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

by Edited By Judith Merril

  Miss Hutton picked up an ebony ruler from the desk and turned it slowly, watching the reflections run along its smooth darkness. She said, “I have realized something about myself at last, Susan. I am a very selfish person.”

  Susan did not blink.

  The mistress laid the ruler down. She said, “In two weeks’ time, after our little concert and the customary speeches for end of term, there will be a presentation. I shall be given a reading lamp or a Life of Johnson, and I shall make a short parting address wishing you all luck in the years to come and hoping you have a Merry Christmas. There will be three cheers for Miss Hutton. I can hear them now, very penetrating and shrill with the school captain leading them. Then I shall leave.

  “I have bought a little cottage, not very far from here. It has a garden, not large and rather wild at the moment. I hope to spend quite a lot of time working on it. I shall dig, and plant, and after a year or so I shall have quite an attractive display of flowers. I shall come back to the school, of course, for Speech Days. For a little while there will be faces amongst you that I know. The little new people may notice me and ask, ‘Who is that?’ and somebody a little older and very scornful will say, “That’s Miss Hutton, who used to teach English.’ But that will pass, and afterwards I will be just another old lady for whom the monitors will have to find a seat. No one will remember.”

  Susan reached up and pushed a strand of hair back from her eyes.

  “I went to my cottage last weekend,” said Miss Hutton. “I stood in what will be the living room, and looked round the bareness, and planned where I should place this and that piece of furniture. And an odd thought came to me. It seemed that this little room, so still and cold, had been waiting for me for over sixty years. Do you understand how I felt?”

  Susan stirred slightly. She said, “Yes Miss Hutton, I do.”

  Miss Hutton nodded to herself vaguely. “Of course. Now, Susan, for a senior member of staff to seek counsel of a fifteen-year-old pupil is an act that I consider gross, and that I can only describe as an obscene privilege. But of course you are not a normal child. In fact, as we understand the term, you are not a child at all, are you?”

  Very quietly. “No, Madam.”

  A shadow seemed to touch the old woman’s face. A muscle twitched in her jaw. She said, “Not a child . . . and there is something at the back of your eyes that should make me afraid. I don’t know why it does not.”

  Susan said softly, “How can I help you, Miss Hutton?”

  The teacher made shapes in the air with her hands, as if symbols might be better than words to express what she wanted to say. “Susan, perhaps my need is very simple. I should have married. I should have liked children of my own; I could have watched them grow and ripen and marry perhaps, in their own time. But somehow I never got round to marriage. There was always too much to do at school. In a sense, although this will sound very stupid to you, you were all my children. And now you have gone into time, and I am left with my flowers and my little silent room. As I told you, I am selfish. These things should be enough. These and the knowledge that I did my best. But they are not.”

  Susan’s eyes were lowered modestly. Her wrist was touching the wood of the desk; she wore a slim watch, and the desk top was acting as a sounding board for the tiny thing so that its ticking seemed to ring in the room.

  “Susan,” said Miss Hutton, and her voice whispered and creaked, “I remember you when you came to this school, a little smidgin of a thing, all plaits and eyes. Now you are taller than I. I’ve watched you grow, over the years, and I know, I know, that you have more understanding than I, and more compassion than any of us ... I was tempted to say, than any of us poor humans. And yet by our standards you are a half-grown child.” She shook her head again. “And like any child you are a die, a matrix. But the shape you will stamp out, when you are grown, is past my imagining.”

  The girl was silent. Her quietness had a penetrating quality; the gray walls of the rooms, the rows of empty desks seemed in themselves to be listening and waiting.

  “I think,” said the mistress, “that what I am asking you to do is to take the place of all my other vanished children. Be my child, Susan. Tell me what you intend to do with yourself. Will you be a doctor, a dancer? An artist perhaps, a scientist? Tell me and I shall be able to follow you, in my mind at least. Perhaps I might even hear of you or see you again one day. By doing this, I think you would make up for all the rest.”

  Silence lengthened; the ticking of the watch became louder until it was the noise of a little frenzied machine clacking off irretrievable seconds. Then Susan raised her head. “I’m sorry,” she said simply. “I don’t know what I shall be. So I can’t tell anyone, Miss Hutton. Not even you.”

  Miss Hutton stared at the desk and her hands clenched until the knuckles showed white with strain. The sound of the watch clattered in her mind and the little cottage room seemed suddenly to grow out of darkness, chilling her as if its very walls harbored an unearthly cold. Miss Hutton shuddered and gasped; then something seemed almost to shoulder past her into that room, something young and golden and intensely alive, something that brushed away fears and ghosts and oldness and snapped open windows to let in sunlight and warmth. Miss Hutton laughed uncertainly, seeing the little room before her with the vividness of hallucination. There was no darkness now; its windows were open and through them she could see June flowers, a brightness of grass, cumulus ships sailing the intense sky. This was a place to which she could come in dignity, and in peace. She could rest here, and she would not be alone ...

