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

by Edited By Judith Merril

  Godalmighty! I used to carry hundred-kilo sacks of cement like they was nothing.

  We went back and cleaned up the head. I washed out the pajama top and draped it on the radiator. I was in a cold sweat and my face burned when I turned in.

  Across the ward Casey was sitting like a statue beside Slop Chute’s bunk.

  Next day was Friday, because Pink Waldo made some crack about fish to Curly Waldo when they formed up for sick call. Mary moved closer to Curly Waldo and gave Pink Waldo a cold look. That was good.

  Slop Chute looked waxy, and Uncle Death seemed to see it because a gleam come into his wooden eyes. Both Waldos listened all over Slop Chute and told Uncle what they heard in their secret language. Uncle nodded, and Casey thumbed his nose at him.

  No doubt about it, the ways was greased for Slop Chute. Mama Death come back soon as she could and began to loosen the chocks. She slobbered arthurs all over Slop Chute and flittered around like women do when they smell a wedding. Casey give her extra special hell, and we all laughed right out and she hardly noticed.

  That afternoon two orderly-masks come with a go-to-Jesus cart and wanted to take Slop Chute to X-ray. Casey climbed on the cart and scowled at them.

  Slop Chute told ‘em shove off, he wasn’t going.

  They got Mary and she told Slop Chute please go, it was doctor’s orders.

  Sorry, no, he said.

  “Please, for me, Slop Chute,” she begged.

  She knows our right names—that’s one reason we love her. But Slop Chute shook his head, and his big jaw bone stuck out.

  Mary—she had to then—called Mama Death. Mama waddled in, and Casey spit in her mask.

  “Now, arthur, what is this, arthur, you know we want to help you get well and go home, arthur,” she arthured at Slop Chute. “Be a good boy now, arthur, and go along to the clinic.”

  She motioned the orderlies to pick him up anyway. Casey hit one in the mask and Slop Chute growled, “Sheer off, you bastards!”

  The orderlies hesitated.

  Mama’s little eyes squinted and she wiggled her hands at them. “Let’s not be naughty, arthur. Doctor knows best, arthur.”

  The orderlies looked at Slop Chute and at each other. Casey wrapped his arms around Mama Death and began chewing on her neck. He seemed to mix right into her, someway, and she broke and run out of the ward.

  She came right back, though, trailing Uncle Death. Casey met him at the door and beat hell out of him all the way to Slop Chute’s bunk. Mama sent Mary for the chart, and Uncle Death studied Slop Chute’s reflection for a minute. He looked pale and swayed a little from Casey’s beating.

  He turned toward Slop Chute and breathed in deep and Casey was on him again. Casey wrapped his arms and legs around him and chewed at his mask with those big yellow teeth. Casey’s hair bristled and his eyes were red as the flames of hell.

  Uncle Death staggered back across the ward and fetched up against Carnahan’s bunk. The other masks were scared spitless, looking all around, kind of knowing.

  Casey pulled away, and Uncle Death said maybe he was wrong, schedule it for tomorrow. All the masks left in a hurry except Mary. She went back to Slop Chute and took his hand.

  “I’m sorry, Slop Chute,” she whispered.

  “Bless you, Connie,” he said, and grinned. It was the last thing I ever heard him say.

  * * * *

  Slop Chute went to sleep, and Casey sat beside his bunk. He motioned me off when I wanted to help Slop Chute to the head after lights out. I turned in and went to sleep.

  I don’t know what woke me. Casey was moving around fidgety-like, but of course not making a sound. I could hear the others stirring and whispering in the dark too.

  Then I heard a muffled noise—the bubbling cough again, and spitting. Slop Chute was having another hemorrhage and he had his head under the blankets to hide the sound. Carnahan started to get up. Casey waved him down.

  I saw a deeper shadow high in the dark over Slop Chute’s bunk. It came down ever so gently and Casey would push it back up again. The muffled coughing went on.

  Casey had a harder time pushing back the shadow. Finally he climbed on the bunk straddle of Slop Chute and kept a steady push against it.

