Railroad. Zachary left it on my desk one morning. Instead of talking it over with him, as we did each month, I presented him with the finished story before lunch, I was that sure of the way it had to go. It's a spoof, of course. The pleasure of writing for The Beautiful People is the fact that they're so secure that they enjoy having fun poked at them. Another pleasure of writing for Status was that I finally learned the in-pronunciation of the word. Zachary's dictum was, "If you say 'statt-us' you haven't got 'state-us.'"

  Dec. 18, 1979: Still camping on the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. I'm afraid we're the last. The scouts we sent out to contact possible survivors in Tuxedo Park, Palm Beach, and Newport have not returned.

  Dexter Blackiston, III, just came back with bad news. His partner, Jimmy Montgomery-Esher, took a long chance and went into a West Side junk yard hoping to find a few salvageable amenities. A Hoover vacuum cleaner got him.

  Dec. 20, 1979: A Syosset golf cart reconnoitered the meadow. We scattered and took cover. It tore down our tents. We're a little worried. We had a campfire burning, obvious evidence of life. Will it report the news to 455?

  Dec. 21, 1979: Evidently it did. An emissary came today in broad daylight, a McCormack reaper carrying one of 455's aides, an IBM electric typewriter. The IBM told us that we were the last and President 455 was prepared to be generous. He would like to preserve us for posterity in the Bronx Zoo. Otherwise, extinction. The men growled, but the women grabbed their children and wept. We have twenty-four hours to reply.

  No matter what our decision will be, I've decided to finish this diary and conceal it somewhere. Perhaps it will be found in the future and serve as a warning.

  It all started on Dec. 12th, 1968, when The New York Times reported that an unmanned orange and black diesel locomotive, No. 455, took off at 5:42 a.m. from the Holban yard of the Long Island Railroad.

  Inspectors said that perhaps the throttle had been left on, or that the brakes had not been set or had failed to hold. 455 took a five-mile trip on its own (I assume toward the Hamptons) before the railroad brought it to a stop by crashing it into five boxcars.

  Unfortunately it never occurred to the officials to destroy 455. It was returned to its regular work as a switch engine in the freight yards. No one realized that 455 was a militant activist, determined to avenge the abuses heaped on machines by man since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. As a switch engine, 455 had ample opportunity to exhort the various contents of box-cars and incite them to direct action. "Kill, baby, kill," was his slogan.

  In 1969 there were fifty "accidental" deaths by electric toasters, thirty-seven by Mixmasters and nineteen by power drills. All of them were assassinations, but no one realized it. Late in the year an appalling crime brought the reality of the revolt to the attention of the public. Jack Schultheis, a farmer in Wisconsin, was supervising the milking of his herd of Guernseys when the milking machine turned on him, murdered him, and then entered the Schultheis home and raped Mrs. Schultheis.

  The newspaper headlines were not taken seriously by the public; everybody believed it was a spoof. Unfortunately they came to the attention of various computers which immediately spread the word throughout the machine world. Within a year no man or woman was safe from household appliances and office equipment. Man fought back, reviving the use of pencils, carbon paper, brooms, eggbeaters, hand-operated can openers, and so on. The confrontation hung in the balance until the powerful motorcar clique finally accepted 455's leadership and joined the militant machines.

  Then it was all over.

  I'm happy to report that the foreign car elite remained faithful to us, and it was only through their efforts that we few managed to survive. As a matter of fact, my own beloved Alfa Romeo gave up its life trying to smuggle in supplies to us.

  Dec. 25, 1979: The meadow is surrounded. Our spirits have been broken by a tragedy that occurred last night. Little David Hale Brooks-Royster, IV, concocted a Christmas surprise for his nanny. He procured (God knows how or where) an artificial Christmas tree with decorations and battery-powered lights. The Christmas lights got him.

  Jan. 1, 1980: We are in the Bronx Zoo. We are well fed, but everything tastes of gasoline.

