Selections

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “We don’t have slaves,” Guinn said stupidly.

  Morgan knelt at his feet. “She is yours if you wish it,” said Merlin.

  Leaning on his great sword, Guinn reached and took the chain. “Stand up, Morgan,” he said. “You embarrass me.” He tugged at the chain. “Merlin, take this thing off her.”

  Merlin sighed. “As you wish.” He made the slightest of gestures and the chain fell away. “But I warn you—she is called the Wild for good reason. She is that which appears to be something else. She is the very source of the term ‘fey.’”

  “Wild I may be,” said Morgan in a low voice, “but I feel I shall be tamed for this one’s lifetime—yes, and all his others.”

  Guinn walked to the cave-mouth and knelt by Garry. “He’s still alive! If only we could get him to a doctor!”

  “There will be time,” said Morgan, with a peculiar quirk to her mouth.

  There was a moan from the cave. Guinn bent and peered in. He turned and took the Grail from Morgan. “Give her a hand,” he said, and turned away.

  Merlin stood looking hungrily at the Grail. “May I drink?”

  Guinn looked at him quizzically. “I don’t know, Merlin,” he said honestly. “I’m going to need a whole mess of indoctrination here. I don’t know what I should or shouldn’t do.”

  “It will do nothing but good, believe me.”

  “Can’t you wait a bit?”

  “Ay.” Merlin heaved an enormous sigh. “But after waiting near two thousand years, it isn’t easy.”

  Lynn stumbled out of the cave. Her clothes were torn, and there were ugly fingernail scratches on her shoulders. She flung herself on Garry and lay in a twisted ecstasy of tortured sobs.

  Morgan knelt and held her. “Give her the Grail,” she said urgently to Guinn. “Make her walk with it while she weeps. While she weeps!”

  Guinn gently lifted the sobbing girl. “Lynn, honey. Here. Here—take this.”

  Lynn strained toward Garry. Guinn tilted her face up and only then did she see his shining armor and great sword. She blinked in surprise. And then the radiance of the Grail suffused her. She put out her hands blindly and he gave it to her.

  “Here, dear,” called Morgan from a short distance.

  Her sobs gradually subsiding, Lynn walked to her and gave her the chalice. Morgan took it, narrowed her eyes, and suddenly the astonished Lynn was arrayed in a beautifully draped Grecian dress.

  “Now, what was that for?” asked Guinn.

  Merlin smiled. “Don’t you remember the qualities of the Grail? ‘The weeping maiden who bears it shall retain perennial youth.’ Morgan is a woman with the values and compassions of a woman.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Guinn devoutly, remembering his last meeting with Morgan. “Merlin, help me out of this hardware.”

  “So be it,” said Merlin. He reached out and took the sword, and the golden chain-mail vanished, surplice and all.

  “Hey!” Guinn yelped, and dove into the cave. He found his clothes and pulled them on.

  “How do you feel, boy?”

  They were in the car, working gently down the switchback road toward the town. Garry lay on the wide back seat, with his head on Lynn’s lap. Morgan and Guinn were in front. (Merlin, who scorned any mechanical transportation, was left behind “to take care of the goats,” he had said. Morgan had explained to him that old Sam would find the goats in an empty lot near his place in town. “You’ll understand how, one day.”)

  Garry grinned weakly. “I feel pretty damn itchy,” he said. “But I’m gonna be all right.”

  Guinn glanced quickly at Morgan and she nodded. “He will be. No man can die within eight days once he’s seen the Grail.”

  Guinn glanced into the rear-view mirror again. There was no doubt of the fact that Garry was alive and chipper.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ve been in the dark altogether too damn much. Let’s have it. Where did all this start?”

  She smiled, and touched his shoulder. “It’s a big thing and requires big thinking, darling.”

  “I can try.”

  She settled back in her seat. “Well, first, you’ve got to get used to the idea of a race of beings so enormous, so powerful, that you can’t fully comprehend them. You just have to know they’re there.”

  “Gods?”

