The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 4 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  I said, “A mere knack.”

  “Well, give me another nugget and I’ll give you some good advice. . . . Thank you. My advice is, make straight for the big river, and so to the coast. Don’t stop to play at the next village—there is only one—or you may regret it. The Esporco are the most villainous Indians in these parts. Don’t push even your luck too far. Four ounces of gold, and I’ll let you have a fine weapon, a revolver, all the way from Belgium.”

  The revolver I took, but not his advice, and we went on at dawn. In the late afternoon several canoes came out to meet us. My men spat and said, “Esporco, master—very bad.”

  “What, will they attack us?” I asked. “No.” They indicated that the Esporco Indian was the worst trickster and cheat in the Mato Grosso. But I fondled the tictoc nut, while observing that in every canoe sat a girl wearing a necklace of raw rubies, and little else. The men—big fellows, as Indians go—had an easy, cozy way with them, all smiles, no weapons, full of good humor.

  They hailed me as Senhor Tictoc, while the girls threw flowers.

  My leading paddler, the stroke, as it were, growled, “When Esporco bring flowers, keep your hand on your knife”—a savage version of Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

  Still, I gave orders to land, and was received with wild delight. The chief ordered several young goats killed. I presented him with a sack of salt, which is highly prized thereabout. There was a banquet with a profusion of some slightly effervescent drink in the nature of the Mexican mescal, only lighter and breezier.

  In a little while we started to talk business. I expressed interest in rubies. The chief said, “Those red things? But they are nothing.” And, taking a magnificent necklace from one of the girls, he tossed it into the river—I was to learn, later, that he had a net there to catch it. “I have heard that you are interested in stones,” said he, while I gaped like a fish. And he went away and came back with an uncut diamond of the Brazilian variety, as big as your two fists.

  I displayed no emotion, but said, “Interesting. How much do you want for it?”

  He said, “It has no price. I have been around, and know the value your people set on such stones. I also know—we ail know on this river—what would happen if the news got about that there was gold, rubies, emeralds and diamonds hereabout. Your people would come down on us like jaguars, and drive us off the face of the earth. As it is, we have enough, we are contented, we regard such stuff as this as pretty for unmarried girls. No, my friend, it is not for sale. But I tell you what. It being a plaything, let us play for it. You have a great reputation as a tictoc player. As it happens, so have I. Now what have you to stake against this stone?”

  “Three canoeloads of treasure,” I said.

  At this, one of his sons chimes in with, “Don’t do it, father! The man is a wizard. All the river knows it. He has a thinking nut!”

  Apparently tipsy, the chief shouted, “Silence, brat! There is no such thing. It is a superstition. Tictoc is a game of skill, and I am the best man on this river.” He became angry. “Who questions my skill?”

  Nobody did. The circle was made, the ten nuts arranged at their proper distances. I begged my host to shoot first. There was a breathless hush as he went down on his knees and shot a perfect Two—at which there was a murmur of applause.

  Then I stroked my nut and asked it for a One. Out it went, spinning like a little whirlwind, and a One it was.

  It is etiquette, in the tictoc game, for the winner to pick up the fighting nuts and bring them back to the base. Loser shoots first. This time the chief shot a Three. I was feeling warm-hearted. Who “wouldn’t, if he was certain to win a diamond that would make the Koh-i-noor and the Cullinan diamonds look like stones in a fifty-dollar engagement ring? So I said to my nut, “This time, for the sport of the thing, get me a Five. But last shot we’ll have another One and the best out of three games.”

  It did as it was bid, and I lost with a Five. The Chief much elated, got our nuts and handed me mine with grave courtesy. I shot with perfect confidence. Imagine my horror when, instead of moving with grace and deliberation, it reeled drunkenly forward and barely reached the periphery of the circle! I wondered, could that mescal-like stuff I had drunk have gone to its head through mine? Thinking with all my might, I shot again—and knocked one nut out of the ring. A third time, and I finished with an Eight.

  The chief went to pick up our nuts. I was numb with grief. He handed me the nut I had played that last game with. I looked at it—and it was not my own!

  Then the truth dawned on me. The old rascal had swapped nuts after the second game! Simple as that. But I kept my temper, because in a split second everybody had stopped laughing, and every man had produced a machete, an ax, a bow or spear. I said, “There is some mistake here, sir. This is not my tictoc nut.”

  “Then whose is it?”

  “Yours. You are, no doubt inadvertently, holding mine in your hand. Give it back, if you please.”

  And driven beyond prudence, I made a grab at it. I was fast, but he was faster, and surprisingly strong. I, too, am tolerably strong in the fingers. We stood locked, hand to hand, for about twenty seconds. Then I heard and felt a sharp little crack. So did he, for he stood back, waving away his tribesmen who were closing in. . He held out his hand with dignity; it held the common tictoc nut that he had palmed off on me. In my palm lay my own true nut, but split down the center, exposing the kernel.

