Sci Fiction Classics Volume 2

by Vol 2 (v1. 3) (epub)

  "But that isn't a decline of awareness," Alison pointed out. "That's an increase in awareness."

  "It's a bloody decline in our sense of control over what happens in the world. The important things are all happening offstage. They're happening off everybody's stage. Look at this progress in arms control — you heard Robin on the news."

  "Maybe," said Alison, "God has decided to cut reality, and re-edit it. Because it wasn't working out. Or it didn't work out the first time. It bombed out, literally. We're in a remake of the film of the world."

  Hugh teased her, saying, "Maybe these breaks are for advertisements. Only, we can't see them any more than the characters in a film can see the commercials!"

  "Rubbish. When you have a commercial," said Alison, "the film just stops. Then it starts up again from the same moment."

  "In that case, you're right. Something must be editing reality," Hugh acknowledged.

  "How can I possibly agree with that? But I can't disagree, either. Lord knows, reality needs editing."

  An ambulance wailed by, bearing someone from the motorway pile-up. A police car raced the other way, blue light flashing on its roof.

  "It's the Thousand Cuts," said Don. "And it'll drive us mad with stress. Like rats in an electrified maze. We'll go catatonic. We'll become a planet of zombies…a world on autopilot. Like the birds and the bees."

  He started the engine. Driving out of the car park of the Duke of Kent, he turned left because it was easier to do so, before remembering that he had no idea where they had been heading. He slowed, to let another ambulance race by.

  Hugh suddenly began to laugh.

  "I've just got it! Don't you see, we've got a way to test my idea. We may even have a way to communicate with the director himself! Listen, we'll do a special show. We'll do a show about editing reality. We'll make a film within the Film…a film about that Film. I'll package this as a great morale-booster, which indeed it might well be! We'll get the whole country laughing at what's happening. It'll help keep people sane during the Thousand Cuts."

  Alison clapped her hands.

  "Thank you."

  "Just so long as we aren't cut off," said Don. "You know, 'Normal transmission resumes as soon as the show is over.'"

  "If we are cut off, we'll still be going full steam ahead. We can watch it all on videotape afterward — Swing us around, Don. We're going back to my flat to get the whole thing set up. And we'll need to get hold of Martha. If somebody's editing reality, I'm joining in. We'll call the show 'The Making of Reality, the Motion Picture'!"

  "Don't you mean 'Remaking'?"

  "Yes, I do. Quite right, love. 'The Remaking of Reality, the Motion Picture'…that's it. I stand corrected." He slouched back in the seat of the Metro.

  "So do we all, Hugh, if you're right. So do we all."

  "Do what?"

  "Stand corrected.—"

  Two weeks later, Hugh cradled a phone and turned to his friends.

  "Well, I don't know exactly what I've been doing the past four days. But I must have been busting my ass, as our American friends so colorfully put it. Our show's been given the green light for October the fourth, right after the nine o'clock news. Seven European countries are hooking up, using subtitles…and two major networks in the States are running us the same evening, with Australia and Japan following suit the next day. Even Russia is going to screen the show…subject, that is, to content analysis."

  Martha sneezed. She had caught a cold. "Shouldn't be a problem," she sniffled. "Soviets have always laughed at God."

  "Okay, so where were we, Don?" asked Alison.

  "I've been going through this heap of notes. I'll get them knocked into shape with Martha, then we can start rehearsing on videotape, Thursday. See what runs, and what doesn't run."

  "Could we please switch the radio on for a moment?" asked Alison.

  "Why? Oh, to check out what's been happening in the," and Hugh grinned broadly, "real world? Why not? We might harvest some more ideas."

  Fetching the radio, she set it on the bar.

  " — Helsinki. This agreement represents a major advance in the lessening of international tension …"

  "How on Earth can an advance lessen something?" Martha asked.

  "You should meet my publisher," quipped Don.

  "— first genuine reduction in weapons systems, with inspection and verification by neutral observers from the Third World. The actual dismantling and downgrading of —"

  "It seems even God can't manage miracles overnight," Hugh remarked.

