Science Fiction Discoveries

by Carol

  ‘I'll soon he too old for you!”

  And left.

  7

  Doctor Murray stopped by one afternoon and sat down on the side of his bed.

  “You’re looking well, George. Better than I’ve ever seen you—although of course I’ve only seen you this past month or so. Dyed your hair, I see. Vanity, vanity, thy name is man! I hear all sorts of wild things about you. If half of them were true, you’d be a phenomenon and I could congratulate myself on my wonderful prowess as a physician. Perhaps I will, anyway.”

  He looked over some papers he had in a folder: the results, most likely, of the physical examination George had had some five weeks ago, after he had emerged from the coma. “Hmmm ... you are in good shape! Heart and lungs good. Blood pressure a little

  low, but not to worry. Shows what a good clean life will do for you. I see that you don t smoke and of course here you don’t drink much. So all we have to watch,” he added, with a wink, "is your sex life.” George bared his teeth in a smile in which the doctor failed to perceive mockery. "And new choppers, tool” exclaimed Murray, laughing in wonderment. "Well, goodbye, George,” he said, closing the folder. "I have an urgent appointment. Have to keep my practice up, you know.” And, with another wink, he pantomimed a golf swing.

  There was so much talk about George that, inevitably, some of it came to the attention of a wider public. But Owl Creek was such a stagnant backwater that the ripples didn’t spread very tar. Mildred brought him a copy of the Owl Creek Weekly, which had a little story about him.

  LOCAL MAN LIVES BACKWARD

  OWL CREEK—June 2. Mr. George Clay (72), a patient for the last five years at the Owl Creek Rest Home, may not be there much longer, it is said. He may be discharged on grounds of extreme youth. The patients at the Home are all Senior Citizens and it is rumored that Mr. Clay may soon be too young to be kept on there.

  "He looks younger every day,” says Nurse Mildred Paine (53). “I wish I could say the same for myself. He is getting stronger. He has new teeth. His hair is darkening and the wrinkles of his face are disappearing. I've never seen anything like it in my life and I've been in this line of work for thirty years.”

  Dr. Stanley Murray (28), recently appointed staff physician pro tem at the Home, replacing Dr. Ives, now on his well-earned sabbatical, has a prosaic explanation for the marvel, however. "It sometimes happens,” Dr. Murray tells this reporter, "that a man will look much older than he is after undergoing a particularly debilitating illness. Then, if he recovers and regains his normal appearance, it seems as if he has gotten younger. It is a phenomenon that everyone in the medical profession is familiar with. And I have an idea,” adds Dr. Murray, "that George is not quite so old as some people think he is.”

  But Anthony (Trucky) Maoriano (45), handyman, driver, etc., at the Home, finds that he cannot in good conscience corroborate Dr. Murray's diagnosis. "No, there's no mistake about it,” says Trucky. “Mr. Clay is definitely getting younger, not older. I think he's living backwards.” This should worry the staff at the Owl Creek Rest Home. Of course, it wouldn't be the first time they have had a patient who was in his second childhood, but . . . Who knows where this trend will end?

  Change your diapers, George?

  The story, mused George as he read it, probably wouldn’t even come to the attention of his offspring, unless it was picked up by the metropolitan dailies, which was possible. The last few lines raised a problem he had thought of once or twice: Where would this business end? Would he progress—or regress back to infancy? Somehow, he couldn’t think so. In his dreams he was always a young man; and his guess was that his body was merely regaining its optimum physical condition, which would naturally be that of a young man. He had bathed unawares in that Fountain of Youth for which Ponce de Leon had been searching. Youth. Not infancy.

  He never quarreled with the old men about him now, but bore their little remarks and querulous hints with reserve and fortitude. Noblesse oblige. But one thing haunted him and that was Harry Dumbarton’s question: “Why you—and not me?” Harry, he knew, had spoken for them all. He saw that same question wherever he turned, in every face. “Why him—and not me?” He had to admit that they had a real question there. He thought a good deal about it.

