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

by Edited By Judith Merril

  The creature’s amiable lack of intelligence, coupled with its particular musical capabilities, was the key. Clearly, it was a member, possibly the sole survivor, of a subject race— slaves and entertainers, the playthings of a technically advanced but cruel species who had, for reasons that would almost certainly remain unexplained (plague?), deserted them, fleeing the forests to seek the shelter and assistance to be found in their cities. Dr. Williams hoped with grim fervency that these were either several thousand miles away or preferably on another planet altogether.

  Each evening, as they rested in the darkening shadows, he would produce the machine, solemnly select a spool, and for a while the brassy effervescence or sadly declamatory strains of jazz, performances that spanned the ninety brief years of its existence as an entity, would stir the stillness of the sleeping forest. Then, when the final blast or sigh had died and the rhythmic pulse was stilled, the recital would begin again, and he would listen, head bowed, to the patterns of simulated brass and reed that hummed and chortled in the darkness, marveling at the now hair-fine accuracy of the copy, yet always conscious of the minutely subtle differences that labeled it as such.

  For Dr. Williams understood his chosen music well, and his knowledge that in its moments of greatness it became a highly personal means of statement he found both heartening and sad. It meant, simply, that when the last of the batteries had been used, access to the music in its true form would be gone forever. Yet might this not be, he reflected, in some ways for the best? He was living a new life in a new world, and nostalgia could all too easily imprison him in a cocoon of memories, only partially aware of the truths of his miraculously compatible existence.

  Weeks later, a spool faltered for the last time. Sadly but firmly, as though unable to bear the death agonies of a dear friend, Dr. Williams pressed the switch, cutting Chu Berry off in uncharacteristically faltering mid-solo. He packed machine and spools neatly in their case, and when morning came scooped a hole at the base of a tree and buried them. The creature stood some little distance away, respectfully silent, its posture one of sadness and commiseration. Dr. Williams marked the tree with the five lines of the stave, carefully carved the notations of the flatted third and fifth in the key of b flat, then turned and walked away without a backward glance.

  The effects of his loss soon passed. It still echoed in their own musical forays, sudden glaring reminders of lifelong idols and favorite performances that he learned to accept with equanimity and use as harmonic springboards to creations of their own. Each passing day found him increasingly aware of the understanding that integrated their musical conception, something that had existed from the beginning but was now of an interweaving complexity beyond anything that he had ever remotely envisaged. The barrier between them, composed of space and environment, was shredding, and they were moving inexorably toward a blending of musical thought and tradition that he sensed would be the greater both for its fusion and the inevitable discarding of parts of both.

  This hitherto untrod plateau was reached one sultry afternoon some weeks later. Dr. Williams lay beneath a tree at the edge of a large clearing, drowsily contemplating the profuse and picturesque greenery in the near distance, while his companion wandered close by, droning a pleasant but seemingly aimless pattern of sound that played softly and at first soothingly.

  A sudden and unexpected modulation occurred, a tonal and harmonic obliquity that caused Dr. Williams to stiffen abruptly and twist his head towards the now still figure that faced him from the centre of the clearing. The creature sang on, sounds that built gradually to a complex of timbres that he had never heard before yet which flicked tantalizingly against his mind, stimulating areas of reaction that were contradictorily both new and hauntingly familiar. Something boiled sharply inside his consciousness and as suddenly subsided, an abruptly cleansing explosion that left him shaking with unfulfilled awareness.

  He sat up, removed the sections of his clarinet from his haversack, and assembled them with a trancelike deliberateness. Still seated beneath the tree, he began to play, probing low-register adornments that added harmonic sinew to the bubbling search, shepherding the other’s inventions firmly toward the ultimate cohesion that he knew had come at last, and suddenly, like an exultant shout, the pattern was resolved into a sustained sonic tapestry that rang about the clearing, dissolving their surroundings and the very ground beneath them; timeless, placeless sound that seemed to radiate out to the farthest reaches of infinity. Eyes closed, Dr. Williams let his now unbidden fingers seek out the ingredients that were his contribution to this miracle, never faltering in their search, surely predestined in the unhesitating lightness of their choice. He soared and plummetted in a vast sea of sound of which he was an integral part, filled with a sense of completeness that he had never known or dreamed could possibly be. Time was without meaning, space a boundless vista that echoed the triumph of their empathy. Weeping and unresisting, Dr. Williams let himself be reborn.

  Soft and distant at first, so faint that he at first accepted it as a not yet integrated part of this happening, an oddly discordant note infiltrated his awareness, a gradually swelling intrusion that bored implacably into this emotional narcosis. Vaguely, he wondered if he had suddenly become acceptable to the native insect population, perhaps about to pay a symbolic toll that marked his physical as well as spiritual acceptance into his new world. He flapped a temporarily unoccupied hand by his ear. The buzzing persisted, loudly now, a pointless, jarring obbligato to the music which flooded about him, its creator seemingly lost in an ecstasy of sound and movement that grew in intensity as it progressed.