  "Blah to that," said Alison. "They're all scared of what could happen during one of the zombie intervals. Or just after one, when everyone's confused."

  "— reported casualty figures following the most recent break are already in the thousands. The worst disaster occurred at Heathrow Airport, where —"

  "See? It just takes one poor jerk to jab his finger at the wrong button. And poof. If this is an example of divine intervention, it's the most ham-fisted miracle I've ever come across," Alison said.

  "When you're cutting film, love," said Hugh, "you waste a lot of good material for the sake of the picture as a whole."

  "You sound as if you sneakingly admire what's going on," protested Don. "All this bloody cutting of our lives."

  Hugh poured himself a brandy, and squirted some soda into the glass.

  "No, it's ludicrous, and dangerous, and it's soul-destroying. But you've got to laugh at it, to get it in the right perspective…and yes, to keep our dignity and free will. It's a mad universe…and it's just turned out to be even madder than anybody could have imagined. Well, in my humble opinion the highest human art isn't tragedy. It's satire. And," here he nodded derisively toward the ceiling, "speaking as one trickster to another, I want whoever or whatever is directing this big show, Life, to notice that I've spotted what's going on. I've found out that reality is just a movie…and I can stay home and even laugh."

  "— have been inundated with requests for Librium and Valium —"

  "I laugh, therefore I am. Birds don't laugh. Cows don't laugh. There's the difference. Now let's get on with it. Let's make everyone kill themselves laughing. They deserve it."

  "The Remaking of Reality, the Motion Picture," was prerecorded during the afternoons of October the first and second…with Hugh Carpenter in the role of Cosmic Director and the lovely Alison as his continuity-person…and it was edited into shape on the third.

  It was, in the opinion of all concerned, just about the sharpest and funniest half-hour of TV in the history of the world.

  Hugh turned from the video monitor to wave back to the technicians. Peter Rolfe, who had produced the show, pumped Hugh's hand and slapped him on the back, then embraced Alison and kissed her. After a moment's hesitation, he kissed Martha too. Though the show was prerecorded, the whole team had decided to be present for the transmission.

  Hugh popped open one of the champagne bottles he had brought along.

  "Out she flies, out she flies! To Manchester and Munich, to Tulsa and Tel Aviv! To Alpha Centauri and all points in the universe, if there's anybody out there! Cheers!"

  Before long, Rolfe's telephone was flashing for his attention.

  "Yes? Really? Oh superb!" he enthused. "Hugh! The switchboard is absolutely jammed. The viewers are just bubbling over. You've stopped them from throwing themselves under a bus tomorrow. You've stopped them from overdosing tonight. You've made the first real sense out of this ghastly mess. You've made the world fun again!"

  "What, no negative reactions at all?" interrupted Don.

  "Oh, there's a teeny little bit from the blasphemy brigade. But, my dear fellow, you can expect that."

  "I do. I look forward to it. The negative reactions are so comical."

  "Not this time, old son. It's heartfelt gratitude all round. The country's laughing its collective head off."

  "Do you realize," asked Rolfe, as he hosted the celebration party at his Hampstead house the next evening, "this has been a new
high for TV? In the last twenty-four hours, you must have clocked up viewing figures of half a billion people? Give or take the Soviets, who don't believe in ratings, mean beasts."

  The carpet was strewn with telegrams. Kicking his way among them, Rolfe pressed another whiskey and water on Alison and kissed her again.

  "You've probably outdone Armstrong stepping onto the Moon," he called to Hugh.

  Tipsy people sprawled on the floor, watching a rerun of the show, chortling and whinnying at the high points. It was almost all high points.

  "Salud!" Rolfe toasted. "The whole world must be laughing tonight. —"

  "Damn!" swore Don. He glanced at the passing road sign. "Petworth, half a mile — We must be heading down to the cottage."

  Hugh was hunched tensely on Don's left, with Martha and Alison behind. Martha was wearing an orange headscarf tied tightly around her black curls…which was remarkably impromptu of her, for a weekend with friends.