  Why him? Surely, he wasn’t being rewarded with this great gift because he had contributed to charities or helped old ladies across the street. When he hopped back into bed after his exercises, and lay in the dark listening to the others groaning and coughing, muttering and turning in their sleep, he sent up that silent question again and again: Why me?

  He remembered that suggestive medical item in the newsmagazine; and Tommy’s faith-healing Hardrack; and that senile old man, Ambrose, who had bored everyone here silly about a Secret Society of Immortals, until he proved that he wasn’t a Member—by dying; and how Floyd, Edith’s first husband, had staggered in one day twenty years ago with a bottle someone had sold him, containing, he said, a rejuvenation elixir, and which George found to be mineral water. Nothing was too trivial for him to dredge up. But there was no answer.

  Unless ... As he drifted off to sleep in the lengthening hours of the night he wondered: What if he weren’t getting younger at all, and all this were an insane delusion? Suppose he were senile and dreaming of his youth? That sounded plausible enough. At such moments, it even seemed likely. It explained the otherwise inexplicable. A man being hanged imagines that the rope breaks, just as the trapdoor of the scaffold opens beneath his feet; and, surely, many another old man, drifting dreamlike on his pillow away from the moorings of reason, had imagined that he was young again? Could it be that he would wake up tomorrow morning and find himself old: his body frail and weak, his vision blurred, his face corrugated, his bowels and bladder unreliable?

  But when he awoke in the morning, he found himself even stronger and younger-looking than the night before. It was not youth, but old age and suffering that were fading like a dream.

  8

  The end was in sight. The end? No, a new beginning. One morning, he walked in the grounds in back of the hospital, arm in arm with Trucky, although actually he needed support no more than Trucky did. He turned his wistful gaze out towards Owl Creek. In his first week here, he had walked away. He had made it as far as the ancient railroad bridge a few hundred yards downstream. But, midway across, he stepped on a loose plank, pitched forward against the guardrail and hung there until an attendant came (“Come on, Pop, that waters too cold to dive into”) and took him back to his bungalow.

  Yesterday, he had taken a small but fateful step. He had dispatched a letter to the president of the Bureford Bank, Charlie Kincaid, saying that George Clay the Younger would be in shortly to collect the money in Janie’s Fund. He was confident that this little stratagem would work. Charlie wouldn’t fail to recognize in this young stranger his old friend’s features. George had become his own heir. He had stepped into his own shoes.

  That is, he would have done so if he had had any to step into. One of the two things that kept him at the Home (Mildred being the other) was that he needed something to walk away in. Bathrobe, pajamas and slippers wouldn’t do in the street.

  He asked Mildred about the clothes he had worn when he came.

  “Why, George, those were given to the Salvation Army years ago. And, besides, they wouldn’t fit you now. You really have a fine voice,” she went on, laughing a little. “It’s gotten deeper and stronger every day. I hate to lose you, you know, but how can anyone keep you? Why don’t you wait a few days? Maybe Doctor Murray will discharge you.”

  He moved restlessly. “I’ll wait until tomorrow,” he said; and then, “Will you meet me in the Playroom at eleven-thirty?”

  She shook her head. But she was there when he looked in.

  He was up early the next morning: shaved, bathed, exercised. His release came suddenly.

  Supervisor Leland Kapes of the County Board of Hospitals came by on a routine trip of inspection and saw George sitting on the side o
f his bed. He turned to Mildred.

  "What is this man doing here? Has he been occupying that bed?”

  Mildred chose her words with care. "He’s been sick, but he’s well now. He’s waiting for Doctor Murray to discharge him.”

  "Well, for God’s sake!” whispered Kapes, as George sat listening. "Get him out of here, will you? Don’t wait for Doctor Murray. Do it this afternoon. We’ve got old people waiting for these beds!”

  "Yes, sir!” cried Mildred; and Kapes went on to inspect the kitchen.

