Raeder tried to move, and slid helplessly into the open grave.
He lay on his back, looking at the blue sky. Presently a black silhouette loomed above him, blotting out the sky. Metal twinkled. The silhouette slowly took aim.
And Raeder gave up all hope forever.
“Wait, Thompson!” roared the amplified voice of Mike Terry. The revolver wavered.
“It is one second past five o’clock! The week is up! JIM RAEDER HAS WON!”
There was pandemonium of cheering from the studio audience.
The Thompson gang, gathered around the grave, looked sullen.
“He’s won, friends, he’s won!” Mike Terry cried. “Look, look on your screen! The police have arrived, they’re taking the Thompsons away from their victim—the victim they could not kill. And all this is thanks to you, Good Samaritans of America. Look folks, tender hands are lifting Jim Raeder from the open grave that was his final refuge. Good Samaritan Janice Morrow is there. Could this be the beginning of a romance? Jim seems to have fainted, friends; they’re giving him a stimulant. He’s won two hundred thousand dollars! Now we’ll have a few words from Jim Raeder!”
There was a short silence.
“That’s odd,” said Mike Terry. “Folks, I’m afraid we can’t hear from Jim just now. The doctors are examining him. Just one moment …”
There was a silence. Mike Terry wiped his forehead and smiled.
“It’s the strain, folks, the terrible strain. The doctor tells me … Well, folks, Jim Raeder is temporarily not himself. But it’s only temporary! JBC is hiring the best psychiatrists and psychoanalysts in the country. We’re going to do everything humanly possible for this gallant boy. And entirely at our own expense.”
Mike Terry glanced at the studio clock. “Well, it’s about time to sign off, folks. Watch for the announcement of our next great thrill show. And don’t worry, I’m sure that very soon we’ll have Jim Raeder back with us.”
Mike Terry smiled, and winked at the audience. “He’s bound to get well, friends. After all, we’re all pulling for him!”
<
* * * *
HICKORY, DICKORY, KEROUAC
by Richard Gehman
The most frequent focus of speculation in s-f these days is on the cultural potential of humanity. One story may explore uncharted territory deep in the darkest interior of man; another may try to trace the tangled relationships between men and the world around them; a third might be a sort of aerial-photo view of the environment itself.
Richard Gehman is one of America’s most prolific magazine writers, and is an inquisitive and earnest student of our mores, including our fads in jazz and literature.
This story was first published under the by-line, Martin Scott. The name was new to me. I queried editor Ray Russell at Playboy, who wrote to tell me the author’s identity, and also said, “It certainly is an extremely clever piece, but I must admit I don’t see how the satire fits into your book.”
This shook me, because Russell is a type that digs s-f, mostly, and if this is not science fiction, it is what I mean by s-f, and—like, man, I mean, it is the greatest. . . .
* * * *
It was a season of great restlessness and change for mice everywhere, a stirring time, a time of moods and urges and moves. The mouse felt it; his whiskers trembled in anticipation. One night there was a party in a stall, and an old badger came. He sat there drinking red wine and aspirin gravely, staring at a young and excitable squirrel who had been on cashews for months.
“It’s the time, man!” the squirrel kept saying to the badger, but the mouse knew the message was for him. It had to be for him; the badger had fallen asleep after his third Sneaky Pete. That was the badger’s way of rebellion. No squirrel could bug him.
The mouse got the message. He was quite possibly the hippest mouse that ever crept. He dug. He dug everything —he dug with his sharp little eyes, he dug with his pointy little nose, he dug with his little claws (under each of which he kept a bit of dirt at all times, in case he might be invited to the Actors’ Studio). The mouse dug the gray mice that lived in the universe that was his house, he dug the brown mice that were padded down in the vast unreachable reaches of the fields, and he dug the mice-colored mice that lived nowhere but stayed ever on the road. He even dug rats. Oh, how he dug; he dug the whole world, and he dug his hole-world. He was with it, he was of it, he was in.
This mouse was a cat.
He was well-known, too. He had eaten some pages of verse in some tiny magazines—Trap, Silo Review and Barley—and they had heard of him in San Francisco, where there was a small but pulsating and Mysterious mouse revival swinging. But the season of restlessness caught him and he was hung, and although he had finished chewing three pages of a novel, he said to his mother, “Dad, I got to go.”
There was reason enough: nothing charged him. He’d been on pot. Nothing. He’d gone on pot again; still nothing. He’d then gone on pan, kettle, roaster, colander, soup spoon; he’d tried everything in the kitchen cabinet. No kicks.
The word was out—he’d seen it in the squirrel’s eyes that night at the party. The hipsters had a new kick. Go on clock, the word came. Man, get with the clock-way; man, it’s time; make it man, it’s timeless.
The mouse rushed first to the First National Corn Crib, where all the squares kept their hoards. He started to spit— but he dug it too much, there was too much love in him for squares and everybody else, they were all Zenned up like he was, and he could not do it. He changed his mind, then changed it again. He rushed on. Man, this was living! He rushed over to a haystack where a beetle had a pad and gnawed anarchist poetry. He seized six of the beetle’s legs and shook them violently. The beetle opened three of his four eyes and regarded the mouse with utter serenity. He was stoned, but he had so many eyes he could be stoned and still see everything.