  The blackness came down anyway, little by little. Casey strained and shifted his footing. I could hear him grunt and hear his joints crack.

  I was breathing forced draft with my heart like to pull off its bed bolts. I heard other bedsprings creaking. Somebody across from me whimpered low, but it was sure never Slop Chute that done it.

  Casey went to his knees, his hands forced almost level with his head. He swung his head back and forth and I saw his lips curled back from the big teeth clenched tight together… Then he had the blackness on his shoulders like the weight of the whole world.

  Casey went down on hands and knees with his back arched like a bridge. Almost I thought I heard him grunt… and he gained a little.

  Then the blackness settled heavier, and I heard Casey’s tendons pull out and his bones snap. Casey and Slop Chute disappeared under the blackness, and it overflowed from there over the whole bed… and more… and it seemed to fill the whole ward.

  It wasn’t like going to sleep, but I don’t know anything it was like.

  The masks must’ve towed off Slop Chute’s hulk in the night, because it was gone when I woke up.

  So was Casey.

  Casey didn’t show up for sick call and I knew then how much he meant to me. With him around to fight back I didn’t feel as dead as they wanted me to. Without him I felt deader than ever. I even almost liked Mama Death when she charlesed me.

  Mary came on duty that morning with a diamond on her third finger and a brighter sparkle in her eye. It was a little diamond, but it was Curly Waldo’s and it kind of made up for Slop Chute.

  I wished Casey was there to see it. He would’ve danced all around her and kissed her nice, the way he often did. Casey loved Mary.

  It was Saturday, I know, because Mama Death come in and told some of us we could be wheeled to a special church hooraw before breakfast next morning if we wanted. We said no thanks. But it was a hell of a Saturday without Casey. Sharkey Brown said it for all of us—“With Casey gone, this place is like a morgue again.”

  Not even Carnahan could call him up.

  “Sometimes I think I feel him stir, and then again I ain’t sure,” he said. “It beats hell where he’s went to.”

  Going to sleep that night was as much like dying as it could be for men already dead.

  * * * *

  Music from far off woke me up when it was just getting light. I was going to try to cork off again, when I saw Carnahan was awake.

  “Casey’s around somewhere,” he whispered.

  “Where?” I asked, looking around. “I don’t see him.”

  “I feel him,” Carnahan said. “He’s around.”

  The others began to wake up and look around. It was like the night Casey and Slop Chute went under. Then some­thing moved in the solarium…

  It was Casey.

  He come in the ward slow and bashful-like, jerking his head all around, with his eyes open wide, and looking scared we was going to throw something at him. He stopped in the middle of the ward.

  “Yea, Casey!” Carnahan said in a low, clear voice.

  Casey looked at him sharp.

  “Yea, Casey!” we all said. “Come aboard, you hairy old bastard!”

  Casey shook hands with himself over his head and went into his dance. He grinned… and I swear to God it was Slop Chute’s big, lopsided grin he had on.

  For the first time in my whole damn life I wanted to cry.

  <>

  * * * *

  SPACE-TIME FOR SPRINGERS

  by Fritz Leiber

  Some people will tell you that Fritz Leiber was born backstage, in the traditional trunk, during the witches’ scene in Macbeth. This is not true. But he did grow up in an atmosphere of greasepaint and iambic monologue; and he
did put in at least one season of Shakespearean barnstorming himself. He also studied for the ministry, acted in Hollywood, taught at a college, worked in a factory, and edited a science magazine. But all that time he was writing, too.

  Very few authors are equally successful with fantasy and science fiction. Leiber already had a reputation in Weird Tales when, in 1943, two novels of his appeared almost simultaneously in Astounding and Unknown Worlds. “Gather Darkness” is still generally regarded as one of the best American science-fiction novels; “Conjure Wife” is a modern fantasy with the unique distinction of being the only story that has ever frightened me the third time through.

