The Year's Best Science Fiction 11 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  “Better than that, professor!” he called. “Watch!”

  Barone raised a hand and pointed at me. My lectern rose silently and hovered above my head. I heard a gasp. I turned in time to see Barone gesturing at a shapely coed. She was trying to cover her nakedness with her notebook.

  “Mr. Barone!” I shouted. “That will be enough!”

  “Not yet, professor!”

  He waved and clutched as if catching a butterfly. When he opened his hands, a swarm of bats flew out, careening wildly about the lecture hall. Coeds screamed and dove under their chairs.

  Barone had to be stopped. I took a deep breath and shouted, “Stop!”

  The room hushed suddenly; everyone froze. Only the whispering flight of the bats and the naked girl’s whimpering broke the heavy silence. All eyes were on me, even Barone’s. This had to be good.

  I pointed at the lectern and brought it down gently. A quick gesture returned the girl’s clothes.

  I clasped my hands together and concentrated. I opened them and released the falcons. They swept the air clean of bats and returned to my hand, obediently vanishing.

  The class was a single open mouth. It was time to break the tension.

  “Are there any other questions?”

  The students shook their heads numbly. Only Barone remained motionless.

  “Very well. Read page three through seventeen for next time. Do all problems on page seventeen. That will be all for today.”

  The class filed out quietly. Barone, the last to leave, hesitated by the rear doors of the lecture hall. He turned and looked back. We studied each other for several seconds. Then, as if making a decision, he nodded grimly. He flashed me a smile and walked out humming.

  I let out my breath and gathered my notes. As I left the lecture hall, I glanced at my watch. 11:30.

  Maybe I can catch the 1:15 bus.

  <>

  * * * *

  ESP stories, which had (comparatively) disappeared from the magazines for two or three years—perhaps in reaction against the played-out “psionics,” or mechanized-ESP, fad of the preceding years—seem to be edging back in again. One of the most promising of 1965’s first novels was Phyllis Gotlieb’s Sunburst (Gold Medal), a thoughtful and effective book about a group of mutation-affected children in a midwestern town. And a bright new first story in If, “Simon Says,” by Lawrence S. Todd, is pure—if funny— psionics.

  But most of the new stories are a bit different: more exploratory than assertive, more concerned with the familiar individual borderline possibilities than with the superman problems implicit in the sudden emergence of clearly delineated “powers,” they tend to avoid the tags (ESP, psi, telepathy, telekinesis, etc.) as well as the specific patterns of perception defined by the old labels. John Phillifent’s “Finnegan’s Knack” (Analog) is about a “hunchy” man. Hal Moore’s extraordinary first story, “Sea Bright” (to be included in the F&SF “Best”), contains a child who might be a sister to Alistair Bevan’s “Susan” (coming up next), from the British magazine Science fantasy.

  Last year I reported here that Ted Cornell, longtime editor of New Worlds and Science Fantasy, had retired from the job. The magazines were taken over by the publishers of Compact Books (Roberts & Vinter, London); Michael Moorcock became editor of New Worlds, and Science Fantasy came under the editorship of a man every bit as romantic and rococo as his name: Kyril Bonfiglioli.

  Bon (or Bonfig, to his more energetic friends) lives in a Victorian mansion in Oxford, furnished largely with objets d’art en route from their former homes to his art gallery and curio shop. (When I was there, much of the furnishing consisted of—or was hidden by— endless glass cases of stuffed birds—large ones.) Proprietor of a flourishing Oxford bookshop, as well as the Bonfiglioli Art Gallery, Bon is a lecturer on medieval art for the University, an occasional writer, dilettante of all the arts, and way-back science-fiction fan. A Balliol College man with an incredible—but oddly pleasant— toff accent, he drives a Rolls, complete with automatic record player.

  In a year and a half of Bon’s erratic but intense guidance the magazine has changed its character to the point where it has now also changed its name: As of March, 1966, it became Impulse. In the less than two years between the changes, at least a dozen writers worthy of notice made their debut in its pages. Four of them are represented in this Annual; also notable in 1965 were Ernest Hill (particularly “Joik”), Roger Jones (“The Island,” a first story), Pamela Adams, Patricia Hocknell, Pippin Graham, and B. N. Ball.