“Come on,” the mouse cried.
The beetle said nothing. That was what was so great about him, the mouse knew; he dug and he never spoke, like the crazy old mixed-up Zenners,
It was time to go again; time to go on time. The mouse ran and ran and ran and ran and finally he was there, at the clock. There it stood, wild as a skyscraper, tall and proud and like all America with a moon-face above it, waving its hands inscrutably and passively, cool as you please. The mouse wished he had a chick to dig it with him but knew that was childish; he was himself, he was with, in, of and it. The realization made his tail twitch. His ears rattled. Then the music came, long and mysterious, like some great old song chanted all the way from Tibet:
Hickory, dickory...
It was the moment of truth: reds and greens and blues crowded in and permeated his little red eyes, he broke out in a cold sweat, he broke in out of a hot sweat.
Dock!
That was it. He ran up, he ran down.
Nothing happened.
Hickory, dickory, dock! the unearthly music came again.
“I dig!” the mouse screamed, and ran up and down again.
“I’m on the clock, Dad!” he cried to no one in particular. Breathless, he shouted it again. A spider, observing him icily from a corner, shrugged and wondered what the younger generation was coming to.
The mouse glanced at the spider. That second was when he knew the truth. Pot was no good, pan was no good, clock was just as bad. There was no escaping it. In the final analysis, he had to look inward. He walked home slowly and chewed up the rest of his novel. Today he is rich, a trustee of the First National Corn Crib, and is thinking of eating another book as soon as he can find the time away from his job. The badger is dead, the beetle has turned chiropractor, and only God digs. Hickory, dickory, dock.
<
* * * *
THE YELLOW PILL
by Rog Phillips
“The best laid schemes o’ mice and men,” that Scotsman said, “gang aft a-gley.” Which, in American, means: man or mouse, one can be just as crazy mixed-up as the other.
The l
ate Robert Lindner, in his fascinating The Fifty-Minute Hour, wrote about a patient whose fantasy-world took the form of a space-travel story so credibly constructed that the psychiatrist himself kept drifting into near-acceptance of the reality of the alien planet. Now Mr. Phillips asks: How does the doctor know—for sure—who’s crazy?
* * * *
Dr. Cedric Elton slipped into his office by the back entrance, shucked off his topcoat and hid it in the small, narrow-doored closet, then picked up the neatly piled patient cards his receptionist Helena Fitzroy had placed on the corner of his desk. There were only four, but there could have been a hundred if he accepted everyone who asked to be his patient, because his successes had more than once been spectacular and his reputation as a psychiatrist had become so great because of this that his name had become synonymous with psychiatry in the public mind.
His eyes flicked over the top card. He frowned, then went to the small square of one-way glass in the reception-room door and looked through it. There were four police officers and a man in a strait jacket.
The card said the man’s name was Gerald Bocek, and that he had shot and killed five people in a supermarket, and had killed one officer and wounded two others before being captured.
Except for the strait jacket, Gerald Bocek did not have the appearance of being dangerous. He was about twenty-five, with brown hair and blue eyes. There were faint wrinkles of habitual good nature about his eyes. Right now he was smiling, relaxed, and idly watching Helena, who was pretending to study various cards in her desk file but was obviously conscious of her audience.
Cedric returned to his desk and sat down. The card for Jerry Bocek said more about the killings. When captured, Bocek insisted that the people he had killed were not people at all, but blue-scaled Venusian lizards who had boarded his spaceship, and that he had only been defending himself.
Dr. Cedric Elton shook his head in disapproval. Fantasy fiction was all right in its place, but too many people took it seriously. Of course, it was not the fault of the fiction. The same type of person took other types of fantasy seriously in earlier days, burning women as witches, stoning men as devils—
Abruptly Cedric deflected the control on the intercom and spoke into it. “Send Gerald Bocek in, please,” he said.
A moment later the door to the reception room opened. Helena flashed Cedric a scared smile and got out of the way quickly. One police officer led the way, followed by Gerald Bocek, closely flanked by two officers with the fourth one in the rear, who carefully closed the door. It was impressive, Cedric decided. He nodded toward a chair in front of his desk and the police officers sat the strait-jacketed man in it, then hovered near by, ready for anything.
“You’re Jerry Bocek?” Cedric asked.
The strait-jacketed man nodded cheerfully.
“I’m Dr. Cedric Elton, a psychiatrist,” Cedric said. “Do you have any idea at all why you have been brought to me?”
“Brought to you?” Jerry echoed, chuckling. “Don’t kid me. You’re my old pal, Gar Castle. Brought to you? How could I get away from you in this stinking tub?”
“Stinking tub?” Cedric said.
“Spaceship,” Jerry said. “Look, Gar. Untie me, will you? This nonsense has gone far enough.”
