The Second Fredric Brown Megapack: 27 Classic Science Fiction Stories

by Fredric Brown

  And he was afraid to take it himself because he wasn’t sure he wanted to become immortal. With things as they were even in the U.S.S.R.—not to consider what they must be outside it—was it really worthwhile to live forever, or even indefinitely?

  He compromised by neither giving it to anyone else nor taking it himself, for the time being, until he could make up his mind about it.

  Meanwhile he carried with him the only dose of the drug he had made up. It was only a minute quantity that fitted into a tiny capsule that was insoluble and could be carried in his mouth. He attached it to the side of one of his dentures, so that it rested safely between denture and cheek and he would be in no danger of swallowing it inadvertently.

  But if he should so decide at any time he could reach into his mouth, crash the capsule with a thumbnail, and become immortal.

  He so decided one day when, after coming down with lobar pneumonia and being taken to a Moscow hospital, he learned from overhearing a conversation between a doctor and nurse who erroneously thought he was asleep, that he was expected to die within a few hours.

  Fear of death proved greater than fear of immortality, whatever immortality might bring, so, as soon as the doctor and the nurse had left the room, he crushed the capsule and swallowed its contents.

  He hoped that, since death might be so imminent, the drug would work in time to save his life. It did work in time, although by the time it had taken effect he had slipped into semicoma and delirium.

  Three years later, in 1981, he was still in semicoma and delirium, and the Russian doctors had finally diagnosed his case and ceased to be puzzled by it.

  Obviously Smetakovsky had taken some sort of immortality drug—one which they found it impossible to isolate or analyze—and it was keeping him from dying and would no doubt do so indefinitely if not forever.

  But unfortunately it had also made immortal the pneumococci in his body, the bacteria (diplococci pneumoniae) that had caused his pneumonia in the first place and would now continue to maintain it forever. So the doctors, being realists and seeing no reason to burden themselves by giving him custodial care in perpetuity, simply buried him.

  MILLENNIUM

  Hades was hell, Satan thought; that was why he loved the place. He leaned forward across his gleaming desk and flicked the switch of the intercom.

  “Yes, Sire,” said the voice of Lilith, his secretary.

  “How many today?”

  “Four of them. Shall I send one of them in?”

  “Yes—wait. Any of them look as though he might be an unselfish one?”

  “One of them does, I think. But so what, Sire? There’s one chance in billions of his making The Ultimate Wish.”

  Even at the sound of those last words Satan shivered despite the heat. It was his most constant, almost his only worry that someday someone might make The Ultimate Wish, the ultimate, unselfish wish. And then it would happen; Satan would find himself chained for a thousand years, and out of business for the rest of eternity after that.

  But Lilith was right, he told himself.

  Only about one person out of a thousand sold his soul for the granting of even a minor unselfish wish, and it might be millions of years yet, or forever, before the ultimate one was made. Thus far, no one had even come close to it.

  “Okay, Lil,” he said. “Just the same, send him in first; I’d rather get it over with.” He flicked off the intercom.

  The little man who came through the big doorway certainly didn’t look dangerous; he looked plain scared.

  Satan frowned at him. “You know the terms?”

  “Yes,” said the little man. “At least, I think I do. In exchange for your granting any one wish I make, you get my soul when I die. Is that right?”

  “Right. Your wish?”

  “Well,” said the little man, “I’ve thought it out pretty carefully and—”

  “Get to the point. I’m busy. Your wish?”

  “Well…I wish that, without any change whatsoever in myself, I become the most evil, stupid and miserable person on Earth.”

  Satan screamed.

  SECOND CHANCE

  Jay and I were in the stands at New Comiskey Field in Chicago to watch the replay of the October 9, 1959, game of the World Series, and play was about to start.

  In the original game just exactly five hundred years ago, the Los Angeles Dodgers had won, nine to three, which had ended the series in six games and had given them the championship. Of course it could come out differently this time, although conditions at the start were as near as possible to those of the original game.