  Keith Roberts, Bonfiglioli’s big discovery the previous year (and probably the most notable of all the very new British writers, so far), is now assistant editor of Impulse.

  All I know about Alistair Bevan is that he is a young man in his early thirties, and a “professional and commercial artist by trade”— which makes it seem somehow unfair that he should also have written four stories I considered at least briefly for inclusion here—one of which, “The Madman,” almost edged “Susan” out.

  * * * *

  SUSAN

  ALISTAIR BEVAN

  Summer and winter the chemmy lab had a smell all its own, a sharp half-sweet nuance like the scent of dust magnified many times. It came from the storage shelves to the left of the door where bottles of chemicals stood in rows on shelves of dark orange wood. Here were sulphates and thiosulphates, oxides and hydroxides, phosphorus coiled like Devil’s spaghetti in its thick oil, shining miniature slagheaps of iodine. There were other things too, a microscope on loan from Biology next door, a balance, its brasswork shining butter-yellow from its protective case; and a crystal of CuSO4, meridian-bright in its tall vat. The jar in which the crystal hung stood on top of the highest shelf and seemed in itself to be a focus of light; reflections burned deep inside it like elongated turquoise suns.

  Susan moved her unusual eyes from the shelves of chemicals, back to Mrs. Williams. The science mistress droned on softly, voice pitched just loud enough to carry to the farthest corners of the lab. From time to time chalk rasped on the board, the lines of symbols grew, white dust fell silently to thicken the drifts along the bottom of the varnished frame. This was the last period of the day and the lights were burning, pooling the floor with yellow, defining the edges of the benches with long waxy reflections, striking spindle-shaped gleams from the rims of beakers and flasks. Through the windows the sky was deepening toward four o’clock blue. Little noises came from the thirty girls; the rasp of a stool leg, the scuff of a foot, an occasional cough. The class was very slightly restless. Autumn term would finish in just under a fortnight; eight whole schooldays and a bit before breaking-up and all the concert-making, report-sealing, desk-tidying excitement still to come. Christmas was already in the air.

  The benches ran round three sides of the lab. To the right were more shelves with masses of glassware, testtubes, gas jars, troughs, great seldom-used retorts. In the corner behind was the fume cupboard, bulky and forbidding with its tall newel posts, in the middle of the room the dais and the long blackboards. Susan sat halfway down the center bench, elbows resting on the dark wood, knees together, steepled fingers just touching her top lip. She let her eyes wander again from the face of the mistress to the batswing burner on the bench in front of her. The little flame danced in a deepening web of shadow, its base invisible, its yellow horns quivering and ducking and never quite repeating the same shape twice. Its other less-used name was butterfly burner, and like the Olympic torch it was a symbol, lit at the beginning of a lesson, never extinguished until the end. The flame hovered at the tip of the slim pipe like the bleeder of a tiny furnace where ideas, perhaps, were burned.

  Mrs. Williams raised her chin slightly, questioningly. “And the composition of hydrochloric acid, someone? Quickly now.” Her glance traveled across the rows of faces, came inevitably to Susan. “Yes, Susan?” she asked.

  The girl lowered her hands to her lap gently and straightened her back. If a voice can be said to have color, Susan’s vo
ice was amber like her hair. “Thank you, Susan,” said Mrs. Williams. “Yes.” She paused, right elbow cupped in left hand, finger touching her throat. She was still for a moment, looking at nothing. Then the duster fizzed softly on the blackboard, the chalk scraped again. The lesson continued.

  Ten to four, and the class starting to make their notes. Susan wrote methodically, glancing up from time to time to verify a formula that was already in her mind. As she finished the last line the bell shrilled in the corridor.

  Nibs continued to scratch for another half minute; Mrs. Williams ran a very firm class. Then the mistress nodded briefly; exercise books scurried into satchels, buckles snapped shut, fountain pens were closed and rammed back into blazer pockets. There was the sort of straining silence that only comes between last bell and dismissal. Mrs. Williams eagled at the girls, compressed her lips. Then she turned and scanned the board with a vaguely resentful air, as if the end of classes had taken her completely by surprise. The corners of Susan’s mouth turned upward the smallest fraction. This was all part of the ritual.

