Again, Dangerous Visions

by edited by Harlan Ellison

  Then he awoke one morning and things were very bad.

  Hyacinthus!

  He was feeling it. Something wrong, not like before old Earth blew, but something different. Like music, old music, thinly off in the distance, calling him awake like a broken bugle. Like the old days, when the screamers were coming!

  Here he was, safe, high above the city in his floating flying palace, halfway out of his lovely dreams, and something was terribly wrong.

  "Hi hi, Old Hump," said Alise, sitting with a thump on his bed with its golden coverlets while he opened a slitted eye.

  "You used to call me Sir Chug," said Chug. "Now you call me Old Hump. What you got there?"

  "I brung you a present," said Alise, who prided herself on having learned the new lingua Ge which Chug brought to this planet almost three Earth years ago. "It's that bowl of goldfish you was admiring in the shop in Stickley last weeklette when we was on that party where you taught us worshipful Zephrans the Charleston."

  "The Charleston? That wasn't supposed to be for six months," he groaned out loud, sitting up. "I was drunk! I'm gonna run out of dances!"

  "You know lots of dances." Alise patted her red hairy horns and turned a mirror on to view herself in. "What about the Jarabe Tapatio? That's the Mexican Hat dance."

  "I know! But how do you know?"

  "I read it in a book, up on a planet I know named Flora."

  "Flora! Ain't no planet named Flora!"

  "It's a kind of invisible planet which I just happen to know. Then there's the Chug Step. Kinda pushy."

  He glared.

  "Then," she went on, one-half an eye on him, "there's a waltz they had in a place they used to call Denmark called Little Man In A Fix."

  "WHAT?"

  Here was this girl, this peachy, creamy girl, this adored, lovely, once-in-a-lifetime girl, needling and prodding him. He was certain of it. She knew things about him! She was the one who brought his ship in! It couldn't be; no, no!

  "How's about some square dances?" she asked brightly. "There's one called Somebody Goofed!

  "How's about Birdie In A Cage?" She chanted, talking it up,

  "Up and down and around and around

  Allemande left and allemande aye

  Ingo, Bingo, six penny high,

  Big cat little cat

  Root hog or DIE!

  "Besides," she said, catching one of his astounded eyes in the mirror, "do you have six months?"

  "Do I have six months," Chug croaked from a dry throat.

  The tiny wings were the pinions of bats, flapping in the caverns of his intuition. Hyacinthus, they flapped, before he was able to close off the hideous sound.

  "Whaddya mean, do I have six months?" he snarled, swinging out of bed in his silken glitter of mandarin pajamas. Then in fright he squeezed the thought back. HYACINTHUS!!

  "And whaddya mean, giving me goldfish for a present?" he gasped. "I'm onto you, girl. You're after me. You always have been!

  "Here I am, the most respected man on the planet. I'm a goldmine of information about the Mother World. Savants have written books about me. I'm important. Big. Beloved. I've changed the cultural life of the teeming teenagers of Zephyrus. Given 'em fads, whooped 'em up, taught 'em jitterbugging—"

  She was under his chin and pressing his nose in with a curved forefinger. She cooed, "I know. You're a cool cat."

  "And whaddya give me?" he raved. "Goldfish!"

  "But you like goldfish!"

  "Only to look at!"

  "That's what I brung 'em for, to look at. What else do you do with 'em?"

  "Eat 'em!" snarled Chug. "Like I'm gonna eat you one of these days!"

  She giggled. "You are a cat," she said. "I knowed that when I first seen you. They took your mom and dad's chromosomes and tweezered in some cat genes, now didn't they? You come out of a laboratory, Old Hump. You come out mewing and spitting and clawing. Then they passed a law because they didn't want any more human cats.

  "You're a cat, Old Hump. And that's the reason you always land on your feet!"

  Old Chug was on his feet and stalking and circling and spitting and pulling frustratedly at the long hairs of his dandy, waxed, whiskery mustache.

