The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack

by Isaac Asimov

  Another note for you, Lester. I have already indicated that my ring is to be yours. I don’t want to tell you what I have discovered of its properties, for fear it might not give you the same pleasure and interest that it has given me. Of course, like any spot of shifting light and color, it is an aid to self-hypnosis. It is much, much more than that, but—find out for yourself, at some time when you are a little protected from everyday distractions. I know it can’t harm you, because I know its source.

  By the way, I wish you would convey to my publishers my request that they either discontinue manufacture of my Introductory Biology or else bring out a new edition revised in accordance with some notes you will find in the top left drawer of my library desk. I glanced through that book after my angel assured me that I wrote it, and I was amazed. However, I’m afraid my notes are messy (I call them mine by a poetic license), and they may be too advanced for the present day—though the revision is mainly a matter of leaving out certain generalities that ain’t so. Use your best judgment: it’s a very minor textbook, and the thing isn’t too important. A last wriggle of my personal vanity.

  * * * *

  July 27

  I have seen a two-moon night.

  It was given to me by that other grownup, at the end of a wonderful visit, when he and six of those nine other children came to see me. It was last night, I think—yes, must have been. First there was a murmur of wings above the house; my angel flew in, laughing; then they were here, all about me. Full of gaiety and colored fire, showing off in every way they knew would please me. Each one had something graceful and friendly to say to me. One brought me a moving image of the St. Lawrence seen at morning from half a mile up—clouds—eagles; now, how could he know that would delight me so much? And each one thanked me for what I had done.

  But it’s been so easy!

  And at the end the old one—his skin is quite brown, and his down is white and gray—gave the remembered image of a two-moon night. He saw it some sixty years ago.

  I have not even considered making an effort to describe it—my fingers will not hold this pencil much longer tonight. Oh—soaring buildings of white and amber, untroubled countryside, silver on curling rivers, a glimpse of open sea; a moon rising in clarity, another setting in a wreath of cloud, between them a wide wandering of unfamiliar stars; and here and there the angels, worthy after fifty million years to live in such a night. No, I cannot describe anything like that. But, you human kindred of mine, I can do something better. I can tell you that this two-moon night, glorious as it was, was no more beautiful than a night under a single moon on this ancient and familiar Earth might be—if you will imagine that the rubbish of human evil has been cleared away and that our own people have started at last on the greatest of all explorations.

  * * * *

  July 29

  Nothing now remains to give away but the memory of the time that has passed since the angel came. I am to rest as long as I wish, write whatever I want to. Then I shall get myself over to the bed and lie down as if for sleep. She tells me that I can keep my eyes open: she will close them for me when I no longer see her.

  I remain convinced that our human case is hopeful. I feel sure that in only a few thousand years we may be able to perform some of the simpler preparatory tasks, such as casting out evil and loving our neighbors. And if that should prove to be so, who can doubt that in another fifty million years we might well be only a little lower than the angels?

  * * * *

  LIBRARIAN’S NOTE: As is generally known, the original of the Bannerman Journal is said to have been in the possession of Dr. Lester Morse at the time of the latter’s disappearance in 1964, and that disappearance has remained an unsolved mystery to the present day. McCarran is known to have visited Captain Garrison Blaine in October, 1951, but no record remains of that visit. Captain Blaine appears to have been a bachelor who lived alone. He was killed in line of duty, December, 1951. McCarran is believed not to have written about nor discussed the Bannerman affair with anyone else. It is almost certain that he himself removed the extract and related papers from the files (unofficially, it would seem!) when he severed his connection with the FBI in 1957; at any rate, they were found among his effects after his assassination and were released to the public, considerably later, by Mrs. McCarran.

  The following memorandum was originally attached to the extract from the Bannerman Journal; it carries the McCarran initialing.

  * * * *

  Aug. 11, 1951

  The original letter of complaint written by Stephen Clyde, M.D., and mentioned in the accompanying letter of Captain Blaine, has unfortunately been lost, owing perhaps to an error in filing.

