Seven Come Infinity

by Groff Conklin

  SEVEN COME INFINITY

  Edited by Groff Conklin

  A FAWCETT GOLD MEDAL BOOK

  Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich, Conn.

  Member of American Book Publishers Council, Inc.

  * * *

  All characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1966 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof.

  Printed in the United States of America

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Charles V. DeVet, SPECIAL FEATURE. Copyright © 1958 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author from ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, May 1958.

  Raymond F. Jones, DISCONTINUITY. Copyright © 1950 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., from ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, October 1950.

  Murray Leinster, THE CORIANIS DISASTER. Copyright © 1960 by Columbia Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Will Jenkins from ORIGINAL SCIENCE FICTION STORIES, May 1960.

  Chad Oliver, RITE OF PASSAGE. Copyright © 1954 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Willis Kingsley Wing, Collins-Knowlton-Wing, Inc., from ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, April 1954.

  Eric Frank Russell, PANIC BUTTON. Copyright © 1959 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., from ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, November 1959.

  Clifford Simak, THE GOLDEN BUGS. Copyright © 1960 by Mercury Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and Robert Mills from MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, June 1960.

  William Tenn, THE SERVANT PROBLEM. Copyright © 1955 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of Philip Klass and Henry Morrison, Inc., from GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION, April 1955.

  PREFACE

  There are twelve numbers on the twelve faces of a pair of dice, two each of six, all meticulously pinked out in careful little dots. For almost four thousand years men have played with dice, balancing their knowledge of the odds against the intriguing possibilities of the future—the next roll of the dice. The crapshooter knows, for example, that the odds against throwing the magic numbers seven and eleven are 5 to 1 and 17 to 1, respectively. He knows that the odds against throwing a seven, then an eleven, in two consecutive rolls, are 107 to 1, or the product of the odds for the individual rolls: 1/6 x 1/18 = 1/108.

  These are high odds, indeed, and the crapshooter’s plea for “Seven come eleven” is more an appeal for special favor from the gods than a realistic demand based on mathematical probabilities. But although the odds are high, they are nevertheless far from astronomical, and even farther from infinite. When, however, instead of exhorting those cubes to “come eleven,” one pleads for something to “come infinity,” as does the title of this book, one must simply stop figuring odds and lean back and have a good time.

  Actually, though, why that title? Well, there are seven stories, and they deal with a special kind of infinity—the infinite variety of the future, and the inevitable role that chance will play in the worlds of tomorrow.

  Of course, any story whatsoever is a selection from an infinite series of possibilities. The standard, more mundane fiction of the typical publishing season, however, deals with places, people, and plots of the here and now or then—the present or the past. And although both the plot and the background material are of infinite variety in one respect, in another that infinity is limited to existent settings, to what the author considers real people, and to events which are familiar if not always pleasant.

  But when an author writes science-fiction, his imagination is freed from the shackles of history. He is at liberty to write of any conceivable situation, restricted only by his eternal obligation to the reader. The title of this anthology reflects this obligation, hinting, as it does, at the strange kinship between the diceplayer and the writer of science fiction.

  The diceplayer weighs the odds against his expectations, and his success or failure at the game depends upon a careful balance of the two. In much the same way, the writer of science-fiction balances his knowledge of today against the infinite variety of the future to construct a plausible story that has not happened yet. His success depends upon a careful blending of imagination and knowledge. He must use his knowledge of men and matter to convince us of an unheard-of event, of unknown places and unborn beings which have existence only in his imagination.

  Each story in this collection is, then, almost a leap into the wild blue yonder, a choice from a never-ending series of possible future happenings. Each story is based upon a never-before-thought-of incident from the bottomless grab-bag of the next minute, year, century, aeon—and not necessarily confined to earth, either. It can happen anywhere in our galaxy, or that of anyone else which in turn offers its own infinite variety of “cosmographical” locales, living beings, and civilizations.

  But always we return from this profusion to the author, his unique imagination, particular training and bent. Chad Oliver, for example, is in addition to being a writer of first-rate science-fiction, an anthropologist. In RITE OF PASSAGE, Oliver uses his special knowledge of cultures to depict a “primitive” society—one, that is, which exists without advanced technology. But the simplicity of Oliver’s imaginative “primitives” is deceptive, as the intruding earthmen learn; and the story is a gently ironic comment on our clutter of conveniences.

  In the same manner, each of the other six authors represented in this collection uses his own special genius to convince us of his vision. The seven stories contained here, magnificently different though each is from the other, nevertheless embody one essential quality: that mastery of matter and emotion that gives substance to an event which could not have happened yet. It is this plausible adventuring into the unknown that gives science-fiction its special allure.

  And that is why I’ve never spent much time shooting craps, pleading “seven come eleven.” Reading about the endless possibilities of elsewhere and elsewhen is much more rewarding.

  So—“Seven Come Infinity!”