  The Chicago White Sox were out on the field and the starting players were tossing the ball around the infield a few times before throwing it to Wynn, the starting pitcher, to take his warm-up pitches. Kluszewski was on first, Fox on second, Goodman on third, and Aparicio was playing short. Gilliam was coming up to bat first for the Dodgers, with Neal on deck. Podres would be their starting pitcher.

  They were not the original players of those names, of course. They were androids, artificial men who differ from robots in that they are made not of metal but of flexible plastics, powered by laboratory-grown muscles, and designed as exact simulacrums of human beings. These were as nearly exact replicas as possible of the original players of half a millennium ago. As with all reproduced athletes of ancient games and contests, early records, pictures, television films, and other sources had been exhaustively studied; each android not only looked like and played like the ancient player he represented, but was adjusted to be just as skillful as and no more skillful than his prototype. He hadn’t played over an entire season—baseball is now limited to the set of World Series games played once a year on the semimillennial anniversaries of the original games—but if he had played for the whole season his batting and fielding averages would have been identical to those of the player he imitated; so would the earned-run average of the pitchers.

  In theory the scores should come out the same as those of the individual games, but of course there are the breaks, and the fact that the respective managers—also androids—may choose to issue different instructions and make different substitutions. The same team usually wins the Series that originally won it, but not always in the same number of games, and the scores of individual games sometimes vary widely from the original scores.

  This particular game kept the same score, nothing to nothing, for two innings, as the original, but it varied widely in the third; that had been the big inning for the Dodgers with six runs. This time Wynn let three men get on base with only one out, but managed to put out the fire and hold the Dodgers scoreless.

  The stands and bleachers started roaring. And Jay, who favors the White Sox, made me a bet; he’d been afraid to offer even odds till that half inning was over.

  In the sixth inning—but the game is on record, so why go into details? The White Sox did win, by a one-run margin, and stayed in the Series. It was three games apiece, and the Sox would have a chance tomorrow to make it a complete upset and win the championship.

  Jay (his real name is J with twelve digits after it) and I stood up to leave, as did the rest of the spectators. There was a wave of bright steel throughout the stands.

  “I wonder,” Jay said, “what it would be like to see a game really played by human beings, as it used to be.”

  “I wonder,” I said, “what it would be like just to see a real human being. I’m less than two hundred and there haven’t been any alive for at least four hundred years. How’d you like to go with me for a lube job? If I don’t get one today I’ll start getting rusty. And how do you want to bet on tomorrow’s game? The White Sox have a second chance, even if the human race hasn’t. Well, we keep their traditions alive as much as we can.”

  CONTACT

  Dhar Ry sat alone in his room, meditating. From outside the door he caught a thought wave equivalent to a knock, and, glancing at the door, he willed it to slide open. It slid open. “Enter, my friend,” he said. He could have pr
ojected the idea telepathically, but with only two persons present, speech was more polite.

  Ejon Khee entered. “You are up late tonight, my leader,” he said.

  “Yes, Khee. Within an hour the Earth rocket is due to land, and I wish to see it. Yes, I know, it will land a thousand miles away, if their calculations are correct. Beyond the horizon. But if it lands even twice that far the flash of the atomic explosion should be visible, and I have waited long for first contact. For even though no Earthman will be on that rocket, it will still be first contact—for them. Of course our telepath teams have been reading their thoughts for many centuries, but—this will be the first physical contact between Mars and Earth.”

  Khee made himself comfortable in one of the low chairs. “True,” he said. “I have not followed recent reports too closely, though. Why are they using an atomic warhead? I know they think our planet is probably uninhabited, but still—”

  “They will watch the flash through their lunar telescopes and get a—what do they call it?—a spectroscopic analysis, which will tell them more than they know now (or think they know; much of it is erroneous) about the atmosphere of our planet and the composition of its surface. It is—call it a sighting shot, Khee. They’ll be here in person within a few oppositions. And then—”

  Mars was holding out, waiting for Earth to come. What was left of Mars, that is; this one small city of about nine hundred beings. The civilization of Mars was older than that of Earth, but it was a dying one. This was what remained of it, one city, nine hundred people. They were waiting for Earth to make contact, for a selfish reason and for an unselfish one.