  Personnel presumed responsible have been instructed not to allow such error to be repeated except if, as, and/or when necessary.

  C. McC.

  * * * *

  On the margin of this memorandum there was a penciled notation, later erased. The imprint is sufficient to show the unmistakable McCarran script. The notation read in part as follows: Far be it from a McC. to lose his job except if, as, and/or—the rest is undecipherable, except for a terminal word which is regrettably unparliamentary.

  * * * *

  STATEMENT BY LESTER MORSE, M.D., DATED AUGUST 9, 1951

  On the afternoon of July 30, 1951, acting on what I am obliged to describe as an unexpected impulse, I drove out to the country for the purpose of calling on my friend Dr. David Bannerman. I had not seen him nor had word from him since the evening of June 12 of this year.

  I entered, as was my custom, without knocking. After calling to him and hearing no response, I went upstairs to his bedroom and found him dead. From superficial indications I judged that death must have taken place during the previous night. He was lying on his bed on his left side, comfortably disposed as if for sleep but fully dressed, with a fresh shirt and clean summer slacks. His eyes and mouth were closed, and there was no trace of the disorder to be expected at even the easiest natural death. Because of these signs I assumed, as soon as I had determined the absence of breath and heartbeat and noted the chill of the body, that some neighbor must have found him already, performed these simple rites out of respect for him, and probably notified a local physician or other responsible person. I therefore waited (Dr. Bannerman had no telephone), expecting that someone would soon call.

  Dr. Bannerman’s journal was on a table near his bed, open to that page on which he has written a codicil to his will. I read that part. Later, while I was waiting for others to come, I read the remainder of the journal, as I believe he wished me to do. The ring he mentions was on the fifth finger of his left hand, and it is now in my possession. When writing that codicil Dr. Bannerman must have overlooked or forgotten the fact that in his formal will, written some months earlier, he had appointed me executor. If there are legal technicalities involved, I shall be pleased to cooperate fully with the proper authorities.

  The ring, however, will remain in my keeping, since that was Dr. Bannerman’s expressed wish, and I am not prepared to offer it for examination or discussion under any circumstances.

  The notes for a revision of one of his textbooks were in his desk, as noted in the journal. They are by no means “messy”; nor are they particularly revolutionary except insofar as he wished to rephrase, as theory or hypothesis, certain statements that I would have supposed could be regarded as axiomatic. This is not my field, and I am not competent to judge. I shall take up the matter with his publishers at the earliest opportunity.5

  So far as I can determine, and bearing in mind the results of the autopsy performed by Stephen Clyde, M.D., the death of Dr. David Bannerman was not inconsistent with the presence of an embolism of some type not distinguishable post mortem. I have so stated on the certificate of death. It would seem to be not in the public interest to leave such questions in doubt. I am compelled to add one other item of medical opinion for what it may be worth:

  I am not a psychiatrist, but, owing to the demands of general pra
ctice, I have found it advisable to keep as up to date as possible with current findings and opinion in this branch of medicine. Dr. Bannerman possessed, in my opinion, emotional and intellectual stability to a better degree than anyone else of comparable intelligence in the entire field of my acquaintance, personal and professional. If it is suggested that he was suffering from a hallucinatory psychosis, I can only say that it must have been of a type quite outside my experience and not described, so far as I know, anywhere in the literature of psychopathology.

  Dr. Bannerman’s house, on the afternoon of July 30, was in good order. Near the open, unscreened window of his bedroom there was a coverless shoe box with a folded silk scarf in the bottom. I found no pillow such as Dr. Bannerman describes in the journal, but observed that a small section had been cut from the scarf. In this box, and near it, there was a peculiar fragrance, faint, aromatic, and very sweet, such as I have never encountered before and therefore cannot describe.

  It may or may not have any bearing on the case that, while I remained in his house that afternoon, I felt no sense of grief or personal loss, although Dr. Bannerman had been a loved and honored friend for a number of years. I merely had, and have, a conviction that after the completion of some very great undertaking, he had found peace.

  1 Dr. Bannerman’s dog, mentioned often earlier in the journal. A nine-year-old English setter. According to an entry of May 15, 1951, she was then beginning to go blind. —BLAINE.

  2 At this point Dr. Bannerman’s handwriting alters curiously. From here on he used a soft pencil instead of a pen, and the script shows signs of haste. In spite of this, however, it is actually much clearer, steadier, and easier to read than the earlier entries in his normal hand. —BLAINE.

  3 In spite of superficial changes in the handwriting, this signature has been certified genuine by an expert graphologist. —BLAINE.

  4 Dr. Bannerman’s mother died in 1918 of influenza. His brother (three years older, not younger) died of pneumonia, 1906. —BLAINE.

  5 LIBRARIAN’S NOTE: But it seems he never did. No new edition of Introductory Biology was ever brought out, and the textbook has been out of print since 1952.

  YOUTH, by Isaac Asimov

  CHAPTER I

  There was a spatter of pebbles against the window and the youngster stirred in his sleep. Another, and he was awake.

  He sat up stiffly in bed. Seconds passed while he interpreted his strange surroundings. He wasn’t in his own home, of course. This was out in the country. It was colder than it should be and there was green at the window.

  “Slim!”

  The call was a hoarse, urgent whisper, and the youngster bounded to the open window.

  Slim wasn’t his real name, but the new friend he had met the day before had needed only one look at his slight figure to say, “You’re Slim.” He added, “I’m Red.”

  Red wasn’t his real name, either, but its appropriateness was obvious. They were friends instantly with the quick unquestioning friendship of young ones not yet quite in adolescence, before even the first stains of adulthood began to make their appearance.

  Slim cried, “Hi, Red!” and waved cheerfully, still blinking the sleep out of himself.

  Red kept to his croaking whisper, “Quiet! You want to wake somebody?”

  Slim noticed all at once that the sun scarcely topped the low hills in the east, that the shadows were long and soft, and that the grass was wet.

  Slim said, more softly, “What’s the matter?”

  Red only waved for him to come out.

  Slim dressed quickly, gladly confining his morning wash to the momentary sprinkle of a little lukewarm water. He let the air dry the exposed portions of his body as he ran out, while bare skin grew wet against the dewy grass.

  Red said, “You’ve got to be quiet. If Mom wakes up or Dad or your Dad or even any of the hands then it’ll be ‘Come on in or you’ll catch your death of cold.’”

  He mimicked voice and tone faithfully, so that Slim laughed and thought that there had never been so funny a fellow as Red.

  Slim said, eagerly, “Do you come out here every day like this, Red? Real early? It’s like the whole world is just yours, isn’t it, Red? No one else around and all like that.” He felt proud at being allowed entrance into this private world.

  Red stared at him sidelong. He said carelessly, “I’ve been up for hours. Didn’t you hear it last night?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Thunder.”

  “Was there a thunderstorm?” Slim never slept through a thunderstorm.

  “I guess not. But there was thunder. I heard it, and then I went to the window and it wasn’t raining. It was all stars and the sky was just getting sort of almost gray. You know what I mean?”

  Slim had never seen it so, but he nodded.

  “So I just thought I’d go out,” said Red.

  They walked along the grassy side of the concrete road that split the panorama right down the middle all the way down to where it vanished among the hills. It was so old that Red’s father couldn’t tell Red when it had been built. It didn’t have a crack or a rough spot in it.

  Red said, “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Sure, Red. What kind of a secret?”

  “Just a secret. Maybe I’ll tell you and maybe I won’t. I don’t know yet.” Red broke a long, supple stem from a fern they passed, methodically stripped it of its leaflets and swung what was left whip-fashion. For a moment, he was on a wild charger, which reared and champed under his iron control. Then he got tired, tossed the whip aside and stowed the charger away in a corner of his imagination for future use.