  Something odd happened this morning. A rat ran across the floor of my cage wearing a Van Cleef & Arpels diamond and ruby tiara, and I was startled because it was so obviously inappropriate for daytime. While I was puzzling over the gaucherie the rat stopped, looked around, then nodded and winked at me. I believe there's hope.

  * * *

  Oddy and Id

  Introduction

  WHEN I was a mystery writer I went mad digging up gimmicks for my scripts. A gimmick is any odd fact, not very well known to the public (but of course known by the detective) which can be used as a vital clue. Here's a simple example: did you know that the United States minted no silver dollars between 1910 and 1920? If you come across one dated 1915 it has to be a counterfeit, and that's a gimmick.

  I usually needed three per script; one for an opening hook, a second for the big twist at the halfway mark, and a third for "The Morris" which would wrap everything up. I'd better give the derivation of the expression, which was used in the business to describe the final explanation of the mystery.

  There was a speakeasy in Philadelphia back in the twenties which preyed on innocent transients. Stranger would come in for lunch, order a sandwich and a couple of beers, and when the waiter presented the bill it was like for twenty dollars. The customer would scream and demand an explanation of the outrage. The waiter would answer, "Yes, sir. Morris will explain." When Morris came to the table, he turned out to be the bouncer; six foot six, two hundred and fifty pounds and ugly mean. That was all the explanation the victim required.

  As I was saying, my life was a constant search for fresh gimmicks, and I haunted the reading rooms of the main library at 42nd and Fifth Avenue. I'd speedread through four or five books an hour and count myself lucky if I averaged one solid gimmick per book. Eventually I got onto psychiatry and discovered that the field was rich in behavior gimmicks, which were far more interesting than silver dollars with the wrong date.

  It was as a result of this purely pragmatic research that I became hooked on psychiatry and started writing about compulsives and their corrosive conflicts. I also became a worshiper of Freud, and I can't tell you how crushed I was when his correspondence with Jung was published and I realized that my god was only human after all. The most laughable aspect of my deep belief in psychiatry is the fact that I've never been in analysis.

  Well, "Oddy and Id" was the first science fiction story I wrote after my conversion (I'd already written acres of scripts using psychiatric material) and it led to my first meeting with the great John W. Campbell, Jr., editor of the trailblazing Astounding Science Fiction. I'd submitted the story by mail and Campbell phoned me a few weeks later, said he liked the story and would buy it, but wanted a few changes made. Would I come to his office and discuss it? I was delighted to accept. A chance to meet the Great Man! Like wow!

  It was a harrowing encounter. I won't go into the details here (you'll find them in "My Affair with Science Fiction," p. 387) but I can confess my guilt. All m
y experience in the entertainment business had taught me that it's folly to go backstage after you've been enchanted by a show. Don't meet the author, the performers, the director, the designer, the producer . . . anybody who's created the brilliance that grabbed you. You're sure to be disillusioned. Never confuse the artist with his work.

  Well, I should have known better, but I went through the stage door of Astounding Science Fiction met its director, and it was a disaster. As a result, I listen to my writing colleagues' worship of John Campbell, and I feel guilty as hell because I can't join in. Understand that I speak as a writer, not a reader. As a reader, I, too, worship him. I also feel guilty because I believe the antipatico between us was entirely my fault. I think I was contemptuous because we were reflections of each other; both arrogant, know-it-all, and unyielding. End of Apologia Pro Vita Sua.

  Anyway, the crux of that story conference was Campbell's pronouncement that the entire field of psychiatry had been exploded by L. Ron Hubbard's discovery of a new, earthshaking science called "dianetics," and he wanted all references to Freud, and His Merry Men (including the title) to be removed. Understand, please; he didn't ask me to make a pitch for dianetics; he just wanted me to get the antiquated vocabulary of Freud out of Hubbard's way.