  Martian civilization had developed in a quite different direction from that of Earth. It had developed no important knowledge of the physical sciences, no technology. But it had developed social sciences to the point where there had not been a single crime, let alone a war, on Mars for fifty thousand years. And it had developed fully the parapsychological sciences, the sciences of the mind, that Earth was just beginning to discover.

  Mars could teach Earth much. How to avoid crime and war, two simple things, to begin with. Beyond those simple things, telepathy, telekinesis, empathy…

  And Earth would, Mars hoped, teach them something even more valuable to Mars: how, by science and technology—which it was too late for Mars to develop now, even if they had the types of minds which would enable them to develop these things—to restore and rehabilitate a dying planet, so that an otherwise dying race might live and multiply again. Each planet would gain greatly, and neither would lose.

  And tonight was the night when Earth would make its first contact, a sighting shot. Its next shot, a rocket containing Earthmen or at least an Earthman, would be at the next opposition, two Earth years, or roughly four Martian years, hence. The Martians knew this because their teams of telepaths were able to catch at least some of the thoughts of Earthmen, enough to know their plans. Unfortunately, at that distance, the connection was one-way and Mars could not ask Earth to hurry its program. Or tell Earth scientists the facts about Mars’ composition and atmosphere which would have made this preliminary shot unnecessary.

  Tonight Ry, the leader (as nearly as the Martian word can be translated), and Khee, his administrative assistant and closest friend, sat and meditated together until the time was near. Then they drank a toast to the future—in a beverage based on menthol, which had the same effect on Martians as alcohol on Earthmen—and climbed to the roof of the building in which they had been sitting. They watched toward the north, where the rocket should land. The stars shone brilliantly through the thin atmosphere…

  * * * *

  In Observatory No. 1 on Earth’s moon, Rog Everett, his eye at the eyepiece of the spotter scope, said triumphantly, “Thar she blew, Willie. And now, as soon as the films are developed, we’ll know the score on that old planet Mars.” He straightened up—there’d be no more to see now—and he and Willie Sanger shook hands solemnly; it was a historical occasion.

  “Hope it didn’t kill anybody. Any Martians, that is. Rog, did it hit dead center in Syrtis Major?”

  “Near as matters. The pix will show exactly but I’d say it was maybe a thousand miles off, to the south. And that’s damn close on a fifty-million-mile shot. Willie, do you really think there are any Martians?”

  Willie thought a second and then said, “No.”

  Willie was right.

  A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

  Looking at it one way, you could say that it happened a great many different times over a twenty-four hour period; another way, that it happened once and all at once.

  It happened, that is, at 8:30 P.M. on Wednesday, June 9th, 1954. That means it came first, of course, in the Marshall Islands, the Gilbert Islands and in all the other islands—and on all the ships at sea—which were just west of the International Date Line. It was twenty-four hours later in happening in the various islands and on the various ships just east of the International Date Line.

  Of course, on ships which, during that twenty-four hour period, crossed the date line from east to west and therefore had two 8:30 P.M.’s, both on June 9th, it happened twice. On ships crossing the other way and therefore having no 8:30 P.M. (or one bell, if we must be nautical) it didn’t happen at all.

  That may sound complicated, but it’s simple, really. Just say that it happened at 8:30 P.M. everywhere, regardless of time belts and strictly in accordance with whether or not the area in question had or did not have daylight saving time. Simply that: 8:30 P.M. everywhere.