  The fuel gauge was showing empty, though Don always kept the tank well filled.

  Slowing…and really, he had been speeding, doing nearly sixty along this country lane…he relaxed and admired the trees in the reddening sunset of their foliage.

  Hugh loosened up too. "You've got to laugh, haven't you?" he asked reflectively.

  And then Don looked at his watch. It wasn't the weekend at all; it was midweek.

  "Good God, it's October the twentieth. That's the longest break yet. We're at Peter's place in Hampstead, on the fifth…I mean, we were. That's a cut of two whole weeks."

  "I've got the radio here," said Sarah.

  The filler music was Beethoven's. It played jubilantly on and on.

  "There's a lot to catch up on," remarked Hugh idly.

  Finally the music died away.

  "— and I am Robin Johnson. The date is —"

  "We'll be at the cottage in another ten minutes," Don said. "I've got a couple of spare gallons I keep there."

  "— news will come as a grave shock to you all. Briefly, the Helsinki disarmament talks collapsed in ruins on the eleventh of October. Yugoslavia was invaded by Warsaw Pact forces on the eighteenth, two days ago. Currently, Soviet armor is massing on the West German border. The NATO Alliance is on full alert, but so far — Wait! — I've just received an unconfirmed report that several tactical nuclear weapons have exploded inside West Germany. This report is as yet unconfirmed —"

  "But," said Hugh lamely.

  "So that's why we're all trying to get down to the cottage on an empty tank — We're trying to be the lucky ones."

  The engine missed several times, coughed, then quietly gave out. The Metro coasted to a halt.

  "It seems," said Alison quietly, "that we did kill ourselves laughing, after all."

  "Do you mean," whispered Martha, "'God…or something…is not mocked'?"

  "I don't know about 'God…or something'," said Don bitterly. "But I suppose we have to describe this as, well, a negative reaction. And somehow it doesn't seem comical. The movie's been axed."

  "Post-holocaust scenes now, I presume," grumbled Hugh. "No damn sense of continuity —"

  He wound the window down.

  "Cut!" he screamed at the sky. "Cut! Cut!"

  But the sky in the north brightened intolerably for a few seconds. Not long after, a fierce hot wind tore the red and gold leaves from the trees.

  The End

  © 1982 by Ian Watson. First appeared in The Best of OMNI Science Fiction No. 3.

  Auto-da-Fé

  Roger Zelazny

  Still do I remember the hot sun upon the sands of the Plaza de Autos, the cries of the soft-drink hawkers, the tiers of humanity stacked across from me on the sunny side of the arena, sunglasses like cavities in their gleaming faces.

  Still do I remember the smells and the colors: the reds and the blues and the yellows, the ever present tang of petroleum fumes upon the air.

  Still do I remember that day, that day with its sun in the middle of the sky and the sign of Aries, burning in the blooming of the year. I recall the mincing steps of the pumpers, heads thrown back, arms waving, the white dazzles of their teeth framed with smiling lips, cloths like colorful tails protruding from the rear pockets of their coveralls; and the horns—I remember the blare of a thousand horns over the loudspeakers, on and off, off and on, over and over, and again, and then one shimmering, final note, sustained, to break the ear and the heart with its infinite power, its pathos.

  Then there was silence.

  I see it now as I did on that day so long ago.…

  He entered the arena, and the cry that went up shook blue heaven upon its pillars of white marble.

  "Viva! El mechador! Viva! El mechador!"

  I remember his face, dark and sad and wise.

  Long of jaw and nose was he, and his laughter was as the roaring of the wind, and his movements were as the music of the theramin and the drum. His coveralls were blue and silk and tight and stitched with thread of gold and broidered all about with black braid. His jacket was beaded and there were flashing scales upon his breast, his shoulders, his back.

  His lips curled into the smile of a man who has known much glory and has hold upon the power that will bring him into more.

  He moved, turning in a circle, not shielding his eyes against the sun.

