The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction Fifth Series

by Edited by Anthony Boucher

  “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.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  RAYMOND E. BANKS

  Time, in the history of science fiction, is (like the time of the Short Ones in this story) curiously speeded up and condensed. Such young and relatively new writers as Poul Anderson, Richard Matheson, Chad Oliver and Robert Sheckley seem by now like well-established Old Hands; and already there is an even younger and newer generation of creators. (Personally, I feel that I entered the field rather late—as recently as 1941; but I suppose I must appear a very graybeard. . . .) Of this latest generation, one of the most promising, to my mind, is Raymond E. Banks, a part-time politico of Manhattan Beach, California, who here studies the politics of the future—politics in Washington, and the religio-politics of a strange microcosm which can shape—or annihilate —the vast world above it.

  THE SHORT ONES

  Valsek came out of his hut and looked at the sky. As usual it was milk-white, but grayed down now to predawn somberness.

  “Telfus!”

  The sleepy face of his hired man peered over a- rock, behind which he had slept.

  “We must plow today,” said Valsek. ‘There’ll be no rain.” “Did a god tell you this?” asked Telfus, a groan in his voice. Another exposed god-wire! Important things were stirring and he had to drive this farm-hand clod to his labor.

  “If you are to sleep in my field and eat at my table, you must work,” said Valsek angrily. He bent to examine the god-wire. The shock to his hands told him there was a feeble current running in it which made his magnetic backbone tingle. Vexing, oh vexing, to know that current ran through the wire and through you, but not to know whether it was the current of the old god Melton, or the new god, Hiller!

  “Bury this god-wire at once,” he told Telfus. “It isn’t neat to have the god-wires exposed. How can I make contact with Hiller when he can see my fields unplowed and my god-wires exposed? He will not choose me Spokesman.”

  “Did this Hiller come to you in the night?” asked Telfus politely.

  “In a way, in a way,” said the prophet testily. It was hard to know. It was time for a new god, but you could miss it by weeks.

  Valsek’s wife came over the hill, carrying a pail of milk warm from the goat.

  “Was there a sign last night?” she asked, pausing before the hut.

  Valsek gave his wife a cold stare. “Naturally there was a sign,” he said. “I do not sleep on the cold stone of the barn floor because it pleases my bones. I have had several portents from Hiller.”

  His wife looked resigned. “Such as?”

  Short Ones! Valsek felt contempt inside of him. All of the Short Ones were fools. It was the time for a new god, and they went around milking goats and asking about signs. Short Ones! (And what god had first revealed to them that name? And why, when they were the tallest living beings in all the world?)

  “The wind blew last night,” he said.

  “The wind blows every night,” she said.

  He presented his hard conviction to the cutting blade of her scorn.

  “About midnight it rained,” he persisted. “I had just got through suggesting rain to the new god, Hiller.”

  “Now was that considerate?” asked Telfus, still leaning on his rock. “Your only hired hand asleep in the fields outside and you ask for rain.”

  “There is no Hiller,” said Valsek’s wife, tightening her lips. “It rains every midnight this time of year. And there will be no corn if you keep sleeping in the bam, making those stupid clay images and avoiding work.”

  “Woman,” said Valsek, “god-business is important. If Hiller choses me for Spokesman to all the Short Ones we shall be rich.”

  But his wife was tired, perhaps because she had had to pull the plow yesterday for Telfus. “Ask Hiller to send us a bushel of corn,” she said coldly. “Then I will come into the barn and burn a manure stick to him.”

  She went into the hut, letting the door slam.

  “If it is permitted to sleep in the barn,” said Telfus, “I will help you fashion your clay idols. Once in King Giron’s courtyard I watched an artist fashion a clay idol for Melton, and I think I might have a hand for it, if it is permitted to sleep in the barn.”

  Blasphemers! Worldly blasphemers! “It is not permitted to sleep in the barn,” said Valsek. “I have spent many years in the barn, reaching out for each new god as he or she came, and though I have not yet made contact, it is a dedicated place. You have no touch for prophecy.”

  “I have seen men go mad, each trying to be picked Spokesman to the gods for the Short Ones,” said Telfus. “The chances are much against it. And consider the fate of the Spokesman once the year of his god is over.”

  Valsek’s eyes flashed angrily. “Consider the fate of the Spokesman in his prime. Power, rich power in the time of your god, you fool, if you are Spokesman. And afterwards many Spokesmen become members of the Prophets’ Association—with a pension. Does life hold more?”