  His inability to ever fully accept the reality of his surroundings had been a natural precaution on Dr. Williams’ part, an instinctively erected barrier against the possible presence of insanity that he had only lowered completely minutes before. Now, suddenly, as the dark pool of shadow swept across the clearing and the huge and writhing figure that faced him, it was as though it had snapped back into place of its own volition, insulating him, so that he watched what followed in a detached way, warily waiting for its completion before committing himself to accept it as fact

  The shadow passed on, yet somehow it had remained, a whispily fringed darkness that now dulled the customarily bright body of his friend. Dr. Williams watched stiffly as its movements accelerated explosively from a graceful weaving pattern to grotesque and terrifying frenzy. Simultaneously, the music dissolved into screaming clamor.

  The creature’s collapse was slow. To Dr. Williams’ disbelieving eyes it seemed to shrink upon itself, movement that was blurred by the thickening haze of smoke around it and which now touched his nostrils, acrid and sickening. He watched its tendrils aimlessly collide and intertwine, still blaring their dissonant agony but weaker by the second, a dying fall of sound that slid jerkingly down in deathly accompaniment to the movements of its maker.

  Its final fall was punctuated by various unpleasant sounds. It lay before him, a charred and convulsively deflating thing that bubbled offensively at irregular intervals. Otherwise, it was quite silent.

  From the comer of his eye, Dr. Williams saw other movement. He turned his head to watch the small scout ship that had just landed and disgorged two men who now made their way hurriedly towards him. As they passed the still smoking mound they produced weapons and fired them in its direction.

  How pointless, he thought. Anyone can see that it’s dead.

  They reached him and assisted him to his feet, sudden movement that made him feel violently ill. He stared at them, serious faces above blue uniforms.

  “We had a hell of a job finding you,” one face said. “The automatic signal got through all right, so we didn’t have any trouble with the coordinates, but this place is all trees. You must be best part of a hundred miles from the ship. Why didn’t you stay close to it?” There was a pause. After a moment, the other face said, “It’s lucky for you you were out in the open when we did find you. We couldn’t have happened along at a b
etter time if we’d rehearsed it. What was that thing, anyway?”

  Dr. Williams found that he was still unexpectedly holding his clarinet. He shook his head, focused squintingly, grasped it with both hands, and swung it like a club at the nearest face. There was a startled ejaculation, a blur of movement, and he was thrown face down onto the ground. Someone straddled him, and he felt moist coldness dabbing on his aim.

  “Poor guy,” a panting voice said. “He must have really taken off. If anybody saved me from a thing like that, the last thing I’d do would be to try and brain them.” There was a prick that he hardly felt, and the voice faded, abruptly.

  And then Dr. Williams slept and dreamed dreams that were full of huge shadows and burning men in blue uniforms who screamed and sang mad songs while they danced and died. He watched their fuming gyrations critically, applauding as they disintegrated into ashes at his feet. Occasionally it seemed to him that they loomed close, smiling down at him and talking to him in soothing voices, and then he in turn would scream at them until they were momentarily snuffed out, reappearing through the diffusing pall of smoke, once more singing their tortured and incoherent songs and performing their burning dance against the darkness beyond.

  When the ship reached Earth he was immediately rushed to a place where doctors and machines were waiting to seal off the nightmares forever behind impregnable doors, and after a time they succeeded. Under treatment, his experiences shrank and grew misty in his mind until they finally winked feebly out, pushed firmly and efficiently beyond the boundaries of recall. He still knew—because he was told—that he had been involved in an accident of some kind, but the doctors prudently fabricated a suitable story as to its supposed nature and whereabouts. Knowledge of the truth was the key to memory and possible disaster, and the treatment was an expensive business that the insurance people were reluctant to pay for more than once per claimant. Consequently, he was encouraged to believe that he had been the victim of a piece of careless driving on the part of an unapprehended jetster, and was indignantly content to accept this as the cause of the blank spot that persisted in his mind. He was also reunited with his wife, whose tearful solicitude was quite genuine and which lasted for all of three weeks before being replaced by the verbal prodding that he somehow found rather less bearable now.

  Following a period of convalescence, Dr. Williams resumed his professional activities, lecturing to bored or faintly amused audiences on campuses and in sparsely filled halls, only rarely encountering a flicker of genuine interest or understanding. He had grown accustomed to this a long time before, but now, at times, he somehow shared their apathy. The music still stirred him with its brassy melancholy, but there were occasions when it seemed that its vitals had been suddenly and inexplicably removed, leaving behind a thin and empty shell of sound that rang hollowly on his ear. When this happened, Dr. Williams would feel something that was inescapably buried inside him stir faintly, a dim and fading cadence that sounded far beyond his remembering but which briefly moved him to wonderment and an intangible longing.

  And at night he would stare up at the sky, never knowing why, seeking something that he could not name among the distant and glittering stars, the dying echo of a song that had once (and only once) been sung, and which would never now be sung again.