  “Do ants think elephants are gods? Do birds think locomotives are gods? By all means believe in God, but if you do, do Him the justice to believe that he is a God to the Great Beings as well.”

  “Theology later,” said Guinn. “Go on.”

  “When it became evident that this planet would support such as we, the Great Ones supplied guidance for us. They put it on Earth and went on. It is not their custom to stop and watch a civilization grow. They do what they do in order to prevent imbalances that might disrupt little corners of the universe. Once a race in this very system blew up its planet, you know. Their balances prevent that. Or they should. And now they will again.”

  “What is this—guidance?”

  “A permeating, controlling force for each of the great basics of life: growth and decay. A better way of putting it is the anabolism and the catabolism which together comprise metabolism. There is a force that builds and a force that destroys; one that delivers heat and one that absorbs it. It’s light and dark. It’s yin and yang, the oldest symbol known to man—a circle divided in two by the S-shaped line inside of it, one half light, one half dark.”

  “Good and evil.”

  “No!” she said explosively. “Not that! Good and evil are erroneous human concepts that derive from the terrible mistake that was made here.”

  “What mistake?”

  “Mythology contains many a mention of it, though few regard it as the disaster it was. You see, only one of these forces has been fully operating on earth. The other is crippled, subdued.”

  “What happened?”

  Morgan wrinkled her brow. “First, let me explain what the effect of this imbalance is. If you put a cup on a table, and extend your hand to pick it up, you are moving directly toward an established aim. If you shove your arm all the way, as far as it will go, you’ll push the cup all the way across and send it crashing to the floor on the other side. Yet no one can deny that your force was applied to the desired end, in the right direction, with the correct motivations.

  “There is nothing evil or dangerous or harmful on this planet except excess. There’s no such thing as a deadly poison; there’s just too much of a poison. Too much pleasure is pain; too much fear (a fine survival characteristic) or too much anger (and that’s another) means madness.”

  “I think I see. Then which of these powers was crippled?”

  “The power of darkness—destruction—anabolism.”

  “You’re out of your head! This planet’s loaded with it!”

  She shook her head sagely. “It’s building—building gone out of control. It’s the cause of technology’s outstripping the spirit. Every nation that smashes every other nation does it through a desire to construct something—a political philosophy, an empire, a personal fortune or a personal power. It’s construction that’s killing us off. It’s cancer!”

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  “Humans don’t. How can they? They’re born to it. But that can all be changed. It’s up to you.”

  “Me?”

  “You. Only you have the power to give the Grail to Merlin.”

  “What has that to do with it?”

  “Remember your reading about him? What was his parentage?”

  “He was—he was born of a virgin.”

  “That’s right. That is the way the guidances are placed on a planet. Merlin’s the antichrist—yes. But don’t recoil from that word. I tell you it has nothing to do with evil—everything to do with balance.”

  “What would the world be like with that force in it?”

  “That requires a whole new system of thought. It’s hard to put into human language. Have you ever heard of so
meone committing a crime for his own benefit?”

  “All the time.”

  “Well, try to imagine a culture in which it would be impossible to construct that sentence, because ‘crime’ and ‘benefit’ couldn’t exist in the same idea-sequence!”

  He was quiet for a long time. At last he said, “Mankind as a unit of free things, eh? Each with the full consciousness of the whole species?”

  She shrugged. “Action is a light force, inhibition a dark one. The name you have for rational inhibition is conscience. Imagine all mankind with a cohesive conscience, and you’ll get the picture.”

  Guinn wet his lips. “And what about you? And the Druids?”

  “There’s a long word for me. I’m a metempsychotic. I get transferred complete from one body to another, with complete memory. That’s how I can do the things I do. None of it’s magic. It’s just that for me there have been no dark ages. It’s all soundly scientific. The money in your wallet? A kind of teleportation. The chair that moved by itself? Telekinesis.