  Two years ago, after a silence of five years, Leiber began writing fiction again, (HE’S BACK!, one magazine cover shouted.) Last year, a two-part serial of his in Galaxy took the “Hugo” award for best novel of the year at the World Science-Fiction Convention. Most hopeful news we’ve had this year is that Leiber at last is writing full-time. (Well, almost—just a bit of tournament chess on the side.)

  * * * *

  Gummitch was a superkitten, as he knew very well, with an I.Q. of about 160. Of course, he didn’t talk. But everybody knows that I.Q. tests based on language ability are very one-sided. Besides, he would talk as soon as they started setting a place for him at table and pouring him coffee. Ashurbanipal and Cleopatra ate horsemeat from pans on the floor and they didn’t talk. Baby dined in his crib on milk from a bottle and he didn’t talk. Sissy sat at table but they didn’t pour her coffee and she didn’t talk—not one word. Father and Mother (whom Gummitch had nicknamed Old Horsemeat and Kitty-Come-Here) sat at table and poured each other coffee and they did talk. Q.E.D.

  Meanwhile, he would get by very well on thought projec­tion and intuitive understanding of all human speech—not even to mention cat patois, which almost any civilized animal could olav by ear. The dramatic monologues and Socratic dialogues, the quiz and panel-show appearances, the felidological expedition to darkest Africa (where he would uncover the real truth behind lions and tigers), the exploration of the outer planets—all these could wait. The same went for the books for which he was ceaselessly accumulating material: The Encyclopedia of Odors, An­thropofeline Psychology, Invisible Signs and Secret Won­ders, Space-Time for Springers, Slit Eyes Look at Life, et cetera. For the present it was enough to live existence to the hilt and soak up knowledge, missing no experience proper to his age level—to rush about with tail aflame.

  So to all outward appearances Gummitch was just a vividly normal kitten, as shown by the succession of nicknames he bore along the magic path that led from blue-eyed infancy toward puberty: Little One, Squawker, Portly, Bumble (for purring not clumsiness), Old Starved­-to-Death, Fierso, Loverboy (affection not sex), Spook and Catnik. Of these only the last perhaps requires further explanation: the Russians had just sent Muttnik up after Sputnik, so that when one evening Gummitch streaked three times across the firmament of the living room floor in the same direction, past the fixed stars of the humans and the comparatively slow-moving heavenly bodies of the two older cats, and Kitty-Come-Here quoted the line from Keats:

  Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; it was inevitable that Old Horsemeat would say, “Ah—Catnik!”

  The new name lasted all of three days, to be replaced by Gummitch, which showed signs of becoming permanent.

  The little cat was on the verge of truly growing up, at least so Gummitch overheard Old Horsemeat comment to Kitty-Come-Here. A few short weeks, Old Horsemeat said, and Gummitch’s fiery flesh would harden, his slim neck thicken, the electricity vanish from everything but his fur, and all his delightful kittenish qualities rapidly give way to the earth-bound singlemindness of a tom. They’d be lucky, Old Horsemeat concluded, if he didn’t turn com­pletely surly like Ashurbanipal.

  Gummitch listened to these predictions with gay uncon­cern and with secret amusement from his vantage point of superior knowledge, in the same spirit that he accepted so many phases of his outwardly conventional existence: the murderous sidelong looks he got from Ashurbanipal and Cleopatra as he devoured his own horsemeat from his own little tin pan, because they sometimes were given canned catfood but he never; the stark idiocy of Baby, who didn’t know the difference between a live cat and a stuffed teddy bear and who tried to cover up his ignorance by making goo-goo noises and poking indiscriminately at all eyes; the far more serious—because cleverly hidden—maliciousness of Sissy, who had to be watched out for warily—especially when you were alone—and whose retarded—even warped —development, Gummitch knew, was Old Horsemeat and Kitty-Come-Here’s deepest, most secret, worry (more of Sissy and her evil ways soon); the limited intellect of Kitty-Come-Here, who despite the amounts of coffee she drank was quite as featherbrained as kittens are supposed to be and who firmly believed, for example, that kittens operated in the same space-time as other beings—that to get from here to there they had to cross the space between —and similar fallacies; the mental stodginess of even Old Horsemeat, who although he understood quite a bit of the secret doctrine and talked intelligently to Gummitch when they were alone, nevertheless suffered from the limitations of his status—a rather nice old god but a maddeningly slow-witted one.