  And 8:30 P.M. everywhere is just about the optimum moment for radio listening, which undoubtedly had something to do with it. Otherwise somebody or something went to an awful lot of unnecessary trouble, so to stagger the times that they would be the same all over the world.

  Even if, at 8:30 on June 9, 1954, you weren’t listening to your radio—and you probably were—you certainly remember it. The world was on the brink of war. Oh, it had been on the brink of war for years, but this time its toes were over the edge and it balanced precariously. There were special sessions in—but we’ll come to that later.

  Take Dan Murphy, inebriated Australian of Irish birth, being pugnacious in a Brisbane pub. And the Dutchman known as Dutch being pugnacious right back. The radio blaring. The bartender trying to quiet them down and the rest of the crowd trying to egg them on. You’ve seen it happen and you’ve heard it happen, unless you make a habit of staying out of waterfront saloons.

  Murphy had stepped back from the bar already and was wiping his hands on the sides of his dirty sweat shirt. He was well into the preliminaries. He said, “Why, you—!” and waited for the riposte. He wasn’t disappointed. “—you!” said Dutch.

  That, as it happened, was at twenty-nine minutes and twenty-eight seconds past eight o’clock, June 9, 1954. Dan Murphy took a second or two to smile happily and get his dukes up. Then something happened to the radio. For a fraction of a second, only that long, it went dead. Then a quite calm, quite ordinary voice said, “And now a word from our sponsor.” And there was something—some ineffably indefinable quality—in the voice that made everybody in the room listen and hear. Dan Murphy with his right pulled back for a roundhouse swing; Dutch the Dutchman with his feet ready to step back from it and his forearm ready to block it; the bartender with his hand on the bung starter under the bar and his knees bent ready to vault over the bar.

  A full frozen second, and then a different voice, also from the radio, said “Fight.”

  One word, only one word. Probably the only time in history that “a word from our sponsor” on the radio had been just that. And I won’t try to describe the inflection of that word; it has been too variously described. You’ll find people who swear it was said viciously, in hatred; others who are equally sure that it was calm and cold. But it was unmistakably a command, in whatever tone of voice.

  And then there was a fraction of a second of silence again and then the regular program—in the case of the radio in the Brisbane pub, an Ha
waiian instrumental group—was back on.

  Dan Murphy took another step backwards, and said, “Wait a minute. What the hell was that?”

  Dutch the Dutchman had already lowered his big fists and was turning to the radio. Everybody else in the place was staring at it already. The bartender had taken his hand off the bung-starter. He said, “—me for a — — ——. What was that an ad for?”

  “Let’s call this off a minute, Dutch,” Dan Murphy said. “I got a funny feeling like that—radio was talking to me. Personally. And what the——business has a bloody wireless set got telling me what to do?”

  “Me too,” Dutch said, sincerely if a bit ambiguously. He put his elbows on the bar and stared at the radio. Nothing but the plaintive sliding wail of an Hawaiian ensemble came out of it.

  Dan Murphy stepped to the bar beside him. He said, “What the devil were we fighting about?”

  “You called me a——” Dutch reminded him.

  “And I said,-you.”

  “Oh,” Murphy said. “All right, in a couple minutes I’ll knock your head off. But right now I want to think a bit. How’s about a drink?”

  “Sure,” Dutch said.

  For some reason, they never got around to starting the fight.

  Take, two and a half hours later (but still at 8:30 P.M.), the conversation of Mr. and Mrs. Wade Evans of Oklahoma City, presently in their room at the Grand Hotel, Singapore, dressing to go night-clubbing in what they thought was the most romantic city of their round-the-world cruise. The room radio going, but quite softly (Mrs. Evans had turned it down so her husband wouldn’t miss a word of what she had to say to him, which was plenty).

  “And the way you acted yesterday evening on the boat with that Miss—Mamselle Cartier—Cah-tee-yay. Half your age, and French. Honestly, Wade, I don’t see why you took me along at all on this cruise. Second honeymoon, indeed!”