  “The same thing’s true of the Druids. ‘Druid’ isn’t the name of a religious sect, by the way; it’s a title, like ‘chancellor’ or ‘minister’. They’re metempsychotics too, but for the dark powers. I’m neutral. I imagine I’m a sort of recording device for the Great Ones.”

  “And how did the one force get crippled?”

  “These guidances are put among humans in human terms. The antichrist was baptized! His mother confessed her visitation to a man who had the power to do it. And that is Merlin—fully possessed of the dark powers, but unable to use them for their intended purposes!”

  “And the Grail?”

  “Pure and simple, a power source. That jewel is a reservoir of vital energy. It was left in charge of a line of kings—the most cohesive form of authority at that time—and of them, the revered Arthur pen Dragon…I hope I’m not knocking over any childhood idols.”

  “Not mine,” said Guinn sullenly.

  “King Arthur was a petty, self-righteous little martinet with a weak mind and a strong arm. He fell in accord with a renegade Druid who got him to turn the Grail completely to the powers of light. It shouldn’t be denied them, of course; but neither should it be monopolized. The Grail itself, in its symbolized chalice form, was put into an immaterial form, keyed to the very special aura of a certain kind of man, a man who couldn’t exist as long as the dark powers were crippled!

  “So we—Merlin and I—searched until we found suitable material, and then made what environmental changes we could until we got one. You. Percival almost made it, but not quite. He wasn’t—well—dirty enough.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s been tough sledding. Merlin had to keep his powers under forced draft by any means he could. That ritual you saw is one of the ways. The combination of auras of hypnotized animals, a virgin, oak, mistletoe and fresh-killed mammals is a tremendous recharge. With the Grail it won’t be necessary.”

  “And Mordi?”

  “A madman. Happened to be a genealogist and found that he was of the true pen Dragon stock—the last of the pure line, most fortunately. Got to fooling around with old rituals and found that the Druids, even Merlin himself, were bound to him. He wanted the Grail as a personal power-source—which, God knows, it certainly is.”

  Guinn drove thoughtfully for a while. Then, “I called him Mordred.” Morgan laughed. “There may be more pattern behind this than anyone—even Merlin and I—know. For we have a Gareth and his Lynette; we had a Percival, the good man who almost had the Grail. And Mordred, the deputy King who turned so evil.”

  “There was a gasp from the back seat. Lynn said, “Mordi—he saw the Grail. He’ll live eight days?”

  “At least,” said Morgan cheerfully. And Guinn, holding the wheel, saw a flash of that bodiless head, blinking and tonguing up at him. Then he thought of Gary propped up against the cave entrance, dying, and watching…and he drove without speaking.

  “So it’s up to you, chum,” said Morgan. “Give Merlin the Grail, and restore some balance to this rock, or don’t, and we’ll keep on building Babel.”

  “Excalibur and the atom, is that it? Wait. The atom bomb is a disruptive dark-power device if anything ever was. Right?”

  “Right,” said Morgan. “A feeble victory for Merlin’s side. It’s the H-bomb we’re worried about. That’s fusion—that’s building. Darling, if you give Merlin the Grail, that damned thing…won’t…work!”

  Garry said, weakly, “Hey, boss. Just who are you?”

  When Guinn didn’t answer, Morgan laughed and said, “He’s Hadley Guinn. He got his last name from the only name anyone knew his mother by. It was Guinevere. He called himself Hadley because he got sick and tired of getting kidded about his real name.” She hugged him. “In a couple thousand years, he’ll get over that.”

  Guinn took a deep breath and said it, all by himself—the one word that had been anathema to him all his life, that had poisoned the whole Round Table legend for him.

  “Galahad,” he said. “By God, I’m Galahad, that’s who I am!”

  And when they test the H-bomb, you’ll know what he decided.

