Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  Three months out:

  Brunei stepped through the stuccoed portal, and into the central Spanish garden. He noticed that the sky was blue, with a few fleecy white clouds.

  But then, the weather was always good. They had agreed on it.

  Lazar, Ingrid, Lin Pey and Vera were sitting on the green lawn surrounding the fountain.

  Daker, Joby, Linda and Donner preferred the shade, and lounged against the white arabesqued wall which enclosed the garden on four sides, broken only by four arched entrance portals.

  The garden had been a good compromise, thought Brunei. Something for everyone. Fresh air and sun-shine, but also the mental security offered by the walls, which also provided shade for those who wanted it. A fountain, a few palm trees, grass, flowers, even the little formal Japanese rock garden that Lin Pey had insisted on.

  "Hello, Ollie," said Lazar. "Nice day."

  "Isn't it always?" replied Brunei. "How about a little shower?"

  "Maybe tomorrow."

  "I notice a lot of sleeping people today," said Brunei.

  "Yes," said Lin Pey. "By now, the garden seems to be able to maintain itself."

  "You think it has a separate existence?" asked Ingrid.

  "Of course not," said Vera. "Our subconscious minds are maintaining it. It's probably here when we're all asleep."

  "No way of telling that," said Brunei. "Besides, how can it exist when we're asleep, when it doesn't really exist to begin with?"

  "Semantics, Ollie, semantics."

  Brunei took a bottle of Omnidrene out of his pocket. "Time to charge up the old batteries again," he said.

  He passed out the pills.

  "I notice Marsha is still in her cabin."

  "Yeah," said Lazar, "she keeps to herself a lot. No great—"

  Just then, Marsha burst into the garden, screaming: "Make it go away! Make it go away!"

  Behind her slithered a gigantic black snake, with a head as big as a horse's, and bulging red eyes.

  "I thought we agreed to leave our private hallucinations in our cabins," snapped Brunei.

  "I tried! I tried! I don't want it around, but it won't go away! Do something!"

  Ten feet of snake had already entered the garden. The thing seemed endless.

  "Take it easy," said Lazar. "Let's all concentrate and think it away."

  They tried to erase the snake, but it just rolled its big red eyes.

  "That won't work," said Vera. "Her subconscious is still fighting us. Part of her must want the snake here. We've all got to be together to erase it."

  Marsha began to cry. The snake advanced another two feet.

  "Oh, quiet!" rasped Lazar. "Ollie, do I have your permission to bring my dragon into the garden? He'll make short work of the snake."

  Brunei scowled. "You and your dragon.... Oh, maybe it'll work."

  Instantly, the green dragon was in the garden. But it was no longer five feet long and bovine.

  It was a good twelve feet long, with cold reptilian eyes and big yellow fangs.

  It took one look at the snake, opened its powerful jaws, and belched a huge tongue of orange flame.

  The serpent was incinerated. It disappeared.

  Brunei was trembling. "What happened, Lazar?" he said. "That's not the same stupid little dragon."

  "Hah ... hah...." squeaked Lazar. "He's ... uh ... grown...."

  Brunei suddenly noticed that Lazar was ashen. He also noticed that the dragon was turning in their direction.

  "Get it out of here, Lazar! Get it out of here!"

  Lazar nodded. The dragon flickered and went pale, but it was over a minute before it disappeared entirely.

  Six months out:

  Things wandered the passageways and haunted the cabins. Marsha's snake was back. There was Lazar's dragon, which seemed to grow larger every day. There was also a basilisk, a pterodactyl, a vampire bat with a five-foot wingspread, an old-fashioned red spade-tailed demon and other assorted horrors.

  Even Oliver Brunei's friendly Saint Bernard had grown to monstrous size, turned pale green, and grown large yellow fangs.

  Only the Spanish garden in the common room was free of the monstrosities. Here, the combined conscious minds of the ten crew members were still strong enough to banish the rampaging hallucinations.

  The ten of them sat around the fountain, which seemed a shade less sparkling.

  There were even rainclouds in the sky.

  "I don't like it," said Bram Daker. "It's getting completely out of control."