  "You're a little bit telepathic?" he inquired.

  "A little bit," she admitted. "Like you! Flickly, you know when there's trouble ahead—like now.

  "Wanna meet my father?"

  "I guess I better," said Chug trailing stupidly after her through the thirty rooms of his cushion-strewn furry-rugged palace with its whispering tinkling fountains and its shiny gold canary cages where he had lived his dream of purring contentment when he had been able to stop thinking of that demon wave-front of shattered Earth's light catching up with him! Now! soon!—it would all explode out of time, like the plaint of a brook, like the juice of a leaf!

  Soon Alise was lashing her horse-and-buggy across the sunny skies of Zephyrus. Every time those anti-grav hooves kicked at the air the buggy shot ahead. "Gee!" cried Alise, hanging onto the reins. "Haw!" she said, and "Haw!" again for a left U-turn, and finally, "Whoa!" The motors quieted down.

  Alise's father had horns growing out of his head.

  "They aren't real horns," the slim father confessed shyly, taking off his headpiece and hanging it on an air-peg where it bobbed fitfully. "My real ones were sawed off when they sent us from Flora to study the cultural life of Zephyrus."

  "Flora was nowhere," said Alise helpfully, standing close to Chug and stroking his arm. "We didn't have nothing to do. Nothing. We come here, flickly, to bring back some dances and some fads and wild things. And guess what, Old Hump? We found you! Wasn't we lucky?"

  Chug was sweating, gazing upon these two who gazed back upon him benignly and pleasantly and most alarmingly. He attempted to move away from Alise and her stroking hand.

  "Aw," she said, her peachy pink lips drooping. Chug sat weakly down, his head throbbing. Now he was really feeling it, the terrible thing that had gone wrong with his world. "Flora," he muttered.

  "Yes," said the father in his shy manner. "Flora, wife of Zephyrus, but divorced for some time, as it were. We keep our planet shielded from the Zephrans, invisible to them, one might say, to keep them from destroying us."

  Chug's head came up. "Zephrans? Destroy you?"

  "Oh, yes," said Alise, happily placing herself on Chug's knee and diddling her fingers under his ear. "The Zephrans would tear us apart like that if they knew we were on their planet. So we had to saw off our horns.

  "Oh, yes. We grow horns. Something about the climate, I'm sure."

  Chug looked askance at the beauteous head and then shuddered his glance away. "The Zephrans are noble, gentle, tall, courteous and godly. They wouldn't hurt anybody!"

  Both Alise and her father laughed gently.

  "Hyacinthus," said the father, removing his headpiece from the air-peg and placing it back on his head and then turning on a mirror while he fitted it. "Surely you remember the Greek god Zephyrus who was jealous of Hyacinthus and caused his death. Zephrans think of Earth as Hyacinthus."

  Chug was ill. He looked past Alise into the mirror, where he saw the horned man who suddenly looked very sinister. "You're him," cried Chug hysterically, all his accumulated fears centered on this apparition. "The one who brung me in." He leaped up as if to flee a terrible danger, but caught Alise so she wouldn't fall and stood trembling.

  "Yes," said the father, nodding, and smiling inwardly as if at himself. "You'll forgive me my rudeness, but it was necessary to sharpen you up so you could put on a convincing show."

  "WHAT show?" Chug cried.

  "Oh," said the father, flinching. "That again."

  Alise snuggled against the mandarin pajamas Chug still wore. She said dreamily, "We knew all about you, but it didn't matter. You were what we were looking for, so we tested you. Here on Zephyrus. But it's time to go now. To Flora. You'll probably grow horns. You understand, Hyacinthus?"

  "Don't call me Hyacinthus!" Chug pushed her away, spitting h
is fury. His hair again felt as if it were standing up like fur, and again he could feel retractile muscles pulling at his fingernails. He crouched and arched his back and lashed out a paw at the smiling peachy pink girl.

