The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction Fifth Series

by Edited by Anthony Boucher

  Because by some twist of providence, or radiation, or genes, we are among the tiny percentage of the people in this world who can have normal children. We hate each other, but we breed true.

  She said, “Come up, Henry.” I can take a sleeping pill afterward.

  Come up, Henry, we have to live. Till we are all called in, or our children, or our children’s children. Till there is nowhere else to go.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  FOUR VIGNETTES

  This business of vignettes is all Fredric Browns fault. Science-fantasy stories have always tended to be longer than they need to be (partly because most s.f. magazines pay by the word); and authors usually think they’ve achieved a miracle of compression if they pull a story down to 2500 words. But Mr. Brown has been cheerfully demonstrating—in F&SF, in Galaxy, in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and in his delightful collection angels and spaceships (Dutton, 1954)— that one can tell a pointed, witty, complete story in under 500 words, or exactly one page of our magazine format. Readers have been captivated by this discovery, and authors challenged; for “vinnies” (as Brown always calls them) are intensely tricky technically, yet deeply rewarding to the craftsman when they come off. So other F&SF authors have been trying them (and of course I could not resist the temptation to move in on the act myself), with unexpected results: you’ll find James Blish, normally a most sober and complex writer, indulging in broad parody of the current Psionic Pschool, and Isaac Asimov proving himself quite as at home in a miniature as in the galactic saga of the Foundation (which runs to 245,000 words).

  ~ * ~

  FREDERIC BROWN

  TOO FAR

  R. Asutin Wilkinson was a bon vivant, man about Manhattan, and chaser of women. He was also an incorrigible punster on every possible occasion. In speaking of his favorite activity, for example, he would remark that he was a wolf, as it were, but that didn’t make him a werewolf.

  Excruciating as this statement may have been to some of his friends, it was almost true. Wilkinson was not a werewolf; he was a werebuck.

  A night or two nights every week he would stroll into Central Park, turn himself into a buck and take great delight in running and playing.

  True, there was always danger of his being seen but (since he punned even in his thoughts) he was willing to gambol on that.

  Oddly, it had never occurred to him to combine the pleasures of being a wolf, as it were, with the pleasures of being a buck.

  Until one night. Why, he asked himself that night, couldn’t a lucky buck make a little doe? Once thought of, the idea was irresistible. He galloped to the wall of the Central Park Zoo and trotted along it until his sensitive buck nose told him he’d found the right place to climb the fence. He changed into a man for the task of climbing and then, alone in a pen with a beautiful doe, he changed himself back into a buck.

  She was sleeping. He nudged her gently and whispered a suggestion. Her eyes opened wide and startled. “No, no, a dozen times no!”

  “Only a doezen times?” he asked, and then leered. “My deer,” he whispered, “think of the fawn you’ll have!”

  Which went too far. He might have got away with it had his deer really been only a doe, but she was a weremaid— a doe who could change into a girl—and she was a witch as well. She quickly changed into a girl and ran for the fence. When he changed into a man and started after her she threw a spell over her shoulder, a spell that turned him back to a buck and froze him that way.

  Do you ever visit the Central Park Zoo? Look for the buck with the sad eyes; he’s Wilkinson.

  He is sad despite the fact that the doe-weremaid, who is now the toast of New York ballet (she is graceful as a deer, the critics say), visits him occasionally by night and resumes her proper form.

  But when he begs for release from the spell she only smiles sweetly and tells him no, that she is of a very saving disposition and wants to keep the first buck she ever made.

  ~ * ~

  JAMES BLISH

  A MATTER OF ENERGY

  As soon as I saw Joe Jones, I knew that he was the man I needed to send back to the Augustan Age. I knew it because I could not read his expression.

  To the ordinary man who can’t even read his own expression this wouldn’t be a significant datum, but with me it is different. As a consulting industrial psionic psichologist I am accustomed to reading the faces of anything, even checks. I always understand everybody instantly.

  But I didn’t understand Joe Jones. He was Everyman’s nobody. He had no emotions. If he had had them, I could have read them—if not by the patterns formed by the hairs in his moustache, then by the psionic techniques which I have developed by correspondence with psichotic people all over the country. So it had to be true that Joe had no emotions.

  He was the perfect man to go back in time and take over the Augustan Age for me.

  “Joe,” I asseverated, “I’ve given you the invincible weapon to take over the Romans: twisted semantics. It can’t fail, but if it does, try twisted dianetics. Do you understand what you’re to do?”

  “Yes, Cliff,” he lipped thinly.

  “But there’s one danger I haven’t warned you of until now,” I admonished sternly. “You must not use Arabic numerals while you’re in Rome. The Romans didn’t know them. If you use them you will be driven to hide like a witch. Understand?”

  “Yes, Cliff,” he acknowledged flatly.

  “Now, I haven’t given you any training in how to calculate in Roman numerals,” I outpointed. “I could have given it to you by my own revolutionary educational system, or implanted it on your cerebral cortex with my psionic powers, but there’s one great drawback: calculating with Roman numerals just takes too long. You wouldn’t have time to take over the

  Empire if you had to do all your figuring that way. Is that clear?”