  He was above the sun. He was Manolo Stillete Dos Muertos, the mightiest mechador the world has ever seen, black boots upon his feet, pistons in his thighs, fingers with the discretion of micrometers, halo of dark locks about his head and the angel of death in his right arm, there, in the center of the grease-stained circle of truth.

  He waved, and a cry went up once more.

  "Manolo! Manolo! Dos Muertos! Dos Muertos!"

  After two years' absence from the ring, he had chosen this, the anniversary of his death and retirement to return—for there was gasoline and methyl in his blood and his heart was a burnished pump ringed 'bout with desire and courage. He had died twice within the ring, and twice had the medics restored him. After his second death, he had retired, and some said that it was because he had known fear. This could not be true.

  He waved his hand and his name rolled back upon him.

  The horns sounded once more: three long blasts.

  Then again there was silence, and a pumper wearing red and yellow brought him the cape, removed his jacket.

  The tinfoil backing of the cape flashed in the sun as Dos Muertos swirled it.

  Then there came the final, beeping notes.

  The big door rolled upward and back into the wall.

  He draped his cape over his arm and faced the gateway.

  The light above was red and from within the darkness there came the sound of an engine.

  The light turned yellow, then green, and there was the sound of cautiously engaged gears.

  The car moved slowly into the ring, paused, crept forward, paused again.

  It was a red Pontiac, its hood stripped away, its engine like a nest of snakes, coiling and engendering behind the circular shimmer of its invisible fan. The wings of its aerial spun round and round, then fixed upon Manolo and his cape.

  He had chosen a heavy one for his first, slow on turning, to give him a chance to limber up.

  The drums of its brain, which had never before recorded a man, were spinning.

  Then the consciousness of its kind swept over it and it moved forward.

  Manolo swirled his cape and kicked its fender as it roared past.

  The door of the great garage closed.

  When it reached the opposite side of the ring the car stopped, parked.

  Cries of disgust, booing and hissing arose from the crowd.

  Still the Pontiac remained parked.

  Two pumpers, bearing buckets, emerged from behind the fence and threw mud upon its windshield.

  It roared then and pursued the nearest, banging into the fence. Then it turned suddenly, sighted Dos Muertos and charged.

  His veronica transformed him into a statue with a
skirt of silver. The enthusiasm of the crowd was mighty.

  It turned and charged once more, and I wondered at Manolo's skill, for it would seem that his buttons had scraped cherry paint from the side panels.

  Then it paused, spun its wheels, ran in a circle about the ring.

  The crowd roared as it moved past him and recircled.

  Then it stopped again, perhaps fifty feet away.

  Manolo turned his back upon it and waved to the crowd.

  —Again, the cheering and the calling of his name.

  He gestured to someone behind the fence.

  A pumper emerged and bore to him, upon a velvet cushion, his chrome-plated monkey wrench.

  He turned then again to the Pontiac and strode toward it.

  It stood there shivering and he knocked off its radiator cap.

  A jet of steaming water shot into the air and the crowd bellowed. Then he struck the front of the radiator and banged upon each fender.

  He turned his back upon it again and stood there.

  When he heard the engagement of the gears he turned once more, and with one clean pass it was by him, but not before he had banged twice upon the trunk with his wrench.

  It moved to the other end of the ring and parked.

  Manolo raised his hand to the pumper behind the fence.

  The man with the cushion emerged and bore to him the long-handled screwdriver and the short cape. He took the monkey wrench away with him, as well as the long cape.

  Another silence came over the Plaza del Autos.

  The Pontiac, as if sensing all this, turned once more and blew its horn twice. Then it charged.

  There were dark spots upon the sand from where its radiator had leaked water. Its exhaust arose like a ghost behind it. It bore down upon him at a terrible speed.

  Dos Muertos raised the cape before him and rested the blade of the screwdriver upon his left forearm.

  When it seemed he would surely be run down, his hand shot forward, so fast the eye could barely follow it, and he stepped to the side as the engine began to cough.

  Still the Pontiac continued on with a deadly momentum, turned sharply without braking, rolled over, slid into the fence, and began to burn. Its engine coughed and died.