  “Very well,” said Mrs. Williams. “Stand.”

  A thunder of obedience.

  “Stools.”

  The stools were thrust hastily beneath the benches.

  “Dismiss,” said Mrs. Williams. “Quietly now.”

  The class scuttered down the corridor. Susan watched them go. Through the open door came the hurrying, locker-slamming sound of the big school finishing for the day. The batswing flame vanished with a pop.

  Mrs. Williams looked up sharply. “Well, Susan? Haven’t we got a home?”

  Susan swung her crammed satchel onto her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Williams. I was dreaming.”

  Mrs. Williams smiled. The smile looked a little strained. “Time enough for that after next June.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Williams. Good night.”

  “Good night, Susan.”

  The mistress stood in the doorway, books under her arm, hand on the lightswitches. She watched Susan walk away. She stayed still after the tall girl had turned the corner and was out of sight. Then a scuffle of second-formers shot from somewhere, swirled momentarily round her skirt. Mrs. Williams jerked to automatic attention. “You. You, there. Yes, all of you. Come here . . .” She turned off the switches, and left the classroom to the twilight.

  Susan washed her hands and face in the end sink of the first-floor cloakroom, pulled a fresh loop of towel out of the dispenser. She dried herself slowly, burying her face in the towel to catch the clean, linen smell of it that went so naturally with the scents of carbolic soap and steam. Cat-cleanliness was part of Susan’s particular mystery. She had been the same as a first-former, although first-formers are notoriously a fusty, inky-pawed crew. On one occasion the school captain of the time, catching a small girl at the un-heard-of rite of washing during break, had taken her persistence for insolence and the whole idea for cheek and attempted to expel her. But a child who buzzes her displeasure like something electric, until your hand tingles and you have to let go, is something too far outside normal experience to cope with. And the child would keep staring with those lilac eyes, and the whole incident had unnerved the prefect so badly she never got around to reporting it. . . .

  Susan crossed to the mirror, flicked her corn-colored hair more or less into place, picked up her satchel again and headed for 5Q formroom, deserted now and dark. She turned on one light and packed her books for evening study, checking the subjects against the timetable pinned inside the desk lid. Then she walked back down the corridor toward the stairs.

  Miss Hutton sat at her desk in the lower Sixth formroom and watched the girl pass the half-open door. Then she called softly, knowing she would hear.

  “Susan?”

  Susan slowed automatically and walked back to the room.

  “Yes, Madam?”

  Miss Hutton moistened her lip very slightly with her tongue and her fingers twined in each other restlessly. For a moment she looked undecided. She said, “You are rather late, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, Miss Hutton. I was packing my books.”

  Miss Hutton frowned and looked away from Susan’s face and then back quickly as if she had come to a decision. She said, “What time does your bus leave?”

  “Four-twenty-five, Madam.”

  Miss Hutton set her jaw. “Susan, do you think you could spare me a few minutes?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Come in,” said Miss Hutton. “Close the door. Sit anywhere . . . Don’t worry, you are not in trouble.”

  Susan smiled.

  She took a seat in front of the mistress, eased her long legs a little awkwardly under the desk. She slid the satchel from her shoulder and waited with her eyes on Miss Hutton’s face. The school was very quiet now, nearly all the pupils gone.

  Miss Hutton rose, folded her arms, walked quickly across the dais to the window, looked down into the corner of the quad. She said, “Over the years I have come to have a special feeling about the sound the school makes as it empties. To me it seems that the building becomes a great conduit full of very fresh clear water; and the footsteps and the voices tinkle and splash along the corridors and down stairs until the last one is gone. Do you understand me, Susan?”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  Miss Hutton smiled awkwardly, fingered her unpainted lip. In class she was very much of a martinet, but there was little to suggest that now. She was a small, neat, elderly woman, just a little bowed, and tiredness had sagged down the corners of her mouth and made fine lines round her eyes. She walked back to her desk, stood leaning her hands on its polished surface and looking down at Susan. She said, “As you know, Susan, I am retiring at the end of the present term. I had hoped to continue to the end of the school year in July but various considerations, among them my health, prompted an earlier decision. So in a fortnight’s time I shall be gone. School life being what it is, one day tends to slip very rapidly into the next, more particularly as one becomes older.” She cleared her throat. “This may very possibly be the last opportunity I have to talk to you like this, privately. And I want very particularly to ask you a question.”