  Telfus decided not to remind his employer that usually the new Spokesman felt it necessary to execute the old Spokesman of the used-up god.

  “Perhaps it is only that my knees are too tender for god-business,” he said, sighing against the rock.

  “Quiet now,” said Valsek. “It is time for dawn. I have asked Hiller for a portent, to show his choice of me as Spokesman. A dawn portent.”

  They turned to watch the dawn. Even Valsek’s wife came out to watch, for Valsek was always asking for a dawn portent. It was his favorite suggestion to the gods.

  Dawn came. There was a flicker of flashing, magic lights, much, much faster than the slow flame of a tallow taper that the Short Ones used for light. One-two-three-four-five, repeated, one-two-three-four-five. And then the day was upon them. In an instant the gray turned to milk-white and the day’s heat fell.

  “Ah!” cried Valsek. “The dawn light flashed six times. Hiller is the new god. I am his Spokesman! I must hurry to the market place in town with my new idol!”

  Telfus and the wife exchanged looks. Telfus was about to point out that there had been only the usual five lights of dawn, but the wife shook her head. She pointed a scornful finger to the horizon where a black ball of smoke lingered in the sky.

  “Yesterday there were riots,” she said. “Fighting and the burning of things. If you take your new idol to the market place, you will insult either the followers of King Giron or the followers of Melton. One or the other, they will carve your heart out, old man!”

  But it was no use. Valsek had rushed back into the bam to bum a manure stick to Hiller and start his journey, on the strength of the lights of dawn.

  Valsek’s wife stared down at her work-stained hands and sighed. “Now I suppose I should prepare a death sheet for him,” she said.

  “No,” said Telfus, wearily picking up the harness from the ground. “They will only laugh at him and he will live forever while you and I die from doing the world’s work. C
ome, Mrs. Valsek, assume the harness, so that I may walk behind and plow a careful furrow in his fields.”

  ~ * ~

  Time: One month earlier ... or half an hour.

  Place; the Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

  The Life Hall.

  In the vast, gloomy auditorium the scurryings and scuttlings of the Short Ones rose to a climax beneath the opaque, milky glass that covered the colony. Several spectators rose in their seats. At the control panel, Charles Melton also rose.

  “The dials!” cried his adviser.

  But Melton was past tending the dials. He jerked the control helmet off his head a second too late. A blue flash from the helmet flickered in the dark room. Short circuit!

  Melton leaned over the glass, trying to steady himself, and vomited blood. Then a medical attendant came and escorted him away, as his adviser assumed the dials and his helmet.

  A sigh from the spectators. They bent and peered at Melton from the seats above his level, like medical students in an operating theatre. The political career of Charles Melton was over: he had failed the Life Hall Test.

  A technician tapped some buttons and the lighted sign, visible to all, changed:

  test 39167674

  HILLER, RALPH, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, USA

  TEST TIME: 6 HOURS

  OBJECTIVE: BLUE CERTIFICATE TO PROVE LEADERSHIP QUALITIES

  ADVISER: DR. CYNTHIA WOLLRATH

  Cynthia Wollrath!

  Ralph Hiller turned from the door of the Ready Room and paced. What rotten luck he was having! To begin with, his test started right after some inadequate Judge-applicant had failed badly and gotten the Short Ones all upset. On top of that, they had assigned his own former wife to be adviser. How unethical can you get?

  He was sure now that his enemies in the Administration had given him a bad test position and picked a prejudiced adviser to insure his failure—that was typical of the Armstrong crowd. He felt the hot anger on his face. They weren’t going to get away with this. . . .

  Cynthia came into the Ready Room then, dressed in the white uniform of the Life Hall Staff, and greeted him with a cool, competent nod.

  “I’m rather surprised that I’ve been given a prejudiced adviser,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. The Board considered me competent to sit in on this test.”

  “Did you tell them that we were once married?”

  She sighed. “No. You did that in at least three memorandums, I believe. Shall we proceed with the briefing?”

  “The Board knows you dislike me,” he said. “They know I could lose my sanity in there. You could foul me up and no one would be the wiser. I won’t stand for it.”

  Her eyes were carefully impartial. “I don’t dislike you. And I rather think that the Board chose me because they felt that it would help you out. They feel I know your personality, and in something as dangerous as the Life Hall Tests they try to give all the applicants a break.”