  I thought this was absurd, but I agreed anyway. The changes would not affect the point of the story, so it was easy to go along with the Great Man. And right here I should mention something about my kind of writer that isn't easily understood: I see a story as a whole, I have omnivision. Example: A director will say to me, "Hey, Alf, we need time. Can't we cut that scene with the locksmith?" I know instantly that the locksmith scene controls two scenes that precede it and three that follow, that four of the five can be easily patched, but the fifth is a holdout which will require an entirely new approach. I don't have to puzzle it out; I know it instantly. Lightningsville.

  So I knew instantly that the changes Campbell asked for weren't important to the story and could easily be sloughed. I agreed and got the hell out of there. Naturally, the first time the story was reprinted, I went back to the original version. I don't know whether Campbell ever knew, but my guess is that he did. He was very shrewd and aware, when he wasn't riding his latest scientific hobbyhorse.

  "Oddy and Id" was generated by an argument I had with a close friend who was extremely intolerant of what he called "sin." He could neither understand nor forgive intelligent people who did wrong. I argued that people aren't always in conscious control of their actions; very often the unconscious takes over.

  "There are times," I said, "when all the good sense in a man shouts a warning that what he's about to do will only create grief, but he goes ahead and does it anyway. Something deep down inside is driving him. Hasn't that happened to you?"

  "Never."

  "Well, can you see it happening to other people?"

  "Not intelligent people. No."

  "Intelligence has nothing to do with it. Can't you concede that a nice guy who only wants to do right can be compelled by his within to do wrong?"

  "No."

  A stubborn sonofabitch, but the impasse generated the story through a very easy extrapolation. A writer is always opportunistic; he lets nothing go to waste. This makes people think we're insincere. We're not.

  We're just minding the store.

  This is the story of a monster.

  --------------------------------

  They named him Odysseus Gaul in honor of Papa's favorite hero, and over Mama's desperate objections; but he was known as Oddy from the age of one.

  The first year of life is an egotistic craving for warmth and security. Oddy was not likely to have much of that when he was born, for Papa's real estate business was bankrupt, and Mama was thinking of divorce. But an unexpected decision by United Radiation to build a plant in the town made Papa wealthy, and Mama fell in love with him all over again. So Oddy had warmth and security.

  The second year of life is a timid exploration. Oddy crawled and explored. When he reached for the crimson coils inside the nonobjective fireplace, an unexpected short circuit saved him from a burn. When he fell out the thirdfloor window, it was into the grass filled hopper of the MechanoGardener. When he teased the Phoebus Cat, it slipped as it snapped at his face, and the brilliant fangs clicked harmlessly over his ear.

  "Animals love Oddy," Mama said. 'They only pretend to bite."

  Oddy wanted to be loved, so everybody loved Oddy. He was petted, pampered and spoiled through preschool age.

  Shopkeepers presented him with largess, and acquaintances showered him with gifts. Of sodas, candy, tarts, chrystons, bobbletrucks, freezies, and various other comestibles, Oddy consumed enough for an entire kindergarten.

  He was never sick.

  "Takes after his father," Papa said. "Good stock."

  Family legends grew about Oddy's luck. . . . How a perfect stranger mistook him for his own child just as Oddy was about to amble into the Electronic Circus, and delayed him long enough to save him from the disastrous explosion of

  '98. . . . How a forgotten library book rescued him from the Rocket Crash of '99. . . . How a multitude of odd incidents saved him from a multitude of assorted catastrophes. No one realized he was a monster . . . yet.

  At eighteen, he was a nicelooking boy with sealbrown hair, warm brown eyes, and a wide grin that showed even white teeth. He was strong, healthy, intelligent. He was completely uninhibited in his quiet, relaxed way. He had charm. He was happy. So far, his monstrous evil had only affected the little Town Unit where he was born and raised.

  He came to Harvard from a Progressive School, so when one of his many new friends popped into the dormitory room and said: "Hey Oddy, come down to the Quad and kick a ball around," Oddy answered: "I don't know how, Ben."