  * * * *

  Tilley, on Tilley:

  I’m a fellow of the British Display Society, and until recently spent eight years in charge of display and exhibitions for the South Western Electricity Board (packed it in at Christmas, in order to practice privately as a graphic designer!. As you’ve already gathered, I’m a longtime jazzer—played clarinet around my home town (Bridgewater, in Somerset) for quite a while, and led my own band for about eighteen months. I took up tenor sax about six years ago, something I wish I’d done sooner, and still do my ham-fisted impersonation of Lester young occasionally.

  I started writing about eleven years ago, and my first published story won a Best First Story award in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. I’ve had fifteen (I think) stories published altogether—about three-quarters of my total output—most of them in British magazines and three in F&SF. I’m probably the slowest and least prolific writer working in any field, the chief reason being that I find it such darned hard graft. I love it, but it beats the stuffing out of me, which is why, questions of quality apart, I could never attempt it as a full-time career. . . .

  “I’ll be quite happy to keep on trying to develop my craftsmanship, because I hate sloppy, colourless writing. Far too much writing, in all fields, lacks light and shade and any sort of appreciation of the rhythm and flow of words. I think it’s possible that my work in design has helped to keep me conscious of the value of balance and emphasis, which means that my approach to both fields is probably much closer than I’ve ever deliberately made it. (An Interesting thought, and one that’s only occurred to me as I write this letter.1

  Even more interesting, I thought as I read it, is the probable interaction with his other field: some circuit-rider of tomorrow’s far-flung lecture halls is going to have a rich topic in the relationship between jazz and s-f as parallel art forms of the mid-twentieth. (Not too many people span both areas creatively, but the overlap in fans is considerable and jazzmen tend to dig s-f, just as the writers tend to be jazz listeners.)

  Bob Tilley’s letter was a delight to receive, not only for the self-evident reason, but on two further counts. I knew I had seen his name before, probably in New Worlds, certainly not often. It was gratifying to learn that he was not one of the startlingly proficient newcomers who keep popping up—and as suddenly vanishing—but a working craftsman from whom we may expect more in future. Besides which, it is not often that one writer’s letter provides me with a built-in introduction to the next story. I left out one sentence up there . . .

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  * * * *

  I’ve no desire whatever to be an Innovator, and confess myself in awe of Jim Ballard, one of the most talented and dedicated men I ever met. He’s great, isn’t he?

  * * * *

  THE VOLCANO DANCES

  J. G. BALLARD

  They lived in a house on the mountain Tlaxihuatl half a mile below the summit. The house was built on a lava flow like the hide of an elephant. In the afternoon and evening the man, Charles Vandervell, sat by the window in the lounge, watching the fire displays that came from the crater. The noise rolled down the mountain-side like a series of avalanches. At intervals a falling cinder hissed as it extinguished itself in the water tank on the roof. The woman slept most of the time in the bedroom overlooking the valley or, when she wished to be close to Vandervell, on the settee in the lounge.

  In the afternoon she woke briefly when the devilsticks man performed his dance by the road a quarter of a mile from the house. This mendicant had come to the mountain for the benefit of the people in the village below the summit, but his dance had failed to subdue the volcano and prevent the villagers from leaving. As they passed him pushing their carts he would rattle his spears and dance, but they walked on without looking up. When he became discouraged and seemed likely to leave, Vandervell sent the house-boy out to him with an American dollar. From then on the stick-dancer came every day.

  “Is he still here?” the woman asked. She walked into the lounge, folding her robe around her waist. “What’s he supposed to be doing?”

  “He’s fighting a duel with the spirit of the volcano,” Vandervell said. “He’s putting a lot of thought and energy into it, but he hasn’t a chance.”

  “I thought you were on his side,” the woman said. “Aren’t you paying him a retainer?”

  “That’s only to formalize the relationship. To show him that I understand what’s going on. Strictly speaking, I’m on the volcano’s side.”

  A shower of cinders rose a hundred feet above the crater, illuminating the jumping stick-man.

  “Are you sure it’s safe here?”

  Vandervell waved her away. “Of course. Go back to bed
and rest. This thin air is bad for the complexion.”

  “I feel all right. I heard the ground move.”

  “It’s been moving for weeks.” He watched the stick-man conclude his performance with a series of hops, as if leapfrogging over a partner. “On his diet that’s not bad.”

  “You should take him back to Mexico City and put him in one of the cabarets. He’d make more than a dollar.”

  “He wouldn’t be interested. He’s a serious artist, this Nijinsky of the mountain side. Can’t you see that?”

  The woman half-filled a tumbler from the decanter on the table. “How long are you going to keep him out there?”

  “As long as he’ll stay.” He turned to face the woman. “Remember that. When he leaves it will be time to go.”

  The stick-man, a collection of tatters when not in motion, disappeared into his lair, one of the holes in the lava beside the road.

  “I wonder if he met Springman?” Vandervell said. “On balance it’s possible. Springman would have come up the south face. This is the only road to the village.”