  "Zephrans ain't gonna kill me!" he said. "Zephrans worship me!"

  "Their worship was a barrier to keep you from penetrating to their hate. You were too quick to drink the Blue Hyacinth," said the father, now seeming not quite so shy.

  His finger ran sharply through the air and the mirror in which he ostensibly was admiring himself turned into a television screen.

  "All over the planet the word has gone out," he said. "Hyacinthus, they are screaming, Hyacinthus!"

  Chug could not believe eyes or ears. He was looking at his floating palace with its lazy golden eagle wings. It was surrounded by winged cars, and the cars were full of worshipful Zephrans.

  They were not too worshipful.

  "Hyacinthus!" they were screaming. Weapons in their hands were discharging projectiles and rays at the floating palace. "Hyacinthus!" the terrible screaming came. Chug's palace was coming down.

  Tears were in Chug's eyes. Sympathetically Alise petted the back of his head.

  "They've been hating us for a long time," she said, "but they've been hating Earth longer! They've been out into space, Old Hump. While you were entertaining us worshipful teenagers and making things really ching, they were stealing the faster-than-light secret from your ship. They've seen Earth explode at last—only about six months from here. They know you've been fooling them. They know they don't have to be afraid of Earth anymore.

  "We're going back to Flora, Old Hump. The teeming teenagers of Flora need fads, dances, and songs and a tintinabula or two. Everybody will love you. You can come and go as you please. Stay out at night and yowl, as it were. Ips."

  "Ips," said Chug weakly. He was drained, watching the destruction of his august mansion of the air. Then he could watch no longer. The doom he had closed out of his mind for so long at last was upon him. His purr-engine seemed dead, Earth was gone, and what was left? Strangely enough, plenty and everything. Almost as fast as old Chug reached bottom, he started back up. Uncomplicated by worry and fear, a new destiny beckoned.

  Already he was beginning to hum again. Already, the dread moment of betrayal from the hateful Zephrans was being put behind him. He opened an eye, sadly, to watch the burning eagle wings.

  Moreover, maybe that witch Alise at last saw in him a person of talents and importance.

  He hoped.

  "You'll go with us?" cried Alise, steepling her hands entreatingly under his nose.

  "Let it be," sighed Chug blackly as his palace crashed.

  "Let it be," cried Alise, whirling into an excited pirouette and fouette, then flinging herself into old Chug's arms for an ecstatic sashay. "You'll love your new home, Old Hump. You'll be warm and cozy, and we'll take care of you—"

  Chug preened a bit, but dour experience flashed signals. "You mean," he inquired suspiciously, "you're gonna take me to Flora like some blue-ribbon, prize-winning cat?"

  "Halla-hoo!" cried Alise wide-eyed. "We wasn't thinking of no prize-winning cat! What we had in mind was, more like a house-pet!"

  (So that was the way it was gonna be.)

  Afterword

  Haight-Ashbury, 1966. I visited there for 10 days in November of that year, staying in a semi-hippie type apartment run by my two sons and one other. One son worked, the other went to school at San Francisco State, and the other boy worked at night and tried to sleep during the day. Bodies came and went at all hours. There was a stereo. The cow-moo voice of Bob Dylan blew on the wind; and Joan Baez guitared. After the first shock, I appreciated both of them and do. There was also Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, played quiet. There was food eaten by anybody and provided by anybody. Disarray in kitchen and bedroom was the rule; suddenly someone would clean up the joint. Pot there was not (that I knew). The older son handed me a stack of Marvel comics and remarked, incredibly, that Stan Lee and what he was saying was part of the religion of the Berkeley/Haight-Ashbury scene. I was entranced with The Hulk, with Prince Namor of Atlantis, with The Fantastic Four, with Doctor Strange, the Mighty Thor, and others. I lay on the bed face close to the floor and read and glutted myself in leisure.