  “That’s clear, Cliff,” he admitted immediately.

  “So,” I perorated triumphantly. “I’ve provided you with the answer, inside this little black box. This is a computer, called the THROBAC. That’s short for THrifty ROman-numeral BAckwards-looking Calculator. It will add, subtract, multiply or divide in Roman numerals, and give you the answer in Roman numerals. Coupling and that crowd at Bell think that they invented it, but I can see through them like a glass of antigravity elixir. Use this machine—secretly, of course— whenever you need to do any figuring. Do you dig me?”

  “I dig you, Cliff,” he penultimated.

  “Then go,” I concluded commandingly. He stepped into the time machine, which I had named ELSIE, and vanished at once. With the help of my psionic correspondents I could have sent him back without a machine, but this whole operation had to be kept secret from the politicians, industrialists, and other pressure groups who might bring twisted semantics to bear on me.

  He was back in no time, of course. He had instructions to return to this moment, no matter how long he stayed in ancient Rome. But there was something wrong.

  I could read his expression!

  “What have you done?” I hissed grindingly.

  “I did just like you said, Cliff,” he replied defensively. “Soon as I had to do some figuring, I holed up in my room and plugged THROBAC into the nearest socket. But—”

  “Get to the point!” I ordered commandingly.

  “But, Cliff,” he wailed protestingly, “you overlooked something. THROBAC operates only on AC current! And the first AC generator wasn’t built until after the 1830s—a.d.!”

  I was crushed. That small oversight—no, it was an under-sight, typical of me, underestimating the extent of my own massive knowledge—must have blown every fuse and circuit-breaker in Augustan Rome. I rushed to the nearest history book.

  What had I undone?

  ~ * ~

  ANTHONY BOUCHER

  NELLTHU

  Ailsa had been easily the homeliest and the least talented girl in the University, if also the most logical and levelheaded. Now, almost twenty-five years later, she was the most
attractive woman Martin had ever seen and, to judge from their surroundings, by some lengths the richest.

  “. . . so lucky running into you again after all these years,” she was saying, in that indescribably aphrodisiac voice. “You know about publishers, and you can advise me on this novel. I was getting so tired of the piano . . .”

  Martin had heard her piano recordings and knew they were superb—as the vocal recordings had been before them and the non-representational paintings before them and the fashion designs and that astonishing paper on prime- numbers. He also knew that the income from all these together could hardly have furnished the Silver Room in which they dined or the Gold Room in which he later read the novel (which was of course superb) or the room whose color he never noticed because he did not sleep alone (and the word superb is inadequate).

  There was only one answer, and Martin was gratified to observe that the coffee-bringing servant cast no shadow in the morning sun. While Ailsa still slept (superbly), Martin said, “So you’re a demon.”

  “Naturally, sir,” the unshadowed servant said, his eyes adoringly upon the sleeper. “Nellthu, at your service.”

  “But such service! I can imagine Ailsa-that-was working out a good spell and even wishing logically. But I thought you fellows were limited in what you could grant.”

  “We are, sir. Three wishes.”

  “But she has wealth, beauty, youth, fame, a remarkable variety of talents—all on three wishes?”

  “On one, sir. Oh, I foxed her prettily on the first two.” Nellthu smiled reminiscently. “ ‘Beauty’—but she didn’t specify, and I made her the most beautiful centenarian in the world. ‘Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice’—and of course nothing is beyond such dreams, and nothing she got. Ah, I was in form that day, sir! But the third wish . . .”

  “Don’t tell me she tried the old ‘For my third wish I want three more wishes’! I thought that was illegal.”

  “It is, sir. The paradoxes involved go beyond even our powers. No, sir,” said Nellthu, with a sort of rueful admiration, “her third wish was stronger than that. She said: I wish that you fall permanently and unselfishly in love with me.’ “

  “She was always logical,” Martin admitted. “So for your own sake you had to make her beautiful and . . . adept, and since then you have been compelled to gratify her every—” He broke off and looked from the bed to the demon. “How lucky for me that she included unselfishly!”

  “Yes, sir,” said Nellthu.

  ~ * ~

  ISAAC ASIMOV

  DREAMWORLD

  At thirteen, Edward Keller had been a science fiction devotee for four years. He bubbled with galactic enthusiasm.

  His Aunt Clara, who had brought him up by rule and rod in pious memory of her deceased sister, wavered between toleration and exasperation. It appalled her to watch him grow so immersed in fantasy.

  “Face reality, Eddie,” she would say, angrily.

  He would nod, but go on, “And I dreamed Martians were chasing me, see? I had a special death ray, but the atomic power unit was pretty low and—”

  Every other breakfast consisted of eggs, toast, milk, and some such dream.

  Aunt Clara said, severely, “Now, Eddie, one of these nights you won’t be able to wake up out of your dream. You’ll be trapped! Then what?”

  She lowered her angular face close to his and glared.