  "So we just have to stay in the garden, that's all," said Brunei. "The food's all here, and so is the Omnidrene. And they can't come here."

  "Not yet," said Marsha.

  They all shuddered.

  "What went wrong?" asked Ingrid.

  "Nothing," said Donner. "They didn't know what would happen when they sent us out, so we can't say they were wrong."

  "Very comforting," croaked Lazar. "But can someone tell me why we can't control them any more?"

  "Who knows?" said Brunei. "At least we can keep them out of here. That's—"

  There was a snuffling at the wall. The head of something like a Tyrannosaurus Rex peered over the wall at them.

  "Ugh!" said Lin Pey. "I think that's a new one."

  The dragon's head appeared alongside the Tyrannosaur's.

  "Well, at least there's a familiar face," tittered Linda.

  "Very funny."

  Marsha screamed. The huge black snake thrust its head through a portal.

  And the flap of leathery wings could be heard. And the smell of sulphur.

  "Come on! Come on!" shouted Brunei. "Let's get these things out of here!"

  After five minutes of intense group concentration, the last of the horrors was banished.

  "It was a lot harder this time," said Daker.

  "There were more of them," said Donner.

  "They're getting stronger and bolder."

  "Maybe some day they'll break through, and...." Lin Pey let the sentence hang. Everyone supplied his own ending.

  "Don't be ridiculous!" snapped Brunei. "They're not real. They can't kill us!"

  "Maybe we should stop taking the Omnidrene?" suggested Vera, without very much conviction.

  "At this point?" said Brunei. He shuddered. "If the garden disappeared, and we had nothing but the bare ship for the next fifteen and a half years, and we knew it, and at the same time knew that we had the Omnidrene to bring it back.... How long do you think we'd hold off?"

  "You're right," said Vera.

  "We just have to stick it out," said Brunei. "Just remember: They can't kill us. They aren't real."

  "Yes," the crew whispered in a tiny, frail voice, "they aren't real...."

  Seven months out:

  The garden was covered with a gloomy gray cloud layer. Even the "weather" was getting harder and harder to control.

  The crew of starship Number Thirteen huddled around the fountain, staring into the water, trying desperately to ignore the snufflings, flappings, wheezes and growls coming from outside the walls. But occasionally, a scaly head would raise itself above the wall, or a pterodactyl or bat would flap overhead, and there would be violent shudders.

  "I still think we should stop taking the Omnidrene," said Vera Galindez.

  "If we stopped taking it," asked Brunei, "which would disappear first, them ... or the garden?"

  Vera grimaced. "But we've got to do something," she said. "We can't even make them disappear at all, any more. And it's becoming a full time job just to keep them outside the walls."

  "And sooner or later," interjected Lazar, "we're not going to be strong enough to keep them out...."

  "Brr!"

  "The snake! The snake!" screamed Marsha. "It's coming in again!"

  The huge black head was already through a portal.

  "Stop the snake, everyone!" yelled Brunei. Eyes were riveted on the ugly serpent, in intense concentration.

  After five minutes, it was obviously a stalemate. The
snake had not been able to advance, nor could the humans force it to retreat.

  Then smoke began to rise behind the far wall.

  "The dragon's burning down the wall!" shrieked Lazar. "Stop him!"

  They concentrated on the dragon. The smoke disappeared.

  But the snake began to advance again.

  "They're too strong!" moaned Brunei. "We can't hold them back."

  They stopped the snake for a few moments, but the smoke began to billow again.

  "They're gonna break through!" screamed Donner. "We can't stop 'em!"

  "What are we gonna do?"

  "Help!"

  Creakings, cracklings, groanings, as the walls began to crack and blister and shake.

  Suddenly Bram Daker stood up, his dark eyes aflame.

  "Only one thing's strong enough!" he bellowed. "Earth! Earth! EARTH! Think of Earth! All of you! We're back on Earth. Visualize it, make it real, and the monsters'll have to disappear."

  "But where on Earth?" said Vera, bewildered.

  "The Spaceport!" shouted Brunei. "The Spaceport! We all remember the Spaceport."