  On the first day, a Sunday, that I was there, I walked with sons and their friends drinking beer down to the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park where a love-in was in progress. The flower children were beginning now. Girls with painted faces and bare soiled feet. Naked-to-the-waist painted men gyrating in dances to strange Eastern instruments. Paints, brushes, and frames with paper thumb-tacked on them were there for those who wanted to express themselves artistically. A rock band tore the air. Couples danced, roiled, sprawled. Older people, very cubic like me, looked on. Children ran, screamed, danced, sang, automatically knew what their thing was: anybody over ten had to think it out.

  On the second day, the older son hesitantly asked if I minded riding pillion on the motorcycle. "It's the only transportation we've got." I did mind. As the motorcycle started off, me tethered behind, it made a sound which went "ratch-chug." My son explained, his voice blowin' back in the wind, "The kind of sound you can expect from our machine-oriented culture." We chugged on down Cole St., past the psychedelic shops and the little food shops and ice-cream shops run by young people with humble shoulders and Indian head-dress, young and older girls smiling hopefully that love had come to stay, not knowing that the cycle would swing as it does with all things—but that's another story.

  The next day, having plenty of time, and having chased a tomcat off the back porch where it was stealing the little cat's food, I sat down with a typewriter and some paper and without too much trouble wrote ten silly pages. My older son read the pages, and jolted me with, Did I get my inspiration from the Marvel Comics? "Not that I know of," I replied. Younger son said, "You going back to writing, Dad? Maybe you should finish this one." I told him I definitely would finish it . . .someday; that was a promise.

  The above indicates how the elements of the story may have fused together. The story is not supposed to have any theme, or any significance, nor does it seem to attempt to solve any social problems. I tried not to make it timely.

  The story was finished up, and rewritten a bit for Again, Dangerous Visions, but it was not the story I started to write. That story dealt with a priest who scoffed at the idea of light-speed being the limiting velocity in our universe, and with God's help got to Alpha Centauri in no time at all. The difficulties in this theme became enormous, and I turned to the almost forgotten ten pages turned out in a lost San Francisco world. To Keith and Jeff, here 'tis.

  Introduction to

  THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST

  The problem isn't what to say about the incredible Ursula Le Guin, it's where to start.

  Should I, he said, begin with the observation that she is without question the most elegant writer in the sf world? Perhaps. If for no other reason, then surely to expand on the proposition that on certain people in this life a gift of grace and style is bestowed that makes all the rest of us look like garden slugs. Being in Ursula's company for any extended period is an enriching experience, but one gets the impression that oneself and everyone else in the room are on the grace level of a paraplegic's basketball team being trained by Fred Astaire.

  She is witty, strong, emphatic and empathic, wise, knowledgeable, easygoing and electric, seraphic, gracious, sanguine and sane. Without sacrificing the finest scintilla of femininity she dominates a group with her not inconsiderable strengths as an individual; it is Ursula Le Guin, as a model, I'm sure, women's liberationists are most striving to emulate. In short, she's dynamite.

  She also smokes a pipe . . .in private.

  She also writes one helluva stick.

  Ursula won a Nebula and Hugo in 1970 for her novel The Left Hand of Darkness. You've read it, of course, so there's no need to dwell on its level of excellence. Yet it can truly be said, no award in that catego
ry in recent years has done the Nebula—or Hugo—more credit.

  Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was born in Berkeley, California in 1929; daughter of anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber and Theodora K. Kroeber, author of Ishi in Two Worlds, The Inland Whale, and several other tomes of an equally awe-inspiring nature. (Interestingly enough, I find my own listing in Contemporary Authors, volumes 5–8, along with Ursula's mother's listing. But no Ursula. Would someone kindly point out their oversight to them.)

  Ursula grew up in Berkeley and in the Napa Valley. She received her B.A. from Radcliffe and her Masters from Columbia, in French and Italian Renaissance literature.