  But Gummitch could easily forgive all this massed inadequacy and downright brutishness in his felino-human household, because he was aware that he alone knew the real truth about himself and about other kittens and babies as well, the truth which was hidden from weaker minds, the truth that was as intrinsically incredible as the germ theory of disease or the origin of the whole great universe in the explosion of a single atom.

  As a baby kitten Gummitch had believed that Old Horsemeat’s two hands were hairless kittens permanently attached to the ends of Old Horsemeat’s arms but having an independent life of their own. How he had hated and loved those two five-legged sallow monsters, his first playmates, comforters and battle-opponents!

  Well, even that fantastic discarded notion was but a trifling fancy compared to the real truth about himself!

  The forehead of Zeus split open to give birth to Minerva. Gummitch had been born from the waist-fold of a dirty old terrycloth bathrobe, Old Horsemeat’s basic garment. The kitten was intuitively certain of it and had proved it to himself as well as any Descartes or Aristotle. In a kitten-size tuck of that ancient bathrobe the atoms of his body had gathered and quickened into life. His earliest memories were of snoozing wrapped in terrycloth, warmed by Old Horsemeat’s heat. Old Horsemeat and Kitty-Come-Here were his true parents. The other theory of his origin, the one he heard Old Horsemeat and Kitty-Come-Here recount from time to time—that he had been the only sur­viving kitten of a litter abandoned next door, that he had had the shakes from vitamin deficiency and lost the tip of his tail and the hair on his paws and had to be nursed back to life and health with warm yellowish milk-and-vitamins fed from an eyedropper—that other theory was just one of those rationalizations with which mysterious nature cloaks the birth of heroes, perhaps wisely veiling the truth from minds unable to bear it, a rationalization as false as Kitty-Come-Here and Old Horsemeat’s touching belief that Sissy and Baby were their children rather than the cubs of Ashurbanipal and Cleopatra.

  The day that Gummitch had discovered by pure intui­tion the secret of his birth he had been filled with a wild instant excitement. He had only kept it from tearing him to pieces by rushing out to the kitchen and striking and devouring a fried scallop, torturing it fiendishly first for twenty minutes.

  And the secret of his birth was only the beginning. His intellectual faculties aroused, Gummitch had two days later intuited a further and greater secret: since he was the child of humans he would, upon reaching this maturation date of which Old Horsemeat had spoken, turn not into a sullen torn but into a godlike human youth with reddish golden hair the color of his present fur. He would be poured coffee; and he would instantly be able to talk, probably in all languages. While Sissy (how clear it was now!) would at approximately the
same time shrink and fur out into a sharp-clawed and vicious she-cat dark as her hair, sex and self-love her only concerns, first harem-mate for Cleopatra, concubine to Mhurbanipal.

  Exactly the same was true, Gummitch realized at once, for all kittens and babies, all humans and cats, wherever they might dwell. Metamorphosis was as much a part of the fabric of their lives as it was of the insects’. It was also the basic fact underlying all legends of werewolves, vam­pires and witches’ familiars.

  If you just rid your mind of preconceived notions, Gum­mitch told himself, it was all very logical. Babies were stupid, fumbling, vindictive creatures without reason or speech. What more natural than that they should grow up into mute sullen selfish beasts bent only on rapine and reproduction? While kittens were quick, sensitive, subtle, supremely alive. What other destiny were they possibly fitted for except to become the deft, word-speaking, book-writing, music-making, meat-getting-and-dispensing mas­ters of the world? To dwell on the physical differences, to point out that kittens and men, babies and cats, are rather unlike in appearance and size, would be to miss the forest for the trees—very much as if an entomologist should proclaim metamorphosis a myth because his microscope failed to discover the wings of a butterfly in a caterpillar’s slime or a golden beetle in a grub.