  * * *

  Groff Conklin

  The Golden Bugs

  Clifford Simak

  * * *

  It started as a lousy day.

  Arthur Belsen, across the alley, turned on his orchestra at six o’clock and brought me sitting up in bed.

  I’m telling you, Belsen makes his living as an engineer, but music is his passion. And since he is an engineer, he’s not content to leave well enough alone. He had to mess around.

  A year or two before he’d gotten the idea of a robotic symphony, and the man has talent, you have to give him that. He went to work on this idea and designed machines that could read—not only play, but read—music from a tape, and he built a machine to transcribe the tapes. Then he built a lot of these music machines in his basement workshop.

  And he tried them out!

  It was experimental work, quite understandably, and there was redesigning and adjusting to be done and Belsen was finicky about the performance that each machine turned out. So he tried them out a lot—and loudly—not being satisfied until he had the instrumentation just the way he thought it should be.

  There had been some idle talk in the neighborhood about a lynching party, but nothing came of it. That’s the trouble, one of the troubles, with this neighborhood of ours—they’ll talk an arm off you, but never do a thing.

  As yet no one could see an end to all the Belsen racket. It had taken him better than a year to work up the percussion section and that was bad enough. But now he’d start
ed on the strings and that was even worse.

  Helen sat up in bed beside me and put her hands up to her ears, but she couldn’t keep from hearing. Belsen had it turned up loud, to get, as he would tell you, the feel of it.

  By this time, I figured, he probably had the entire neighborhood awake.

  “Well, that’s it,” I said, starting to get up.

  “You want me to get breakfast?”

  “You might as well,” I said. “No one’s going to get any sleep with that thing turned on.”

  While she started breakfast, I headed for the garden back of the garage to see how the dahlias might be faring. I don’t mind telling you I was delighted with those dahlias. It was nearly fair time and there were some of them that would be at bloom perfection just in time for showing.

  I started for the garden, but I never got there. That’s the way it is in this neighborhood. A man will start to do something and never get it done because someone always catches him and wants to talk awhile.

  This time it was Dobby. Dobby is Dr. Darby Wells, a venerable old codger with white chin whiskers, and he lives next door. We all call him Dobby and he doesn’t mind a bit, for in a way it’s a badge of tribute to the man. At one time Dobby had been an entomologist of some repute at the university and it had been his students who had hung the name on him. It was no corruption of his regular name, but stemmed rather from his one-time interest in mud-dauber wasps.

  But now Dobby was retired, with nothing in the world to do except hold long and aimless conversations with anyone he could manage to nail down.

  As soon as I caught sight of him, I knew that I was sunk.

  “I think it’s admirable,” said Dobby, leaning on his fence and launching into full-length discussion as soon as I was in voice distance, “for a man to have a hobby. But I submit it’s inconsiderate of him to practice it so noisily at the crack of dawn.”

  “You mean that,” I said, making a thumb at the Belsen house, from which the screeching and the caterwauling still issued in full force.

  “Exactly,” said Dobby, combing his white chin whiskers with an air of grave deliberation. “Now, mind me, not for a moment would I refuse the man the utmost admiration …”

  “Admiration?” I demanded. There are occasions when I have a hard time understanding Dobby. Not so much because of the pontifical way in which he talks as because of the way he thinks.

  “Precisely,” Dobby told me. “Not for his machines, although they are electronic marvels, but for the way in which he engineers his tapes. The machine that he rigged up to turn out those tapes is a most versatile contraption. Sometimes it seems to be almost human.”

  “When I was a boy,” I said, “we had player pianos and the pianos ran on tapes.”

  “Yes, Randall, you are right,” admitted Dobby, “the principle was there, but the execution—think of the execution! All those old pianos had to do was tinkle merrily along, but Belsen has worked into his tapes the most delicate nuances …”

  “I must have missed them nuances,” I told him, without any charity at all. “All I’ve heard is racket.”

  We talked about Belsen and his orchestra until Helen called me in for breakfast.

  I had no sooner sat down than she dragged out her grievance list.

  “Randall,” she said, with determination, “the kitchen is positively crawling with grease ants again. They’re so small you can hardly see them and all at once they’re into everything.”

  “I thought you got rid of them,” I said.

  “I did. I tracked them to their nest and poured boiling water into it. But this time it’s up to you.”

  “Sure thing,” I promised. “I’ll do it right away.”

  “That’s what you said last time.”

  “I was ready to,” I told her, “but you beat me to it.”

  “And that isn’t all,” she said. “There are those wasps up in the attic louvres. They stung the little Montgomery girl the other day.”

  She was getting ready to say more, but just then Billy, our eleven-year-old, came stumbling down the stairs.

  “Look, Dad,” he cried excitedly, holding out a small-size plastic box. “I have one here I’ve never seen before.”