  “My father died in that chair,” he said. “My uncle—”

  “You aren’t your father. Nor your uncle. Shall we start? We’re late. This is a Short One—”

  She held up a figure, two inches high, a perfectly formed little man, a dead replica of the life below. In her other hand she held a metal sliver that looked like a three-quarter-inch needle. “The Short Ones are artificial creatures of living protoplasm, except for this metallic backbone imbedded in each. It is magnetic material—”

  “I want a postponement.”

  “Bruce Gerard of the Times is covering this test,” she said patiently. “His newspaper is not favorable to the Administration. He would like to report a postponement in a Life Hall Test by an important Administration figure. Now, Ralph, we really must get on with this. There are many other testees to follow you to the chair.”

  He subsided. He held his temper in. That temper that had killed his father, almost destroyed his uncle. That temper that would be put to the most severe test known to men for the next few hours. He found it difficult to concentrate on her words.

  “—wires buried in the ground of the Colony, activate the Short Ones—a quarter of a million Short Ones down there— one of our minutes is a day to them—your six hours of testing cover a year of their lives—”

  He knew all that. A Blue Certificate Life Hall Test was rather like an execution and you studied up on it long before. Learned how science had perfected this tiny breed. How there had been opposition to them until the beginnings of the Life Hall. In today’s world the Short Ones protected the people from inefficient and weak leaders. To hold an important position, such as his Cabinet job, you had to have a Life Hall Certificate. You had to prove out your leadership wisdom over the roiling, boiling generations of Short Ones before you could lead mankind. The test was rightfully dangerous; the people could expect their leaders to have true ability if they passed the test, and the false leaders and weaklings either never applied, or were quickly broken down by the Short Ones.

  “Let’s go,” said Cynthia.

  ~ * ~

  There was a stir from the audience as they entered the auditorium. They recognized him. Many who had been resting with their spectator helmets off reassumed them. A wave of tense expectancy seemed to come from them. The people knew about the failure of his father and his uncle. This looked like a blood test and it was fascinating to see a blood test.

  ~ * ~

  Ralph took his position in the chair with an inward sigh. It was too late not to change anything. He dare not embarrass the Administration before a hostile reporter: He let Cynthia show him the inside of the Director’s helmet with its maze of wires.

  “Since their time runs so fast, you can’t possibly read out each and every mind of the Short Ones down there,” she said. “You can handle perhaps half a dozen. Step-down transformers will allow you to follow their lives. They are your leaders and representatives down in the world of the Short Ones.

  “These knob hand dials are your mechanical controls down there. There are hydraulic linkages which give you power to change the very seas, cause mountains to rise and valleys to form. Their weather is in your control, for when you think of weather, by an electronic signal through the helmet, you cause rain or sun, wind or stillness. The left hand dial is destructive, the right hand dial is constructive. As the current flows throughout the system, your thoughts and wishes are impressed upon the world of the Short Ones, through your leaders. You can back up your edicts by smashing the very ground under their feet. Should you desire to kill, a flick of the dial saturates the magnetized backbone of the unfortunate Short One, and at full magnetization all life ceases for them.

  “Unfortunately, you are directing a dangerous amount of power in this system which courses within a fraction of an inch of your head in the control helmet. At each death down there a tiny amount less current is needed to control the Short Ones. At many deaths this wild current, no longer being drawn by the dead creatures, races through the circuits. Should too many die, you will receive a backlash of wild current before I can—”

  Ralph nodded, put on the helmet and let the scurryings and scuttlings of the Short Ones burst in on his mind.

  He sat straight, looking out over a sheet of milky glass fifty feet across that covered the world below. He was sinking mentally into their world. With him, but fully protected, the spectators put on their helmets to sink into the Colony and witness the events below as he directed them.

  The eerie light from the glass shone on the face of the medical attendant standing ready.

  Ralph reached out his hands to start his test and gave himself a final admonition about his temper. At all costs he must curb it.

  There is a temper that destroys and also one that demands things done by other men. Ralph had used his sternness well for most of the years of his life, but there had been times, bad times, when that fiery temperament had worked against him.

  Like his marriage to Cynthia, ten years before. She had had a cool, scientific detachment about life which had
attracted him. She had been a top student of psychology on the campus. At first her cool detachment had steadied him and enabled him to get started in his political career. But then it began to haunt him—her reasonableness against his storms; he had a growing compulsion to smash through her calmness and subjugate her to his will.

  He had hurt her badly once.

  He still felt the flame of embarrassment when he remembered her face in the bedroom, staring down at the nakedness of the other woman, staring at his own nakedness, as the adulterers lay on her bed, and the shivery calmness of his own nervous system at the expected interruption. And his words across the years: