Sci Fiction Classics Volume 1

by Vol 1 (v1. 2) (epub)

  Silence. Fletcher waited, his back and sides cool and wet.

  "Not important, no. Did the Transsteel—eh? Well, fifteen thousand was good money in those days. What? … Election bets. Yes. They were a social phenomenon in that time. Just a fleck; I've the reference here … Browning will be next president. Be careful not to win every wager, though. You don't want to arouse too much interest. You'll be graded on how unobtrusively you adjust to the social pattern, remember."

  Pause.

  "Exhibitionism isn't out of place in that era. You might arrange to lose an election bet, just to be on the safe side—" Silence again, then laughter. "Fine. Take him up on it. You'll look interesting riding a horse into the Waldorf-Astoria's lobby. Go ahead; you should learn about the normal eccentricities of the time, and certainly that's mild enough—you should spend a few days in 1986 some time and study the Lemming Craze—mass suicides, like the dancing manias of the Middle Ages. Go ahead and make the bet."

  Fletcher moistened his lips. His head was beginning to ache again. When the voice spoke after another pause, the subject had apparently been changed.

  "Fine. Embryo Korys is thriving. He'll be viable in two months. You must meet his mother some time. She used to visit the incubator every week till she was assigned to Polar Weather study. But I really haven't time, Korys, I must look after Daki. Good luck, boy."

  Click.

  Fletcher went out to the kitchen, found a bottle of rye, and sucked thirstily. He leaned against the sink and ran his palm slowly along cool green tile. It was solid and familiar. That made it worse, somehow. In an earthquake you expect the unusual. But not when the ground is solid under foot.

  President Browning—!

  Fifteen grand profit on Transsteel—!

  Where was Korys—and when?

  When Fletcher got to the office, he was somewhat tight and he hadn't wanted to use the hangover cure. Alcohol made a buffer. He played with layouts, but achieved little. Time slipped by unnoticed. Eventually Cynthia Dale appeared, fitting on a small, foolish hat and looking surprised.

  "You're a hound for work, Jerry," she said. "Aren't you going home?"

  "I can't," Fletcher said. "I felked the sorkins."

  "Try mixing them with soda," Cynthia suggested.

  He put his hands flat on the desk and stared owlishly up at her. "There isn't any. I've a bottle in the drawer here … have a drink?"

  "Not straight."

  "Then marry me. We can go and visit Embryo Fletcher every Sunday."

  "You need something," Cynthia said, firmly removing Fletcher from his chair, locating a hat, and lugging him to the elevator. "You need something strong and violent. You can take your choice between a drink and a Turkish bath. If you choose the latter, you'll be deprived of my company."

  "You see," Fletcher said carefully, his mouth cold and stiff, "Dr. Sawtelle blew himself up. All his family, too. Quite dead. I've got the equation in my pocket. I am also a murderer."

  He elaborated on this subject over a heavy slug of rye. The bartender, an experienced man, had mixed the drink with a licorice stick, so presently Fletcher became more coherent. Cynthia swam out of her fuzzy haze and became her usual charming, cool-eyed self.

  "So I called the telephone company again today," Fletcher explained. "There's nothing wrong. Nothing they can find out, anyhow."

  "So it's a gag."

  "Dr. Sawtelle wouldn't agree, if he could be reassembled. Look." Fletcher lit a cigarette and used the match to destroy a scrap of paper. "There goes the equation. I'm afraid to keep it now. The Voice mentioned that it was dangerous without a control, but he didn't say what the control was."

  "He?"

  "Sure. A tiny man with a head as big as a watermelon. He lives in the future. I got it all figured out. He's a university professor and he sends his students back into time on field trips."

  "With a field telephone, I suppose."

  "No, an ordinary phone. They have to keep it quiet. They've a way of tapping the wires—It's logical, isn't it? A telephone call is strictly personal, on a one-party line. But the creebs shifted. Somehow the wires got crossed. I can listen in on part of the conversation now. The Voice's part. But I can't hear Korys."

  "You're drunk. I don't believe a word of it." But Cynthia's eyes were troubled.

  "Korys," Fletcher went on, "is living in a time when a guy named Browning is running for President. And he'll be elected, too. That's why the Transsteel business didn't work with me. Korys is in the future. I don't know when. 1960 or 1970 or maybe later. Do you know a politician named Browning?"

  "I know a poet named Browning," Cynthia said, "but he's in the past."

  "Yes. He painted duchesses—What should I do?"

  "Have your phone number changed."

  "It might—Look, Cynthia, I'm afraid to do anything and I'm afraid not to do anything. I've got a direct line on the future. It's never happened before. It's an opportunity it says here. I ought to be able to clean up a million bucks or write a book or something.

  "Patent that hangover cure of yours."

  "But its limited. I can't ask questions. I can just listen in on what the Voice says. I can't trace down Korys because he's in the future, too. If I were sober, I wouldn't be this logical; my skepticism would be too strong. But why shouldn't I believe in Korys and the Voice when I can see the wallpaper crawling up to the ceiling, right across there."

  "That's subjective," Cynthia pointed out.

  "But what should I do?"

  The girl played with her glass. "If I believed you—which I don't—I'd say the lines of logic point to certain possibilities. As a copy-writer I know the rules of dramatic inevitability. Perhaps the Voice will learn you're listening in, and animate the telephone so it crawls down your throat and strangles you."

  "Uh!" Fletcher said.

  "Or he may send Korys back to kill you—or Embryo Korys."

  "I haven't done anything."

  "Well," Cynthia said, "here's another angle. In 1960 the Voice telephones you, and your name is Korys."

  "I hate paradoxes," Fletcher said firmly. "This isn't a story. I wish it were. I'd know what to do then. But in life you just fumble around, you're not sure. I'm not equipped to listen in on phone calls from the future."

  Cynthia's eyes were glowing. "Or you may be Korys yourself—with amnesia! And the Voice is really talking to you, though you don't know it."

  "Be quiet. Stop that. There'll be another call tomorrow morning—"

  "Don't answer it."

  "Ha!" Fletcher said scornfully, and there was a small silence.

  "You see," he went on presently, "I figure we take the future for granted, in an abstract sort of way. We expect there'll be super-stuff, but we know it'll come gradually. When it impinges concretely, we don't want it."

  "Afraid?"

  "Thoroughly afraid," Fletcher agreed. "The temptation's too great. I might copy some equation, try it out, and turn into a blob of protoplasm. There are too many unknown factors. And I'm not going to get myself hurt."

  "So?"

  "I'm going to keep my nose clean, that's all. Fairy gold!" He grinned crookedly. "I know what it would turn to. But I've got the answer. I'm not going to take anything they offer. I'm not going to cheat. All I'll do is listen in. No harm in that."

  "They might mention your death."

  "I know I'm going to die sometime. I'm ready. Death and taxes aren't both certain; the existence of one precludes the existence of the other—pro tem. As long as I just listen—as long as I don't try to conquer the world or build death rays—I'm O.K."

  "It reminds me of the old story about the guy who took a short cut through a haunted forest on Hallowe'en," Cynthia said. "He was thinking that he'd always been on the level, and if devils could get him just because he was in the forest, there just wasn't any justice."

  "And?"

  "And then a voice behind him said, ‘there isn't,'" Cynthia said pleasantly. "That's all."

  "I run no risks," Fletc
her declared.

  "And I haven't believed a word you've been saying. But it's a new line, anyhow. Pay for the drinks and let's go somewhere and eat."

  Fletcher reached for his wallet.

  Quite safe. He hadn't copied any of the instructions or equations the Voice dictated to Korys. Somewhere, in the misty abyss of the future, the Voice lived in his unimaginable world, checking his temporal maps as men today check spatial charts. There were test-tube babies and a rather incredible university and a Polar Weather Station. And Daki had been rescued from the Inquisition, by means of something the Voice referred to casually as a yofleec. "Yofleec is ceelfoy spelled backwards," Fletcher reflected. "Animal, vegetable, or mineral? I don't care!"

  His interest became purely impersonal; he had forced it into those channels. It was a tremendous relief to know that he wouldn't be tempted to steal from the future, as the unhappy Dr. Sawtelle had tried to do. There had been some hesitation about the hangover cure; it seemed harmless enough, but Fletcher wasn't sure about its possible toxic effects on a man of his era. It might eventually ossify him. He destroyed the recipe and refused to remember the ingredients.

  Meanwhile, he followed the career of Korys with interest. These distorted glimpses into the future were fascinating. Remembering Cynthia's warning, he half expected the Voice to mention that a guy named Jerry Fletcher had been run down by a helicopter, but that never happened. The rules of inevitability didn't apply.

  Why should they? He wasn't interfering. He wasn't sticking his neck out. He was following paths of cold logic; a spectator at a play was seldom shot by one of the actors.

  John Wilkes Booth—

  This wasn't a play. It was a movie. The actors were removed by temporal distances. Nevertheless he never interrupted the Voice now, and was careful to lift and replace the receiver very gently.

  It went on for a month. Finally he learned that Korys was preparing to return to his original time-sector. The field work was almost completed. President Browning had been elected; the Dodgers had won the pennant; a lunar rocket base had been established. Fletcher wondered. 1960? 1970? Or later?

  Cynthia steadily refused to visit his apartment and listen to the Voice. She contended that it was just a line. "It's better than etchings," she admitted, "but it's a little too outré to be convincing." But Fletcher thought that Cynthia was less skeptical than she admitted.

  He didn't care. The affair would end soon, anyhow. His work at the office had not suffered; there was a raise and a promotion in sight, and his hypochondria had lapsed into a passive state. Occasionally he suspected his feeling of well-being and ate vitamin pills as a preventive measure, but not often.

  He hadn't even taken notes of the Voice's words. In a way, it was a taboo—the same principle as avoiding stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk, so it won't rain.

  "He should be leaving tomorrow," Fletcher told Cynthia one night at dinner.

  "Who?"

  "Korys, of course."

  "Good. Then you may stop talking about him. Unless you get a new bee in your bonnet. What do you expect next? A tame leprechaun?"

  Fletcher grinned. "I can't afford it."

  "They eat cream, don't they? I mean drink it."

  "Mine won't. He'll drink rye and like it."

  "I like this chicken cacciatore," Cynthia said, masticating. "If you promise to feed me this well all the time, I may reconsider my refusal to marry you."

  It was the most hopeful sign she had shown so far. Fletcher became immersed in daydreams. Later, on a roof garden, they paused between dances to stand at the parapet and look out over the great, glittering city. The immensity of the night was made larger by the lights below.

  "A rocket base on the Moon," Fletcher said softly.

  Cool winds brushed his cheek. He put his arm about Cynthia and drew her close. He was very glad, suddenly, that he had not stepped on the cracks in the sidewalk. He had taken no chances. The future—the unknown—was dangerous, because it was the unknown.

  And that peril could lie fearfully close. Here, now—two steps could carry him to the top of the parapet and over. Luckily men were conditioned against taking those two steps.

  "It's cold," he said. "Let's go in, Cynthia. We don't want pneumonia—especially now."

  The telephone rang. Fletcher had awakened with another headache this morning. Probably a hangover. He put down his cigarette in an ashtray and gently lifted the receiver. This might be the last call.

  The Voice said, "All ready, Korys?"

  Pause.

  "Half an hour, then. But what caused the delay?"

  Another, longer pause.

  "Oh, really? I must make a note of that. But neuroses were common in that time. There was a touch of it in Embryo Korys, you know, but it was ironed out. Incidentally, his mother is on furlough. You'll be able to meet her in a few hours—But about this man. He knew who you were?"

  Pause.

  "I don't see how he could have known. Or located you. If he was as incoherent as all that, he shouldn't have been outside a sanitorium. What was his name?"

  Pause.

  "Fletcher. Gerald Fletcher? I'll check, but I'm sure there's no record. He's not one of ours. Too bad. Had he escaped from a sanatorium or … Oh, I see. Well, he's in safe hands now, I suppose. Yes, a mental sanatorium they called it in those days, your research hasn't covered the medical field—such as it was! Curious that he should have known you. I can't understand—"

  Pause.

  "Called you by name? Not Korys? Really. How could he possibly have known? This is very interesting indeed. Just when did he first appear?"

  Pause.

  "Crowded—well, naturally. Riding a horse into the Waldorf-Astoria isn't done every day. But I told you there'd be no trouble; every paid off eccentric election bet in those days—Well, if he actually dragged you off the horse and called you by name—it's very curious. Obviously he was mad, but how he knew—No, it couldn't be ESP, could it? There's no actual evidence that the insane are more sensitive than—What did you find out about him?"

  Pause.

  "I see. Anxiety neurosis, of course, at the start. Something was bothering him—dread of the future, perhaps; that's common enough in such cases. The doctors said … oh! Then he had escaped from a sanatorium. That sort of thing was interesting—probably started as nothing but hypochondria—built on some recurrent ailment, headaches or—Anyhow, it could increase over a long period into a genuine psychosis. How old a man was he?"

  The humming void held only silence. And presently—

  "Um-m-m. Typical, I'd say, at that age. Nothing we can do now, though—it's a pity. The man's hopelessly insane. It would be interesting to know what it was that set him off on the wrong track originally. I wonder what a man of that time and that type would worry about enough to drive him off balance? Such things start from a basis of hypochondria often enough, as you've described it, but why was he so sure he was going to become insane? Naturally, if you're convinced you're becoming psychotic and brood over it for years—well! Still, we can discuss the case in more detail personally. Half an hour, then?"

  Pause.

  "Fine. I'm glad you didn't felk the sorkins, boy!" The Voice laughed jovially. There was a click.

  Fletcher watched his hand move forward and drop the receiver into its black cradle.

  He felt the walls close in.

  The End

  © 1945, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.: copyright renewed 1973 by Catherine Reggie. Originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, November 1945; reprinted by permission of the author's Estate and its agents, Don Congdon Ltd.

  Consider Her Ways

  John Wyndham

  There was nothing but myself.

  I hung in a timeless, spaceless, forceless void that was neither light, nor dark. I had entity, but no form; awareness, but no senses; mind, but no memory. I wondered, is this—this nothingness—my soul? And it seemed that I had wondered that always, and should go on wondering it forever
….

  But, somehow, timelessness ceased. I became aware that there was a force: that I was being moved, and that spacelessness had, therefore, ceased, too. There was nothing to show that I moved; I knew simply that I was being drawn. I felt happy because I knew there was something or someone to whom I wanted to be drawn. I had no other wish than to turn like a compass needle, and then fall through the void ….

  But I was disappointed. No smooth, swift fall followed. Instead, other forces fastened on me. I was pulled this way, and then that. I did not know how I knew it; there was no outside reference, no fixed point, no direction, even; yet I could feel that I was tugged hither and thither, as though against the resistance of some inner gyroscope. It was as if one force were in command of me for a time, only to weaken and lose me to a new force. Then I would seem to slide towards an unknown point, until I was arrested, and diverted upon another course. I wafted this way and that, with the sense of awareness continually growing firmer; and I wondered whether rival forces were fighting for me, good and evil, perhaps, or life and death.

  The sense of pulling back and forth became more definite until I was almost jerked from one course to another. Then abruptly, the feeling of struggle finished. I had a sense of travelling faster and faster still, plunging like a wandering meteorite that had been trapped at last ….

  "All right," said a voice. "Resuscitation was a little retarded, for some reason. Better make a note of that on her card. What's the number? Oh, only her fourth time. Yes, certainly make a note. It's all right. Here she comes!"

  It was a woman's voice speaking, with a slightly unfamiliar accent. The surface I was lying on shook under me. I opened my eyes, saw the ceiling moving along above me, and let them close. Presently, another voice, again with an unfamiliar intonation, spoke to me:

  "Drink this," she said.

  A hand lifted my head, and a cup was pressed against my lips. After I had drunk the stuff I lay back with my eyes closed again. I dozed for a little while, and came out of it feeling stronger. For some minutes I lay looking up at the ceiling and wondering vaguely where I was. I could not recall any ceiling that was painted like this pinkish shade of cream. Then, suddenly, while I was still gazing up at the ceiling, I was shocked, just as if something had hit my mind a sharp blow. I was frighteningly aware that it was not just the pinkish ceiling that was unfamiliar—everything was unfamiliar. Where there should have been memories there was just a great gap. I had no idea who I was, or where I was; I could recall nothing of how or why I came to be here …. In a rush of panic I tried to sit up, but a hand pressed me back, and presently held the cup to my lips again.