  I looked at it, fascinated. You know, I studied medicine once—might be in Harley Street by now, only there was a bureaucratic misunderstanding about four microscopes I borrowed. Silly old asses! I’d have got them out of pawn and put them back where I’d found them, as soon as my remittance came in. But no, they gave me the sack.

  However, I have read some anatomy, and I solemnly swear that the kernel of my poor tictoc nut definitely and in detail resembled the human brain—convolutions, lobes, cerebrum, cerebellum, medulla—in every respect.

  Most remarkable of all, when I touched it affectionately with my finger tip, it throbbed very faintly, and then lay still. Whereupon some of the virtue seemed to drain out of me, and I cried like a child.

  But I pulled myself together and said, “Well, the bet is off. The game is null and void. Let me get my men together and push off.”

  Then, in the light of torches, I saw bundles on the shore —very familiar bundles.

  “To save your men unnecessary exertion,” the chief said, “I had them unload your canoes for you. I wish you no harm, but put it to you that you go quietly back where you belong. Come, you shall not go empty handed. Take as many small nuggets as your two hands can hold, and depart in peace. You overreached yourself. I would have given you the diamond for the thinking nut, and gladly, in fair exchange. But no, you had to cheat, to do bad trade, to bet on a sure thing. In this life, nothing is sure.”

  I said, holding out the revolver, “And what will you give me for this?”

  “Oh, two double handfuls of gold.”

  “May I suggest three?”

  “If you will allow me to test it first.”

  I did. He fired one shot into the dark. I took the gun back and said, “First, the gold.”

  Down by the river I took the liberty of scooping up a handful of heavy clay and filling up the barrel of that revolver. It would dry like brick. That old rogue would never play tictoc again.

  But in burying the remains of my thinking nut, I had a weird feeling that I was leaving behind a certain essential portion of myself. Gold and jewels I can get again. But that, never.

  “So I got to the coast and took ship, as a passenger this time, on a heavy freighter bound for Tampa, Florida. What with one thing and another, I arrived with only a few nuggets left, which I keep as ... I don’t know, call it keepsakes. You have been very kind to me. Let me give you one—a very little one—and then I must be on my way. Have this one.”

  He dropped a heavy gold pellet on the wet table. It was not much larger than a pea, but shaped, or misshape
n, beyond human conception. Fire and water had done that. “Have it made into a tie pin,” said Pilgrim. “But I couldn’t take a valuable thing like this,” I cried, “without doing something for you in return!”

  “Not a bit of it. We limeys must stick together, and I’m on my way to Detroit. About seven days from now, John Pilgrim, at Detroit’s leading hotel, will find me. Help me on my way, if you like, but—” He shrugged.

  “I have only ten dollars,” I said, deeply moved by a certain sadness in Pilgrim’s eyes. “You’re welcome to that.”

  “You’re very obliging. It shall be returned with interest.”

  “I must go now,” I said.

  “So must I,” said he.

  Marveling at the intricacies of the human mind, I walked until I found myself on Sixth Avenue, near West 46th Street, in which area congregate those who, with pitying smiles and a certain kind of shrug, can flaw a diamond carat by carat until you are ashamed to own it, and with a shake of the head depreciate a watch until it stops of its own accord. On impulse I went into a shop there and, putting down Pilgrim’s nugget, asked what such a bit of gold might be worth.

  His reply was, “Ya kiddin’? Tickle me so I’ll laugh. What’s the current price of printer’s metal? . . . Worth? Kugel’s Kute Novelties sell those twelve for fifty cents, mail order. I can get ‘em for ya a dollar for two dozen. A teaspoonful lead, melt it and drop it in cold water. You can honestly advertise ‘no two alike.’ Gild ‘em, and there’s a nugget. A miniature gold brick. That manufacturer, so he puts out loaded dice ‘for amusement only’—he sells ‘em too. Seriously, did you buy this?”

  I said, “Yes and no.” But as I dropped the nugget into my pocket and turned to go, the shopman said, “Wait a minute, mister—it’s a nice imitation and a good job of plating. Maybe I might give you a couple bucks for it!”

  “Oh, no, you won’t,” I said, my suspicions aroused. I fondled the nugget in my pocket; it had the indescribable, authentic feel of real gold. As for that trick with melted lead and cold water, I suddenly remembered that I had played it myself about thirty years ago, with some broken toy soldiers, just for the sake of playing with fire. Recently-melted lead has a feel all its own, and is sharp at the edges. But my nugget felt old and worn.

  “It could be, after forty years, for once I made a mistake,” the man said. “Let’s have another look.”

  But I went out, and visited another shop a few doors away: one of those double-fronted establishments, in the right-hand window of which, under a sign which says OLD GOLD BOUGHT, there lies a mess of pinchback bracelets, ancient watch chains, old false teeth and tie pins. In the other window, diamonds carefully carded and priced at anything between two thousand and fifteen thousand dollars. The proprietor, here, looked as if he were next door but one to the breadline.

  I put down my nugget and said boldly, “How much for this?”