  “Yes, Madam.” There was no interrogation in Susan’s voice. She spoke calmly, as if she had always known this conversation would take place and had already guessed its outcome.

  Miss Hutton leaned forward a little. She inhaled slowly and held the breath, let it go again with a tiny sound. Her eyes were intent on the girl’s face. “Susan,” she said gently, “Who are you?”

  A pause. Then, slowly, “I’m sorry, Madam. I don’t know what you mean.”

  Miss Hutton shook her head slightly. She continued to watch Susan and the girl looked back calmly. They both remembered something that had happened just a week ago.

  A classroom. Pale sunlight slanting across the desks, the tall windows bright with winter sky. Form 5Q had been reading Romeo and Juliet. Miss Hutton had cast round for a Juliet and her eyes had stopped on Susan and she had asked her to speak the part. And when they had come to the impossible scene where Juliet imagines waking inside a tomb thirty prone-to-giggle fifth formers had been held by words that for the first time seemed to have a great singing meaning. In the quietness Miss Hutton had paced up between the desks and taken Susan’s neglected book and walked back to the front of the form. Susan carried on for half a dozen lines then slowed and stopped, and the enchantment was broken. “I’m sorry, Madam,” Susan said. “I can’t remember any more.”

  Miss Hutton looked down at the book in her hand and frowned. “Susan, do you have this play by heart?”

  “No, Madam. Only a few lines here and there. We did some of it in the lower school.”

  Someone whispered briefly and Miss Hutton silenced the offender with a look. She opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it and nodded briskly as if the subject was closed. Then she had returned the book to Susan, still open, and Susan looked at it as it lay on the desk and at the top of the page were the words “Persons Represente
d.”

  Miss Hutton laughed, not unmusically. She said, “You slipped up there, Susan. The best of us do occasionally.” She became intent again. “You do have that play by heart, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  “And everything else you ever read for me?”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  Miss Hutton nodded. “Yes, I know that. Everything, at one reading. But you’re clever, my dear. You veil your mind, as you veil those eyes of yours. ... I don’t know how you do it but that is what you do. . . . Why, Susan? Why? I ask you again, who are you? Or what . . .”

  Silence. Then Susan said evenly, “I have a very retentive mind, Miss Hutton.”

  The teacher turned away abruptly and seemed to stare at the blackboard. Then she sat down in her chair, rested her elbows on the desk, laid her chin on her laced fingers. She said slowly, “Susan, when I started to teach, many years ago, I had certain ideals. I do not think I had any illusions, I realized that for each little success there would be many, many frustrations and failures and disappointments, but I had ideals. I don’t think I altogether lost them. In fact I know I did not. Within my limitations I have been a good teacher. But now, right at the end, I cannot help a certain feeling of . . . unfulfilment. It seems that I am able to see nothing but the failures, all the children who showed promise who did not realize that promise for one reason or another. And of course for someone like myself who tries to teach from within the pupil rather than applying the arbitrary requirements of syllabus in a process of verbal tarring and feathering, there must be with each child the ultimate disappointment of seeing her, or him, pass beyond your reach into what is generally termed adult life. You are left to guess what sort of person your little half-made creature finally becomes.” She smiled slightly. “In my younger days, of course, things were not quite so hectic. Classes were smaller; we were not fighting the Battle of the Bulge as we do today. All you small people had more room to spread and grow; schools were not manufactories in quite the same sense as they are now. Or perhaps I am already assuming the rosy glasses of the elderly. For I am old.” The smile flicked off, then returned. “I know most of you think of me as already decrepit,” said Miss Hutton. The stock line would have raised a giggle from any fifth-former. This girl did not smile.