  Miss Hutton looked up and blinked. Susan was leaning over her and it seemed to the mistress that even while she watched a light was dying away from the girl’s eyes. She stared fascinated while a lilac brightness snapped and glittered and ebbed; then Susan was only a gentle-faced blond girl in a dark blue school uniform and blazer. On her shoulder, a satchel of books.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Hutton,” said Susan. “I must catch my bus now.”

  Miss Hutton blinked again and realized the fear was gone, replaced by an unassailable feeling of lightness, as if a question had indeed been asked and answered but not with words. She took a breath and when she spoke her voice was quite different; it had regained its old briskness. “Yes,” she said. “On you go. I’m glad we had our little chat. And Susan . . .”

  “Madam?”

  “Thank you,” said Miss Hutton.

  Susan watched her a moment longer. Then she did an impossible thing. She reached forward and gripped the old woman’s shoulder briefly with one hand.

  Miss Hutton sat at the desk for a full minute after Susan had gone. Then her hand moved up to the sleeve of her cardigan and touched it and it seemed a warmth came from the place and suffused through her body.

  Susan paused in the locker rooms to retie her house sash; then she took her coat from the peg and shrugged herself into it. She tightened the belt, smoothed the collar, ran her finger round inside it to free her hair. She flicked her head, hefted the satchel and walked out to the bus queue as the vehicle ground to a halt outside the school gates. She boarded it and sat on her own, leaning back on the seat with her eyes closed. The chugging of the engine, the noise from the load of children, sounded faintly. She felt tired, as if for the moment she was drained of all energy. A Grammar School fourth-former ogled at her and she grinned without opening her eyes; another, greatly daring, tweaked the end of her sash but she did not react. Her ears told her of the vehicle’s progress; here the driver changed down for a corner, here he accelerated on a slope. She listened to the town being left behind. The bus halted four times and juddered away again. When it reached Susan’s stop she climbed down and stood and watched the tail lights move round a bend of the road and out of sight. The engine sound faded away; a little wind came from somewhere, chilling with a promise of snow and ice. Susan started to walk.

  A hundred yards or so along the main road she turned off into a lane. The estate where she lived was new and as
yet there were no streetlights. In front and far off she could see the yellow rectangles of house windows and porches. She entered the darkest part of the road, moving slowly beneath the bare branches of trees.

  Beneath the hedge, inside Harold Sanderson, a red angel and a white fought for mastery. Harold panted; sweat started out on his face and slid down his cheeks, his hands gripped convulsively, the fingers crumbling twigs and earth. And the red angel conquered, and waved its sword and shouted an awful truth, and Harold growled and slid forward, small now only in stature. His fingers were crooked, wanting to squeeze and twist.

  The tall girl walked unconcernedly, scuffing dead leaves with her shoes. Out on the main road headlights flashed; a beam of light flicked her hair for a second and the hair was yellow and soft. Harold shuddered and began to make a moaning noise like an animal. Another five steps, four, three, two, one ... He sprang, reaching with his claws.

  The satchel, loaded solid with books, caught him squarely under the jaw. He fell back and another blow seemed to explode across his ear, sending him sprawling. He saw a great flash of light and when it was gone the angel had vanished. He rolled over, feeling wet earth beneath him, and his hands came up to protect his face. “No,” muttered Harold. “No more . . .”

  Susan bent over him, close enough to see the alien thing that sprawled in his brain like a cancer. Her eyes shone and she wrenched at the thing with disgust; unwanted neural links swelled and popped like worms. There is blood on your hands, raged Susan silently. Why didn’t you come to me before ...

  Harold sat up dazedly, unable to remember. “Sorry,” he wheezed. “Must have fallen . . . sorry if I gave you a turn.” He looked up blinking in the dark, only able to see her silhouette. His face was not quite the same. In the center of his mind now was a little vacancy, harmless as a sunny meadow.

  “That’s all right,” said Susan quietly. “Let me help.” Her hand found his arm and half hoisted him to his feet.

  He trotted beside her, chattering, till they reached the first of the houses. “Really obliged,” said Harold, “very much obliged. I think I must have knocked my head when I went over. Might’ve laid there all night. Dark under them trees there, you could lay all night easy and not get found. ... I was a bit funny but I’m all right now, it’s going off. Can’t think what I was doing right out here, that I can’t. I’ve heard of these lapses of memory, I reckon I had one of them. ... No thanks, I shall be fine, got a car down the lane, see. . . . Can’t think what I was doing, wandering about like that.” He stopped at Susan’s gate. “Thanks again miss, thanks very much indeed . . . goodnight miss, and thanks ... yes ....”