  He said, “There’ll be a circus around.”

  Slim said, “That’s no secret. I knew that. My Dad told me even before we came here—”

  “That’s not the secret. Fine secret! Ever see a circus?”

  “Oh, sure. You bet.”

  “Like it?”

  “Say, there isn’t anything I like better.”

  Red was watching out of the corner of his eyes again. “Ever think you would like to be with a circus? I mean, for good?”

  Slim considered, “I guess not. I think I’ll be an astronomer like my Dad. I think he wants me to be.”

  “Huh! Astronomer!” said Red.

  Slim felt the doors of the new, private world closing on him and astronomy became a thing of dead stars and black, empty space.

  He said, placatingly, “A circus would be more fun.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “No, I’m not. I mean it.”

  Red grew argumentative. “Suppose you had a chance to join the circus right now. What would you do?”

  “I—I—”

  “See!” Red affected scornful laughter.

  Slim was stung. “I’d join up.”

  “Go on.”

  “Try me.”

  Red whirled at him, strange and intense. “You meant that? You want to go in with me?”

  “What do you mean?” Slim stepped back a bit, surprised by the unexpected challenge.

  “I got something that can get us into the circus. Maybe someday we can even have a circus of our own. We could be the biggest circus-fellows in the world. That’s if you want to go in with me. Otherwise—Well, I guess I can do it on my own. I just thought: Let’s give good old Slim a chance.”

  The world was strange and glamorous, and Slim said, “Sure thing, Red. I’m in! What is it, huh, Red? Tell me what it is.”

  “Figure it out. What’s the most important thing in circuses?”

  Slim thought desperately. He wanted to give the right answer. Finally, he said, “Acrobats?”

  “Holy Smokes! I wouldn’t go five steps to look at acrobats.”

  “I don’t know then.”

  “Animals, that’s what! What’s the best side-show? Where are the biggest crowds? Even in the main rings the best acts are animal acts.” There was no doubt in Red’s voice.

  “Do you think so?”

  “
Everyone thinks so. You ask anyone. Anyway, I found animals this morning. Two of them.”

  “And you’ve got them?”

  “Sure. That’s the secret. Are you telling?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Okay. I’ve got them in the barn. Do you want to see them?”

  They were almost at the barn; its huge open door black. Too black. They had been heading there all the time. Slim stopped in his tracks.

  He tried to make his words casual. “Are they big?”

  “Would I fool with them if they were big? They can’t hurt you. They’re only about so long. I’ve got them in a cage.”

  They were in the barn now and Slim saw the large cage suspended from a hook in the roof. It was covered with stiff canvas.

  Red said, “We used to have some bird there or something. Anyway, they can’t get away from there. Come on, let’s go up to the loft.”

  They clambered up the wooden stairs and Red hooked the cage toward them.

  Slim pointed and said, “There’s sort of a hole in the canvas.”

  Red frowned. “How’d that get there?” He lifted the canvas, looked in, and said, with relief, “They’re still there.”

  “The canvas appeared to be burned,” worried Slim.

  “You want to look, or don’t you?”

  Slim nodded slowly. He wasn’t sure he wanted to, after all. They might be—

  But the canvas had been jerked off and there they were. Two of them, the way Red said. They were small, and sort of disgusting-looking. The animals moved quickly as the canvas lifted and were on the side toward the youngsters. Red poked a cautious finger at them.

  “Watch out,” said Slim, in agony.

  “They don’t hurt you,” said Red. “Ever see anything like them?”

  “No.”

  “Can’t you see how a circus would jump at a chance to have these?”

  “Maybe they’re too small for a circus.”

  Red looked annoyed. He let go the cage which swung back and forth pendulum-fashion. “You’re just trying to back out, aren’t you?”