“My name is Dr. Cedric Elton,” Cedric enunciated. “You are not on a spaceship. You were brought to my office by the four policemen standing in back of you, and—”
Jerry Bocek turned his head and studied each of the four policemen with frank curiosity. “What policemen?” he interrupted. “You mean these four gear lockers?” He turned his head back and looked pityingly at Dr. Elton. “You’d better get hold of yourself, Gar,” he said. “You’re imagining things.”
“My name is Dr. Cedric Elton,” Cedric said.
Gerald Bocek leaned forward and said with equal firmness, “Your name is Gar Castle. I refuse to call you Dr. Cedric Elton because your name is Gar Castle, and I’m going to keep on calling you Gar Castle because we have to have at least one peg of rationality in all this madness or you will be cut completely adrift in this dream world you’ve cooked up.”
Cedric’s eyebrows shot halfway up to his hairline.
“Funny,” he mused, smiling. “That’s exactly what I was just going to say to you!”
* * * *
Cedric continued to smile. Jerry’s serious intenseness slowly faded. Finally an answering smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. When it became a grin, Cedric laughed, and Jerry began to laugh with him. The four police officers looked at one another uneasily.
“Well!” Cedric finally gasped. “I guess that puts us on an even footing! You’re nuts to me and I’m nuts to you!”
“An equal footing is right!” Jerry shouted in high glee. Then he sobered. “Except,” he said gently, “I’m tied up.”
“In a strait jacket,” Cedric corrected.
“Ropes,” Jerry said firmly.
“You’re dangerous,” Cedric said. “You killed six people, one of them a police officer, and wounded two other officers.”
“I blasted five Venusian lizard pirates who boarded our ship,” Jerry said, “and melted the door off of one gear locker, and seared the paint on two others. You know as well as I do, Gar, how space madness causes you to personify everything. That’s why they drill into you that the minute you think there are more people on board the ship than there were at the beginning of the trip you’d better go to the medicine locker and take a yellow pill. They can’t hurt anything but a delusion.”
“If that is so,” Cedric said, “why are you in a strait jacket?”
“I’m tied up with ropes,” Jerry said patiently. “You tied me up. Remember?”
“And those four police officers behind you are gear lockers?” Cedric said. “OK, if one of those gear lockers comes around in front of you and taps you on the jaw with his fist, would you still believe it’s a gear locker?”
Cedric nodded to one of the officers, and the man came around in front of Gerald Bocek and, quite carefully, hit him hard enough to rock his head but not hurt him. Jerry’s eyes blinked with surprise, then he looked at Cedric and smiled. “Did you feel that?” Cedric said quietly.
“Feel what?” Jerry said. “Oh!” He laughed. “You imagined that one of the gear lockers—a police officer in your dream world—came around in front of me and hit me?” He shook his head in pity. “Don’t you understand, Gar, that it didn’t really happen? Untie me and I’ll prove it. Before your very eyes I’ll open the door on your Policeman and take out the pressure suit, or magnetic grapple, or whatever is in it. Or are you afraid to? You’ve surrounded yourself with all sorts of protective delusions. I’m tied with ropes, but you imagine it to be a strait jacket. You imagine yourself to be a psychiatrist named Dr. Cedric Elton, so that you can convince yourself that you’re sane and I’m crazy. Probably you imagine yourself a very famous psychiatrist that everyone would like to come to for treatment. World famous, no doubt. Probably you even think you have a beautiful receptionist. What is her name?”
“Helena Fitzroy,” Cedric said.
Jerry nodded. “It figures,” he said resignedly. “Helena Fitzroy is the expediter at Mars Port. You try to date her every time we land there, but she won’t date you.”
“Hit him again,” Cedric said to the officer. While Jerry’s head was still rocking from the blow, Cedric said, “Now! Is it my imagination that your head is still rocking from the blow?”
“What blow?” Jerry said, smiling. “I felt no blow.”
“Do you mean to say,” Cedric said incredulously, “that there is no corner of your mind, no slight residue of rationality, that tries to tell you your rationalizations aren’t reality?”
Jerry smiled ruefully. “I have to admit,” he said, “when you seem so absolutely certain you’re right and I’m nuts, it almost makes me doubt. Untie me, ‘Gar, and let’s try to work this thing out sensibly.” He grinned. “You know, Gar, one of us has to be nuttier than a fruit cake.”
/> “If I had the officers take off your strait jacket, what would you do?” Cedric asked. “Try to grab a gun and kill some more people?”
“That’s one of the things I’m worried about,” Jerry said. “If those pirates came back, with me tied up, you’re just space crazy enough to welcome them aboard. That’s why you must untie me. Our lives may depend on it, Gar.”
“Where would you get a gun?” Cedric asked.
“Where they’re always kept,” Jerry said. “In the gear lockers.”
Cedric looked at the four policemen, at their holstered revolvers. One of them grinned feebly at him.
“I’m afraid we can’t take your strait jacket off just yet,” Cedric said. “I’m going to have the officers take you back now. I’ll talk with you again tomorrow. Meanwhile I want you to think seriously about things. Try to get below this level of rationalization that walls you off from reality. Once you make a dent in it the whole delusion will vanish.” He looked up at the officers. “All right, take him away. Bring him back the same time tomorrow.”
The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 4 - [Anthology] Page 6