  He scrutinized the nugget, put it in a balance and weighed it; then tested it on a jeweler’s stone, with several kinds of acid. “Voigin gold,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”

  “A friend gave it to me.”

  “I wish I had such friends.” He called, “Giving, come here a minute,” and a younger man came to his side. “What d’you make of this?”

  Irving said, “It ain’t African gold. It ain’t Indian gold. It ain’t a California nugget. I say South America.”

  “Good boy. Correct.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “You loin,” he said. “How d’you tell the difference between salt and sugar? You loin. . . . The market value of this little bit voigin gold is about forty dollars. I got to make a buck—I’ll give you thoity-five.”

  “Eh?”

  “Thoity-six, and not a penny more,” he said, counting out the money. “And if your friend gives you any more, come to me with ‘em.”

  I took the money, caught a taxi, and hurried back to MacAroon’s place. The bartender was gazing into space.

  “That man I was sitting with,” I said, “where is he?”

  The bartender, with a sardonic smile, said, “He put the bite on you, huh? I can smell a phony a mile off. I didn’t like the looks of him as soon as he set foot in my bar. If I was you—”

  “Which way did he go?”

  “I didn’t notice. Soon after you left he ordered a double, no ice and put down a ten-dollar bill—left me fifty cents, and went out.”

  “Here’s my telephone number,” I said. “If he turns up again, call me any hour of the day or night, and hold him till I get here. Here’s five dollars on account; another five when you call.”

  But Pilgrim never came to MacAroon’s again.

  I inquired high and low-—mostly low—but found no trace of him. A British-sounding man with an insinuating air, a malarial complexion and a misleading eccentric manner, who talks about the River Amazon and its tributaries —I will pay a substantial reward for information leading to his rediscovery.

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  * * * *

  SATELLITE PASSAGE

  by Theodore L. Thomas

  Back to Cain and Abel, and ever since that time, there have been restless men, dissatisfied ones, the rovers, explorers, and adventurers. They are the men who traveled to India, discovered China, stumbled across America, pushed through the jungles of the Congo and the Amazon, charted the oceans, crested the mountains, and dog-sledded to the poles. To the stay-at-homes, these wanderers are sometimes heroes, sometimes worthless bums, depending as often as not on whether they do bring home nuggets of real gold (or silks, spices, slaves, oil leases). Now, very soon—as matters look, within our own lifetimes—the rovers will be going out to space. They will man our satellites and space stations, mine our moon, and colonize the other planets; eventually, it is they who will represent us to whatever alien life may have spawned from other stars.

  Ted Thomas has a faculty for imagining life in space with such sharp realism that you can almost see and feel and taste it as you read. Here he tells the story of an embattled, proud and lonely man, a wanderer and a fighter, who must make a split-second decision for or against the community of mankind.

  * * * *

  The three men bent over the chart and once again computed the orbit. It was quiet in the satellite, a busy quiet broken by the click of seeking microswitches and the gentle purr of smooth-running motors. The deep pulsing throb of the air conditioner had stopped; the satellite was in the Earth’s shadow and there was no need for cooling the interior.

  “Well,” said Morgan, “it checks. We’ll pass within fifty feet of the other satellite. Too close. Think we ought to move?”

  Kaufman looked at him and did not speak. McNary glanced up and snorted. Morgan nodded. He said, “That’s right. If there’s any moving to be done, let them do it.” He felt a curious nascent emotion, a blend of anger and exhilaration—very faint now, just strong enough to be recognizable. The pencil snapped in his fingers, and he stared at it, and smiled.

  Kaufman said, “Any way we can reline this a little? Fifty feet cuts it kind of close.”

  They were silent, and the murmuring of machinery filled the cramped room. “How’s this?” said McNary. “Wait till we see the other satellite, take a couple of readings on it, and compute the orbit again. We’d have about five minutes to make the calculations. Morgan here can do it in less than that. Then we’d know if we’re on a collision course.”

  Morgan nodded. “We could do it that way.” He studied the chart in front of him. “The only thing, those boys on the other satellite will see what we’re doing. They’ll know we’re afraid of a collision. They’ll radio it down to Earth, and—you know the Russian mind—we’ll lose face.”

  “That so bad?” asked Kaufman.

  Morgan stared at the chart. He answered softly, “Yes, I think it is. The Russians will milk it dry if we make any move to get our satellite out of the way of theirs. We can’t do that to our people.”

  McNary nodded. Kaufman said, “Agree.
Just wanted to throw it out. We stay put. We hit, we hit.”

  The other two looked at Kaufman. The abrupt dismissal of a serious problem was characteristic of the little astronomer; Kaufman wasted no time with second guesses. A decision made was a fact accomplished; it was over.

  Morgan glanced at McNary to see how he was taking it. McNary, now, big as he was, was a worrier. He stood ready to change his mind at any time, whenever some new alternative looked better. Only the soundness of his judgment prevented his being putty in any strong hands. He was a meteorologist, and a good one.