  SHOTTLE BOP

  Originally published in Unknown Worlds, February 1941

  I'd never seen the place before, and I lived just down the block and around the corner. I'll even give you the address, if you like. "The Shottle Bop," between Twentieth and Twenty-first Streets, on Tenth Avenue in New York City. You can find it if you go there looking for it. Might even be worth your while, too. But you'd better not. "The Shottle Bop." It got me. It was a small shop with a weather-beaten sign swung from a wrought crane, creaking dismally in the late fall wind. I walked past it, thinking of the engagement ring in my pocket and how it had just been handed back to me by Audrey, and my mind was far removed from such things as shottle bops. I was thinking that Audrey might have used a gentler term than "useless" in describing me: and her neatly turned remark about my being a "constitutional psychopathic incompetent" was as uncalled for as it was spectacular. She must have read it somewere, balanced as it was by "And I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth!" which is a notably worn cliche. "Shottle Bop!" I muttered, and then paused, wondering where I had picked up such oddly rhythmic syllables with which to express myself. I'd seen it on that sign, of course, and it had caught my eye. "And what," I asked myself, "might be a Shottle Bop?" Myself replied promptly, "Dunno. Toddle back and have a look." So toddle I did, back along the east side of Tenth, wondering what manner of man might be running such an establishment in pursuance of what kind of business. I was enlightened on the second point by a sign in the window, all but obscured by the dust and ashes of apparent centuries, which read:

  WE SELL BOTTLES

  There was another line of smaller print there. I rubbed at the crusted glass with my sleeve and finally was able to make out.

  With things in them.

  Just like that:

  WE SELL BOTTLES

  With things in them

  Well of course I went in. Sometimes very delightful things come in bottles, and the way I was feeling, I could stand a little delighting. "Close it!" shrilled a voice, as I pushed through the door. The voice came from a shimmering egg adrift in the air behind the counter, low-down. Peering over, I saw that it was not an egg at all, but the bald pate of an old man who was clutching the edge of the counter, his scrawny body streaming away in the slight draft from the open door, as if he were made of bubbles. A mite startled, I kicked the door with my heel. He immediately fell on his face, and then scrambled smiling to his feet. "Ah, it's so good to see you again," he rasped. I think his vocal cords were dusty, too. Everything else here was. As the door swung to, I felt as if I were inside a great dusty brain that had just closed its eyes. Oh yes, there was light enough. But it wasn't the lamp light and it wasn't daylight. It was like light reflected from the cheeks of pale people. Can't say I enjoyed it much. "What do you mean, `again'?" I asked irritably. "You never saw me before."


  "I saw you when you came in and I fell down and got up and saw you again," he quibbled, and beamed. "What can me foo for do?"

  "Huh?" I huhed, and then translated it into What can I do for you? "Oh,” I said. “Well, I saw your sign. What have you got in a bottle that I might like?"

  "What do you want?" "What've you got?" He broke into a piping chant I remember it yet, word for word.

  "For half a buck, a vial of luck or a bottle of nifty breaks or a flask of joy,

  Or Myrna Loy For luncheon with sirloin steaks.

  Pour out a mug from this old jug, and you'll never get wet in rains.

  I've bottles of grins and racetrack wins and lotions to ease your pains.

  Here's bottles of imps and wet-pack shrimps from a sea unknown to man,

  And an elixir to banish fear,

  And the sap from the pipes of Pan.

  With the powdered horn of a unicorn

  You can win yourself a mate;

  With the rich hobnob; or get a job.

  It's yours at a lowered rate."

  "Now wait right there!" I snapped. "You mean you actually sell dragon's blood and ink from the pen of Friar Bacon and all such mumbo-jum?" He nodded rapidly and smiled all over his improbable face. I went on "The genuine article?"

  He kept on nodding. I regarded him for a moment.

  "You mean to stand there with your teeth in your mouth and your bare face hanging out and tell me that in this day and age, in this city and in broad daylight, you sell such trash and then expect me, an enlightened intellectual"

  "You are very stupid and twice as bombastic," he said quietly.

  I glowered at him and reached for the doorknob and there I froze. And I mean froze. For the old man whipped out an ancient bulb-type atomizer and squeezed a couple of whiffs at me as I turned away; and so help me, I couldn't move! I could cuss, though, and boy, did I.