  ~ * ~

  Eddie was strangely impressed by his aunt’s warning. He lay in bed, staring into the darkness. He wouldn’t like to be trapped in a dream. It was always nice to wake up before it was too late. Like the time the dinosaurs were after him—

  Suddenly he was out of bed, out of the house, out on the lawn, and he knew it was another dream.

  The thought was broken by a vague thunder and a shadow that blotted the sun. He looked upward in astonishment and he could make out the human face that touched the clouds.

  It was his Aunt Clara! Monstrously tall, she bent toward him in admonition, mastlike forefinger upraised, voice too guttural to be made out.

  Eddie turned and ran in panic. Another Aunt Clara monster loomed up before him, voice rumbling.

  He turned again, stumbling, panting, heading outward, outward.

  He reached the top of the hill and stopped in horror. Off in the distance a hundred towering Aunt Claras were marching by. As the column passed, each line of Aunt Claras turned their heads sharply toward him and the thunderous bass rumbling coalesced into words:

  “Face reality, Eddie. Face reality, Eddie.”

  Eddie threw himself sobbing to the ground. Please wake up, he begged himself. Don’t be caught in this dream.

  For unless he woke up, the worst science-fictional doom of all would have overtaken him. He would be trapped, trapped, in a world of giant aunts.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  SHIRLEY JACKSON

  I don’t know a better writer of unexpected and unclassifiable fiction than Shirley Jackson, who offers us this time a story as delightfully unconventional as its title.

  ONE ORDINARY DAY, WITH PEANUTS

  MR. JOHN PHILIP JOHNSON shut his front door behind him and came down his front steps into the bright morning with a feeling that all was well with the world on this best of all days, and wasn’t the sun warm and good, and didn’t his shoes feel comfortable after the resoling, and he knew that he had undoubtedly chosen the precise very tie which belonged with the day and the sun and his comfortable feet, and, after all, wasn’t the world just a wonderful place? In spite of the fact that he was a small man, and the tie was perhaps a shade vivid, Mr. Johnson irradiated this feeling of well-being as he came down the steps and onto the dirty sidewalk, and he smiled at people who passed him, and some of them even smiled back. He stopped at the newsstand on the corner and bought his paper, saying “Good morning” with real conviction to the man who sold him the paper and the two or three other people who were lucky enough to be buying papers when Mr. Johnson skipped up. He remembered to fill his pockets with candy and peanuts, and then he set out to get himself uptown. He stopped in a flower shop and bought a carnation for his buttonhole, and stopped almost immediately afterward to give the carnation to a small child in a carriage, who looked at him dumbly, and then smiled, and Mr. Johnson smiled, and the child’s mother looked at Mr. Johnson for a minute and then smiled too.

  When he had gone several blocks uptown, Mr. Johnson cut across the avenue and went along a side street, chosen at random; he did not follow the same route every morning, but preferred to pursue his eventful way in wide detours, more like a puppy than a man intent upon business. It happened this morning that halfway down the block a moving van was parked, and the furniture from an upstairs apartment stood half on the sidewalk, half on the steps, while an amused group of people loitered, examining the scratches on the tables and the worn spots on the chairs, and a harassed woman, trying to watch a young child and the movers and the furniture all at the same time, gave the clear impression of endeavoring to shelter her private life from the people staring at her belongings. Mr. Johnson stopped, and for a moment joined the crowd, and then he came forward and, touching his hat civilly, said, “Perhaps I can keep an eye on your little boy for you?”

  The woman turned and glared at him distrustfully, and Mr. Johnson added hastily, “We’ll sit right here on the steps.” He beckoned to the little boy, who hesitated and then responded agreeably to Mr. Johnson’s genial smile. Mr. Johnson brought out a handful of peanuts from his pocket and sat on the steps with the boy, who at first refused the peanuts on the grounds that his mother did not allow him to accept food from strangers; Mr. Johnson said that probably his mother had not intended peanuts to be included, since elephants at the circus ate them, and the boy considered, and then agreed solemnly. They sat on the steps cracking peanuts in a comradely fashion, and Mr. Johnson said, “So you’re moving?”

  “Yep,” said the boy.

  “Where you going?”

  “Vermont.”

/>   “Nice place. Plenty of snow there. Maple sugar, too; you like maple sugar?”

  “Sure.”

  “Plenty of maple sugar in Vermont. You going to live on a farm?”

  “Going to live with Grandpa.”

  “Grandpa like peanuts?”

  “Sure.”

  “Ought to take him some,” said Mr. Johnson, reaching into his pocket. “Just you and Mommy going?”

  “Yep.”

  “Tell you what,” Mr. Johnson said. “You take some peanuts to eat on the train.”

  The boy’s mother, after glancing at them frequently, had seemingly decided that Mr. Johnson was trustworthy, because she had devoted herself wholeheartedly to seeing that the movers did not—what movers rarely do, but every housewife believes they will—crack a leg from her good table, or set a kitchen chair down on a lamp. Most of the furniture was loaded by now, and she was deep in that nervous stage when she knew there was something she had forgotten to pack—hidden away in the back of a closet somewhere, or left at a neighbor’s and forgotten, or on the clothesline—and was trying to remember under stress what it was.