The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction Fifth Series

by Edited by Anthony Boucher

  With hints and thanks and frank incense.

  Remember Doctor Frankenstein,

  Repeating in a chorus, “There are no bad monsters!

  These are only crazy,

  mixed-up,

  kids!”

  WINONA MC CLINTIC

  <>

  ~ * ~

  RICHARD MATHESON

  Do you want to know what type of man stands the best chance for surviving the holocaust of his world? You’ll learn the answer in this brief and pointed item which is, like most Mathesons, not quite like any other story you’ve read.

  PATTERN FOR SURVIVAL

  And they stood beneath the crystal towers, beneath the polished heights which, like scintillant mirrors, caught rosy sunset on their faces until their city was one vivid, coruscated blush.

  Ras slipped an arm about the waist of his beloved.

  “Happy?” he inquired, in a tender voice.

  “Oh, yes’’ she breathed. “Here in our beautiful city where there is peace and happiness for all, how could I be anything but happy?”

  Sunset cast its roseate benediction upon their soft embrace.

  THE END

  ~ * ~

  The clatter ceased. His hands curled in like blossoms and his eyes fell shut. The prose was wine. It trickled on the taste buds of his mind, a dizzying potion. I’ve done it again, he recognized, by George in heaven, I’ve done it again.

  Satisfaction towed him out to sea. He went down for the third time beneath its happy drag. Surfacing then, reborn, he estimated wordage, addressed envelope, slid in manuscript, weighed total, affixed stamps and sealed. Another brief submergence in the waters of delight, then up withal and to the mailbox.

  It was almost twelve as Richard Allen Shaggley hobbled down the quiet street in his shabby overcoat. He had to hurry or he’d miss the pick-up and he musn’t do that. Ras and the City of Crystal was too superlative to wait another day. He wanted it to reach the editor immediately. It was a certain sale.

  Circuiting the giant, pipe-strewn hole (When, in the name of heaven, would they finish repairing that blasted sewer?), he limped on hurriedly, envelope clutched in rigid fingers, heart a turmoil of vibration.

  Noon. He reached the mailbox and cast about anxious glances for the postman. No sign of him. A sigh of pleasure and relief escaped his chapped lips. Face aglow, Richard Allen Shaggley listened to the envelope thump gently on the bottom of the mailbox.

  The happy author shuffled off, coughing.

  ~ * ~

  Al’s legs were bothering him again. He shambled up the quiet street, teeth gritted slightly, leather sack pulling down his weary shoulder. Getting old, he thought, haven’t got the drive any more. Rheumatism in the legs. Bad; makes it hard to do the route.

  At twelve-fifteen, he reached the dark green mailbox and drew the keys from his pocket.’ Stooping, with a groan, he opened up the box and drew out its contents.

  A smiling eased his pain-tensed face; he nodded once. Another yam by Shaggley. Probably be snatched up right away. The man could really write.

  Rising with a grunt, Al slid the envelope into his sack, relocked the mailbox, then trudged off, still smiling to himself. Makes a man proud, he thought, carrying his stories; even if my legs do hurt.

  Al was a Shaggley fan.

  ~ * ~

  When Rick arrived from lunch a little after three that afternoon, there was a note from his secretary on the desk.

  New ms. from Shaggley just arrived (it read). Beautiful job. Don’t forget R. A. wants to see it when you’re through. S.

  Delight cast illumination across the editor’s hatchet face. By George in heaven, this was manna from what had threatened to be a fruitless afternoon. Lips drawn back in what, for him, was smiling, he dropped into his leather chair, restrained empathic finger twitchings for the blue pencil (No need of it for a Shaggley yam!) and plucked the envelope from the cracked glass surface of his desk. By George, a Shaggley story; what luck! R. A. would beam.

  He sank into the cushion, instantly absorbed in the opening nuance of the tale. A tremor of transport palsied outer sense. Breathless, he plunged on into the story depths. What balance, what delineation! How the man could write. Distractedly, he brushed plaster dust off his pin-stripe sleeve.

  As he read, the wind picked up again, fluttering his straw-like hair, buffeting like tepid wings against his brow. Unconsciously, he raised his hand and traced a delicate finger along the scar, which trailed like livid thread across his cheek and lower temple.

  The wind grew stronger. It moaned by pretzeled I-beams and scattered brown-edged papers on the soggy rug. Rick stirred restlessly and stabbed a glance at the gaping fissure in the wall (When, in the name of heaven, would they finish those repairs?), then returned, joy renewed, to Shaggley’s manuscript.

  Finishing at last, he fingered away a tear of bittersweetness and depressed an intercom key.

  “Another check for Shaggley,” he ordered, then tossed the snapped-off key across his shoulder.

  At three-thirty, he brought the manuscript to R. A.’s office and left it there.

  At four, the publisher laughed and cried over it, gnarled fingers rubbing at the scabrous bald patch on his head.

  ~ * ~

  Old hunchbacked Dick Allen set type for Shaggley’s story that very afternoon, vision blurred by happy tears beneath his eyeshade, liquid coughing unheard above the busy clatter of his machine.