  I didn’t have to ask one what. I knew it was another insect. Last year it had been stamp collecting and this year it was insects—and that’s another thing about having an idle entomologist for a next door neighbor.

  I took the box without enthusiasm.

  “A lady bug,” I said.

  “No, it’s not,” said Billy. “It’s too big to be a lady bug. And the spots are different and the color is all wrong. This one is gold and a ladybug is orange.”

  “Well, look it up,” I said, impatiently. The kid will do anything to keep away from reading.

  “I did,” said Billy. “I looked all through the book and I couldn’t find it.”

  “Oh, for goodness sakes,” snapped Helen, “sit down and eat your breakfast. It’s bad enough to be overrun with ants and wasps without you spending all your time catching other bugs.”

  “But, Mom, it’s educational,” protested Billy. “That is what Dr. Wells says. He says there are 700,000 known families of insects …”

  “Where did you find it, son?” I asked, a bit ashamed of how we both were hopping onto him.

  “Right in my room,” said Billy.

  “In the house!” screamed Helen. “Ants aren’t bad enough …”

  “Soon as I get through eating, I’ll show it to Dr. Wells.”

  “Now, don’t you pester Dobby.”

  “I hope he pesters him a lot,” Helen said, tight-lipped. “It was Dobby who got him started on this foolishness.”

  I handed back the box and Billy put it down beside his plate and started in on breakfast.

  “Randall,” Helen said, taking up her third point of complaint. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with Nora.”

  Nora was the cleaning woman. She came in twice a week.

  “What did she do this time?”

  “It’s what she doesn’t do. She simply will not dust. She just waves a cloth around and that is all there’s to it. She won’t move a lamp or vase.”

  “Well, get someone else,” I said.

  “Randall, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Cleaning women are hard to find and you can’t depend on them. I was talking to Amy …”

  I listened and made the appropriate replies. I’ve heard it all before.

  As soon as I finished breakfast, I took off for the office. It was too early to see any prospects, but I had some policies to write up and some other work to do and I could use the extra hour or two.

  Helen phoned me shortly after noon and she was exasperated.

  “Randall,” she said, without preamble, “someone has dumped a boulder in the middle of the garden.”

  “Come again,” I said.

  “You know. A big rock. It squashed down all the dahlias.”

  “Dahlias!” I yipped.

  “And the funny thing about it is there aren’t any tracks. It would take a truck to move a rock that big and …”

  “Now, let’s take this easy. How big, exactly, is this boulder?”

  “It’s almost as tall as I am.”

  “It’s impossible!” I stormed. Then I tried to calm myself. “It’s a joke,” I said. “Someone played a joke.”

  I searched my mind for someone who might have done it and I couldn’t think of anyone who’d go to all the trouble involved in that sort of joke. There was George Montgomery, but George was a sobersides. And Belsen, but Belsen was too wrapped up in music to be playing any jokes. And Dobby—it was inconceivable he’d ever play a joke.

  “Some joke!” said Helen.

  Nobody in the neighborhood, I told myself, would have done a trick like that. Everyone knew I was counting on those dahlias to win me some more ribbons.

  “I’ll knock off early,” I told her, “and see what can be done about it.”

  Although I kn
ew there was precious little that could be done about it—just haul the thing away.

  “I’ll be over at Amy’s,” Helen said. “I’ll try to get home early.”

  I went out and saw another prospect, but I didn’t do too well. All the time I was thinking of the dahlias.

  I knocked off work in the middle of the afternoon and bought a spray-can of insecticide at a drugstore. The label claimed it was effective against ants, roaches, wasps, aphids and a host of other pests.

  At home, Billy was sitting on the steps.

  “Hello, son. Nothing much to do?”

  “Me and Tommy Henderson played soldier for a while, but we got tired of it.”

  I put the insecticide on the kitchen table, then headed for the garden. Billy trailed listlessly behind me.

  The boulder was there, squarely in the middle of the dahlia patch, and every bit as big as Helen said it was. It was a funny looking thing, not just a big slab-sided piece of rock, but a freckled looking job. It was a washed-out red and almost a perfect globe.

  I walked around it, assessing the damage. There were a few of the dahlias left, but the better ones were gone. There were no tracks, no indication of how the rock might have gotten where it was. It lay a good thirty feet from the alleyway and someone might have used a crane to hoist it off a truck bed, but that seemed most unlikely, for a heavy nest of utility wires ran along the alley.

  I went up to the boulder and had a good, close look at it. The whole face of it was pitted with small, irregular holes, none of them much deeper than a half an inch, and there were occasional smooth patches, with a darker lustre showing, as if some part of the original surface had been knocked off. The darker, smoother patches had the shine of highly polished wax, and I remembered something from very long ago—when a one-time pal of mine had been a momentary rock collector.

  I bent a little closer to one of the smooth, waxy surfaces and it seemed to me that I could see the hint of wavy lines running in the stone.