  Susan watched him go. “Be careful,” she called softly. “It’s very dark. Don’t slip again.” She waited until he was out of sight, then she walked up the path to the house.

  She hung her coat and satchel in the hall and walked through to the lounge. The curtains were drawn, a fire crackling in the hearth. In the corner the television set was working quietly. Melanie sat rather grumpily on the mat, feet apart, hands spread each side of her. “Susan,” she complained, before her sister was halfway through the door, “I can’t find my big animal book. And I wanted it tonight for Brownies. Do you know where it is?”

  Susan thought for a moment and saw the book quite clearly, wedged down behind the back of the sideboard. She retrieved it and dropped it in Melanie’s lap. “You always know where everything is,” said the little girl. “I wish I did.” She began to leaf through the book. “Anne Ryder’s brother is in India and he wrote to say he’d got a mongoose and there’s a picture of one in the book and I wanted to take it to show her. Thanks, Susan...”

  Susan smiled.

  Her mother came through from the kitchen, hands full of plates. She said, “You’re late, love. Did something happen?”

  “No, nothing, mother. I’m sorry. ... I stopped to help someone who was lost.”

  The older woman frowned and started arranging cork mats on the table. “Who was it?”

  “A man called Mr. Sanderson. He had a car, and he couldn’t find the way. It was all right, I knew him.”

  Her mother paused with a dinner mat in her hand. “There’s no Sandersons on the estate. Not that I can think of. Susan . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “You know what I’ve told you about things like that,” said her mother for Melanie’s benefit. “It isn’t always a good idea to talk to people you don’t know, even if they seem nice. Especially after dark. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, mother.”

  “Don’t do it again, then.”

  Susan shook her head slowly. “It was all right. He was ill but he’s better now.”

  Her mother bit her lip and turned away and Susan sensed the worry churning in her mind. She smiled.

  Back turned to her, her mother jerked. “Susan,” she snapped, “stop it. . . .”

  Susan followed her to the kitchen.

  Out of sight of Melanie her mother turned to face her, gripped the girl’s arms above the elbows and tried to see down into her eyes. But the eyes were veiled. She said, “Susan . . .” Then she stopped and the frown came again, deeply. Her tongue stumbled, not seeming able to find the right words. “Your father and I,” she said. “We’re very worried. We were talking . . . we’re both very worried about you. You will take care, won’t you? Be so very careful. . .

  Susan nodded quietly. “I shall be careful.”

  Her mother reached up and stroked the hair from Susan’s forehead. Her eyes were flicking from side to side across the girl’s face as though she was trying hard to understand something. “Susan,” she said, and the words seemed to be squeezed out against her will, “Susan, dear . . . who are you?”

  A long wait. The television played softly in the lounge. A car passed in the lane and the sound vanished in the distance. Then Susan shook her head. “I’m sorry, mother,” she said. “I don’t know what you mean....”

  She picked up the teacups and carried them into the other room.

  <>

  * * * *

  In British s-f nowadays, all roads lead eventually to Mike Moorcock’s Ladbroke Grove flat-and-office, where a hot argument on the virtues of the Ontological Approach or a stiff debate on the Metaphysics of Time may—at any hour of the day or night—compete with (what I am assured is) a connoisseur’s collection of rock ‘n’ roll (full-volume, of course), or with Moorcock’s own excellent blues guitar— while one of the young literary protégés of the household pecks out the end to a rent-payer story on the typewriter in the living room, and three-year-old Sophie struggles to open the concealed Victorian lock of the latest strongbox or escritoire Daddy has brought home from a walk down the Portobello Road.

  You understand, I am exaggerating—but not much.

  And perhaps you understand, too, how interest and enthusiasm on the part of (particularly new, but also established) authors spreads and multiplies around such a focal point. The results do not all show up in New Worlds (or in Impulse): far from it. The stories that germinate in sessions like these, or on the trip home, are as likely to turn up in the higher-paying American magazines, or in the flourishing British paperback book market.

  Among the younger writers most often found in the center of the Moorcock ferment are Charles Platt (“Lone Zone” in New Worlds, No. 152) B. J. Bayley (“All the King’s Men,” No. 148), Langdon Jones (“The Leveller,” No. 152, and “The Empathy Machine,” Science Fantasy), Hilary Bailey and Thorn Keyes, who both produced exciting “firsts” in 1964, and Johnny Byrne—

  Born, Dublin, 1937. Convent and Jesuit educated. Came to England, 1957. Studied some more and then went on the road, sleeping under bridges, picking apples in Kent and pears in Somerset.