  Mildred reappeared some fifteen minutes later. Her eyes were red, but dry. She carried George’s old cane and a suit—not his familiar old brown, but a comparatively new suit, light blue, recently pressed. There was a shirt, a new wide tie, some socks and underwear, polished shoes.

  He looked at her questioningly. "They were my brother’s,” she said. "They’ll fit you. And—” reaching into the pocket of her dress—“you’ll need money. No, no! It’s only fifty dollars. You can send it back to me a year, two years, from now. I know I’ll never see you again. I mustn’t ever see you again. I know that.” Her voice was so low the others could not hear. "But if you will enclose a note when you return the money, I’ll know you’re all right. Take it. It’s insurance that I’ll hear from you some day.”

  He wordlessly accepted the money.

  Mildred moved a screen in front of his bed, so that he could dress behind it. Every eye in the room was riveted on that screen. Morty sat rigidly upright, staring at the screen with an almost painful suspense. Zorbedian’s head was raised from its pillow. Hendershot stared as if he would see through the cloth-covered cardboard, if he could. Even Harry Dumbarton’s silent eye revolved in that direction. The television set whispered unattended to in the opposite comer.

  The playing cards had dropped from the hands of Bums and Borgman and lay on the counterpane. Parham’s newspaper littered the floor by his bed.

  A man stepped from behind the screen. He was slightly above the middle height and, in that place, decidedly young: he couldn’t possibly be more than forty. His face was slightly pale, his body trim. He carried a cane—unnecessarily, it would seem, as he moved with confidence and ease.

  “George,” said Mildred, wistfully, “you look like a young Fredric March.”

  George looked about at Hendershot and at the other old men there. Old men. He had been so like them and was now so different. Perhaps some day he would resemble them again, but that was a long way away—almost a lifetime away: he still had some growing young to do before he started back up that long hill. Every pair of eyes in the room returned his solitary gaze; and there was something in this moment that was very terrible to him.

  The moment drained away ... and then Morty sent up a thin, quavering cheer. It had not quite died when it was supported and endorsed from across the room by a hearty bull-roar. The stricken Harry Dumbarton, struggling upward from his sheets, sent up a mighty cry of congratulation. It cost him more, perhaps, than those eight hours in the freezing water, but he rose to what was possibly the most selfless act of his long career. His example was irresistible. The others took it up. The vote was unanimous.

  “Goodbye!” George called. “Goodbye, Morty, Harry, Virgil, all of you!” He turned away.

  Mildred came with him to the door. “Forget me,” she said. “Forget all of us, George.” And she turned away hastily, toward the back of the building.

  He obeyed her. Whirling his cane jauntily, he stepped out onto the porch.

  And there coming down the walk towards him was •.. Tommy.

  He addressed himself to George:

  “Say, Buddy, could you tell me where—, He stopped, stared, finished lamely: “—I could find the administrator . . . ?”

  They stood facing each other in the clear light of day. Father and son; but it was the father who appeared to be the younger man.

  “Turn around,” said George, in the tone of one who will be obeyed.

  Tommy stared. Then, his face at once anxious and blank, he slowly faced about until his back was to George—who promptly placed a vigorous kick on his rear end. “Deliver that message to Hugh and Edith. Now, git!”

  Tommy got. He moved back down the walk to a car parked at the curb. He slumped forward as he walked, his shoulders and arms hanging limply. It was as if George had heaped all his old age and infirmity upon his son.

  Pity smote him like a blow.

  “Wait, Tommy! Wait!”

  The figure froze, its back toward him.

  “I forgive you, Tommy,” called George. “Tell Hugh and Edith that I forgive them too—and ask them to forgive me. Let there be no guilt! Be happy, Tommy. But be happy away from me!”

  The figure at the car slumped forward—then straightened, managed to get the car door open, and sat down behind the steering wheel. George turned away. He heard a car motor start, rise in pitch and fade away ... and gave it not a thought.