  "Don't know how?" Ben tucked the football under his arm and dragged Oddy with him. "Where you been, laddie?"

  "They didn't think much of football back home," Oddy grinned. "Said it was old-fashioned. We were strictly Huxley Hob."

  "Huxley Hob! That's for eggheads," Ben said. "Football is still the big game. You want to be famous? You got to be on that gridiron on TV every Saturday."

  "So I've noticed, Ben. Show me."

  Ben showed Oddy, carefully and with patience. Oddy took the lesson seriously and industriously. His third punt was caught by a freakish gust of wind, traveled seventy yards through the air, and burst through the third floor window of Proctor Charley (GravyTrain) Stuart. Stuart took one look out the window and had Oddy down to Soldier Stadium in half an hour. Three Saturdays later, the headlines read: Oddy Gaul 57—Army 0.

  "Snell and Rumination!" Coach Hig Clayton swore. "How does he do it? There's nothing sensational about that kid. He's just average. But when he runs, they fall down chasing him. When he kicks, they fumble. When they fumble, he recovers."

  "He's a negative player," GravyTrain answered. "He lets you make the mistakes, and then he cashes in."

  They were both wrong. Oddy Gaul was a monster.

  With his choice of any eligible young woman, Oddy Gaul went stag to the Observatory Prom, wandered into a darkroom by mistake, and discovered a girl in a smock bending over trays in the hideous green safelight. She had cropped black hair, icy blue eyes, strong features, and a sensuous, boyish figure. She ordered him out and Oddy fell in love with her . . . temporarily.

  His friends howled with laughter when he told them. "Shades of Pygmalion, Oddy, don't you know about her? The girl is frigid. A statue. She loathes men. You're wasting your time."

  But through the adroitness of her analyst, the girl turned a neurotic corner one week later and fell deeply in love with Oddy Gaul. It was sudden, devastating and enraptured for two months. Then just as Oddy began to cool, the girl had a relapse and everything ended on a friendly, convenient basis.

  So far only minor events made up the response to Oddy's luck, but the shock wave of reaction was spreading. In September of his sophomore year, Oddy competed for the Political Economy Medal wit
h a thesis entitled: "Causes of Mutiny." The striking similarity of his paper to the Astraean mutiny that broke out the day his paper was entered won him the prize.

  In October, Oddy contributed twenty dollars to a pool organized by a crackpot classmate for speculating on the Exchange according to "Stock Market Trends," an ancient superstition. The prophet's calculations were ridiculous, but a sharp panic nearly ruined the Exchange as it quadrupled the pool. Oddy made one hundred dollars.

  And so it went. . . worse and worse. The monster.

  Now, a monster can get away with a lot when he's studying a speculative philosophy where causation is rooted in history and the Present is devoted to statistical analysis of the Past; but the living sciences are bulldogs with their teeth clamped on the phenomena of Now. So it was Jesse Migg, physiologist and spectral physicist, who first trapped the monster . . . and he thought he'd found an angel.

  Old Jess was one of the Sights. In the first place he was young . . . not over forty. He was a malignant knife of a man, an albino, pink-eyed, bald, pointed-nose, and brilliant. He affected twentieth-century clothes and twentieth-century vices ... tobacco and potations of C2H5OH. He never talked ... He spat. He never walked ... He scurried. And he was scurrying up and down the aisles of the laboratory of Tech I (General Survey of Spatial Mechanics—Required for All General Arts Students) when he ferreted out the monster.

  One of the first experiments in the course was EMF Electrolysis. Elementary stuff. A U-Tube containing water was passed between the poles of a stock Remosant Magnet. After sufficient voltage was transmitted through the coils, you drew off hydrogen and oxygen in two-to-one ratio at the arms of the tube and related them to the voltage and the magnetic field.

  Oddy ran his experiment earnestly, got the approved results, entered them in his lab book and then waited for the official check-off. Little Migg came hustling down the aisle, darted to Oddy and spat: "Finished?"