  The story hit the stand a little after six. The scar-faced dealer shifted on his tired legs as he read it over six times before, reluctantly, offering it for sale.

  At half-past six, the little bald-patched man came hobbling down the street. A hard day’s work, a well-earned rest, he thought, stopping at the corner newsstand for some reading matter.

  He gasped. By George in heaven, a new Shaggley story! What luck!

  The only copy, too. He left a quarter for the dealer who wasn’t there at the moment.

  He took the story home, shambling by skeletal ruins (Strange, those burned buildings hadn’t been replaced yet), reading as he went.

  He finished the story before arriving home. Over supper, he read it once again, shaking his lumpy head at the marvel of its impact, the unbreakable magic of its workmanship. It inspires me, he thought.

  But not tonight. Now was the time for putting things away: the cover on the typewriter, the shabby overcoat, threadbare pin-stripe, eyeshade, mailman’s cap and leather sack all in their proper places.

  He was asleep by ten, dreaming about mushrooms. And, in the morning, wondering once again why those first observers had not described the cloud as more like a toadstool.

  By 6 a.m. Shaggley, breakfasted, was at the typewriter.

  This is the story, he wrote, of how Ras met the beautiful priestess of Shahglee and she fell in love with him.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  ISAAC ASIMOV

  Many of us have experimented with blends of science fiction and the detective story, but none more successfully than Isaac Asimov, especially in that almost perfect fusion, the caves of steel (Doubleday, 1954). Now, in the first of a series of stories for F&SF, Mr. Asimov tries something new; an inverted detective story of the future, modeled upon those revolutionary detective expolits of Dr. Thomdyke’s which R. Austin Freeman published as the singing bone (Hodder & Stoughton, 1912). Let Freeman himself describe the singular method of these stories: “The first part was a minute and detailed description of a crime. . . . The reader had seen the crime committed, knew all about the criminal, and was in possession of all the facts. It would have seemed that there was nothing left to tell. But . . . the second part, which described the investigation of the crime, had to most readers the effect of new matter. All the facts were known; but their evidential quality had not been recognized.” Mr. Asimov’s essay in reader-bafflement, is, in its way, even trickier than those of Mr. Freeman; for he makes his puzzle hinge on a clue which can occur only in the future, yet which can be interpre
ted by any reader on the basis of today’s knowledge! I’m happy to introduce you to-Dr. Wendell Urth, extraterrologist and detective, in his first recorded case. Good luck in matching wits with him!

  THE SINGING BELL

  Louis Peyton never discussed publicly the methods by which he had bested the police of Earth in a dozen duels of wits and bluff, with the psychoprobe always waiting and always foiled. He would have been foolish to do so, of course, but in his more complacent moments, he fondled the notion of leaving a testament to be opened only after his death, one in which his unbroken success could clearly be seen to be due to ability and not to luck.

  In such a testament he would say, “No false pattern can be created to cover a crime without bearing upon it some trace of its creator. It is better, then, to seek in events some pattern that already exists and then adjust your actions to it.”

  It was with that principle in mind that Peyton planned the murder of Albert Cornwell.

  Cornwell, that small-time retailer of stolen things, first approached Peyton at the latter’s usual table-for-one at Grinnell’s. Cornwell’s blue suit seemed to have a special shine, his lined face a special grin, and his faded mustache a special bristle.

  “Mr. Peyton,” he said, greeting his future murderer with no fourth-dimen­sional qualm, “it is so nice to see you. I’d almost given up, sir, almost given up.”

  Peyton, who disliked being approached over his newspaper and dessert at Grinnell’s, said, “If you have business with me, Cornwell, you know where you can reach me.” Peyton was past forty and his hair was past its earlier blackness, but his back was rigid, his bearing youthful, his eyes dark, and his voice could cut the more sharply for long practice.

  “Not for this, Mr. Peyton,” said Cornwell, “not for this. I know of a cache, sir, a cache of…you know, sir.” The forefinger of his right hand moved gently, as though it were a clapper striking invisible substance, and his left hand momentarily cupped his ear.

  Peyton turned a page of the paper, still somewhat damp from its tele-dispenser, folded it flat and said, “Singing Bells?”

  “Oh, hush, Mr. Peyton,” said Cornwell in whispered agony.

  Peyton said, “Come with me.”

  They walked through the park. It was another Peyton axiom that to be reasonably secret there was nothing like a low-voiced discussion out of doors.

  Cornwell whispered, “A cache of Singing Bells; an accumulated cache of Singing Bells. Unpolished, but such beauties, Mr. Peyton.”

  “Have you seen them?”

  “No, sir, but I have spoken with one who has. He had proofs enough to convince me. There is enough there to enable you and me to retire in affluence. In absolute affluence, sir.”

  “Who was this other man?”

  A look of cunning lit Cornwell’s face like a smoking torch, obscuring more than it showed and lending it a repulsive oiliness. “The man was a lunar grubstaker who had a method for locating the Bells in the crater sides. I don’t know his method; he never told me that. But he has gathered dozens, hidden them on the Moon, and come to Earth to arrange the disposing of them.”

  “He died, I suppose?”