  It was a glorious day. The tree-shaded lane, half country road and half city street, stretched before him pleasantly. In the distance he could see the roadside buildings of Owl Creek, gleaming red and white in the sun. A few miles further on was Bureford, where tomorrow morning he would see Charlie Kincaid and arrange to collect his nearly twenty thousand dollars. From Bureford the land stretched south to New Orleans, west to San Francisco, north to bustling Chicago and east to magnetic New York City. Beyond the tall buildings and the restless waters lay London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, all the cities of men—all those places he had always meant to see and which now he would.

  "The world lay all before him,

  Where to choose . . .”

  He had time and life and world enough now.

  He put his foot upon the black asphalt of the road and strode forward, toward Bureford.

  And beyond.

  The Force That Through the Circuit Drives the Current

  by Roger Zelazny

  Roger Zelazny was Guest of Honor at the 1974 World Science-Fiction Convention, a tribute paid only to the most outstanding writers, editors and others in the field. He has received two Hugos and two Nebulas for his previously published science fiction, as well as the French Prix Apollo. Perhaps his most famous short stories are “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth” “He Who Shapes” and “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”

  ... And I had been overridden by a force greater than my own.

  Impression of a submarine canyon: a giant old river bed; a starless, moonless night; fog; a stretch of quicksand; a bright lantern held high in its midst.

  I had been moving along the Hudson Canyon, probing the sediment, reaching down through the muck and the sludge, ramming in a corer and yanking it back again. I analyzed and recorded the nature, the density, the distribution of the several layers within my tube; then I would flush it, move to the next likely spot and repeat the performance; if the situation warranted, I would commence digging a hole-the hard way—and when it was done, I would stand on its bottom and take another core; generally, the situation did not warrant it: there were plenty of ready-made fissures, crevasses, sink holes. Every now and then I would toss a piece of anything handy into the chopper in my middle, where the fusion kiln would bum it to power; every now and then I would stand still and feed the fire and feel the weight of 1,-500 fathoms of Atlantic pressing lightly about me; and I would splay brightness, running through the visible spectrum and past, bounce sounds, receive echoes.

  Momentarily, I lost my footing. I adjusted and recovered it. Then something struggled within me, and for the thinnest slice of an instant I seemed to split, to be of two minds. I reached out with sensory powers I had never before exercised—a matter of reflex rather than intent—and simultaneous with the arrival of its effects, I pinpointed the disturbance.

  As I was swept from the canyon’s bed and slammed against the wall of stone that had towered to my left, was shaken and tossed end over end, was carried down and along by the irresistible pressure of muddy water, I located the epicenter of the earthquake a
s 53 miles to the south-southeast. Addenda to the impression of a submarine canyon: one heavy dust storm; extinguish the lantern.

  I could scarcely believe my good fortune. It was fascinating. I was being swept along at well over fifty miles an hour, buried in mud, uncovered, bounced, tossed, spun, reburied, pressed, turned, tom free and borne along once again, on down into the abyssal depths. I recorded everything.

  For a long time, submarine canyons were believed to represent the remains of dry-land canyons, formed back in the ice ages, covered over when the seas rose again. But they simply cut too far. Impossible quantities of water would have to have been bound as ice to account for the depths to which they extend. It was

  Heezen and Ewing of Lamont who really made the first strong case for turbidity currents as the causative agent, though others such as Daly had suggested it before them; and I believe it was Heezen who once said that no one would ever see a turbidity current and survive. Of course, he had had in mind the state of the art at that time, several decades back. Still, I felt extremely fortunate that I had been in a position to take full advantage of the shock in this fashion, to register the forces with which the canyon walls were being hammered and abraded, the density and the velocity of the particles, the temperature shifts ... I clucked with excitement.

  Then, somewhere, plunging, that split again, a troubled dual-consciousness, as though everything were slightly out of focus, to each thought itself and a running shadow. This slippage increased, the off-thoughts merged into something entire, something which moved apart from me, dimmed, was gone. With its passing, I too, felt somehow more entire, a sufficiency within an aloneness which granted me a measure of control I had never realized I possessed. I extended my awareness along wavelengths I had not essayed before, exploring far, farther yet...