  “Yes. A most shocking accident, Mr. Peyton. A fall from a height. Very sad. Of course, his activities on the Moon were quite illegal. The Dominion is very strict about unauthorized Bell-mining. So perhaps it was a judgment upon him after all…In any case, I have his map.”

  Peyton said, a look of calm indifference on his face, “I don’t want any of the details of your little transaction. What I want to know is why you’ve come to me.”

  Cornwell said, “Well, now, there’s enough for both of us, Mr. Peyton, and we can both do our bit. For my part, I know where the cache is located and I can get a spaceship. You ...”

  “Yes?”

  “You can pilot a spaceship, and you have such excellent contacts for disposing of the Bells. It is a very fair division of labor, Mr. Peyton. Wouldn’t you say so, now?”

  Peyton considered the pattern of his life—the pattern that already existed —and matters seemed to fit.

  He said, “We will leave for the Moon on August the tenth.”

  Cornwell stopped walking and said, “Mr. Peyton! It’s only April now.”

  Peyton maintained an even gait and Cornwell had to hurry to catch up. “Do you hear me, Mr. Peyton?”

  Peyton said, “August the tenth. I will get in touch with you at the proper time, tell you where to bring your ship. Make no attempt to see me person­ally till then. Good-bye, Cornwell.”

  Cornwell said, “Fifty-fifty?”

  “Quite,” said Peyton. “Good-bye.”

  Peyton continued his walk alone and considered the pattern of his life again. At the age of twenty-seven, he had bought a tract of land in the Rockies on which some past owner had built a house designed as refuge against the threatened atomic wars of two centuries back, the ones that had never come to pass after all. The house remained, however, a monument to a frightened drive for self-sufficiency.

  It was of steel and concrete in as isolated a spot as could well be found on Earth, set high above sea level and protected on nearly all sides by mountain peaks that reached higher still. It had its self-contained power unit, its water supply fed by mountain streams, its freezers in which ten sides of beef could hang comfortably, its cellar outfitted like a fortress with an arsenal of weap­ons designed to stave off hungry, panicked hordes that never came. It had its air-conditioning unit that could scrub and scrub the air until anything but radioactivity (alas for human frailty) could be scrubbed out of it.

  In that house of survival, Peyton passed the month of August every subse­quent year of his perennially bachelor life. He took out the communicators, the television, the newspaper tele-dispenser. He built a force-field fence about his property and left a short-distance signal mechanism to the house from the point where the fence crossed the one trail winding through the mountains.

  For one month each year, he could be thoroughly alone. No one saw him, no one could reach him. In absolute solitude, he could have the only vacation he valued after eleven months of contact with a humanity for which he could feel only a cold contempt.

  Even the police—and Peyton smiled—knew of his rigid regard for August. He had once jumped bail and risked the psychoprobe rather than forgo his August.

  Peyton considered another aphorism for possible inclusion in his testament: There is nothing so conducive to an appearance of innocence as the triumphant lack of an alibi.

  On July 30, as on July 30 of every year, Louis Peyton took the 9:15 A.M. non-grav stratojet at New York and arrived in Denver at 12:30 P.M.There he lunched and took the 1:45 P.M. semi-grav bus to Hump’s Point, from which Sam Leibman took him by ancient ground-car—full grav!—up the trail to the boundaries of his property. Sam Leibman gravely accepted the ten-dollar tip that he always received, touched his hat as he had done on July 30 for fifteen years.

  On July 31, as on July 31 of every year, Louis Peyton returned to Hump’s Point in his non-grav aeroflitter and placed an order through the Hump’s Point general store for such supplies as he needed for the coming month. There was nothing unusual about the order. It was virtually the duplicate of previous such orders.

  Maclntyre, manager of the store, checked gravely over the list, put it through to Central Warehouse, Mountain District, in Denver, and the whole of it came pushing over the mass-transference beam within the hour. Peyton loaded the supplies onto his aeroflitter with Maclntyre’s help, left his usual ten-dollar tip and returned to his house.

  On August 1, at 12:01 A.M., the force field that surrounded his property was set to full power and Peyton was isolated.

  And now the pattern changed. Deliberately he had left himself eight days. In that time he slowly and meticulously destroyed just enough of his supplies to account for all of August. He used the dusting chambers which served the house as a garbage-disposal unit. They were of an advanced model capable of reducing all matter up to and including metals
and silicates to an impalpable and undetectable molecular dust. The excess energy formed in the process was carried away by the mountain stream that ran through his property. It ran five degrees warmer than normal for a week.

  On August 9 his aeroflitter carried him to a spot in Wyoming where Albert Cornwell and a spaceship waited. The spaceship, itself, was a weak point, of course, since there were men who had sold it, men who had transported it and helped prepare it for flight. All those men, however, led only as far as Cornwell, and Cornwell, Peyton thought—with the trace of a smile on his cold lips—would be a dead end. A very dead end.

  On August 10 the spaceship, with Peyton at the controls and Cornwell— and his map—as passenger, left the surface of Earth. Its non-grav field was excellent. At full power, the ship’s weight was reduced to less than an ounce. The micropiles fed energy efficiently and noiselessly, and without flame or sound the ship rose through the atmosphere, shrank to a point, and was gone.