  "We're back on Earth! The Spaceport!"

  "Earth!"

  "Earth!"

  "EARTH! EARTH!"

  The garden was beginning to flicker. It became red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, invisible; then back again through the spectrum the other way—violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, invisible.

  Back and forth, like a pendulum through the spectrum....

  Oliver Brunei's head hurt unbearably, he could see the pain on the other faces, but he allowed only one thought to fill his being—Earth! The Spaceport! EARTH!

  More and more, faster and faster, the garden flickered, and now it was the old common room again, and that was flickering.

  Light was flickering, mind was flickering, time, too, seemed to flicker....

  Only Earth! thought Brunei. Earth doesn't flicker, the Spaceport doesn't flicker.

  Earth! EARTH!

  Now all the flickerings, of color, time, mind and dimensions, were coalescing into one gigantic vortex, that was a thing neither of time, nor space, nor mind, but all three somehow fused into one....

  They're screaming! Brunei thought. Listen to the horrible screams! Suddenly he noticed that he, too, was screaming.

  The vortex was growing, swirling, undulating, and it, too, began to flicker....

  There was an unbearable, impossible pain, and....

  The sight of starship Number Thirteen suddenly appearing out of nowhere, and sitting itself calmly down in the middle of the Spaceport was somewhat disconcerting to the Spaceport officials. Especially since at the very moment it appeared, and even afterward, they continued to have visual and laser contact with its image, over three light-months from Earth.

  However, the Solar Government itself was much more pragmatic. One instant, starship Thirteen had been light-months from Earth, the next it was sitting in the Spaceport. Therefore, starship Thirteen had exceeded the speed of light somehow. Therefore, it was possible to exceed the speed of light, and a thorough examination of the ship and its contents would show how.

  Therefore.... You idiots, throw a security cordon around that ship!

  In such matters, the long-conditioned reflexes of the Solar Government worked marvelously. Before the air-waves had cooled, two hundred heavily armed soldiers had surrounded the ship.

  Two hours later, the Solar co-ordinator was on the scene, with ten Orders of Sol to present to the returning heroes, and a large well-armored vehicle to convey them to laboratories, where they would be gone over with the proverbial fine-tooth comb.

  An honor guard of two hundred men standing at attention made a pathway from the ship's main hatch to the armored carrier, in front of which stood the Solar Co-ordinator, with his ten medals.

  They opened the hatch.

  One, two, five, seven, ten dazed and bewildered "heroes" staggered past the honor guard, to face the Co-ordinator.

  He opened his mouth to begin his welcoming speech, and start the five years of questioning and experiments which would eventually kill five of the crew and give Man the secret of faster-than-light drive.

  But instead of speaking, he screamed.

  So did two hundred heavily armed soldiers.

  Because, out of starship Thirteen's main hatch sauntered a twelve-foot green dragon, followed by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a pterodactyl, a vampire bat with a five-foot wingspan, an old-fashioned red, spade-tailed demon, and finally, big as a horse's, the pop-eyed head of an enormous black serpent....

  Carcinoma Angels, by Norman Spinrad

  At the age of nine, Harrison Wintergreen first discovered that the world was his oyster when he looked at it sidewise. That was the year when baseball cards were in. The kid with the biggest collection of baseball cards was it. Harry Wintergreen decided to become it.

  Harry saved up a dollar and bought one hundred random baseball cards. He was in luck—one of them was the very rare Yogi Berra. In three separate transactions, he traded his other ninety-nine cards for the only other three Yogi Berras in the neighborhood. Harry had reduced his holdings to four cards, but he had cornered the market in Yogi Berra. He forced the price of Yogi Berra up to an exorbitant eighty cards. With the slush fund thus accumulated, he successively cornered the market in Mickey Mantle, Willy Mays and Pee Wee Reese and became the J. P. Morgan of baseball cards.

  Harry breezed through high school by the simple expedient of mastering only one subject—the art of taking tests. By his senior year, he could outthink any test writer with his gypsheet tied behind his back and won seven scholarships with foolish ease.

  In college Harry discovered girls. Being reasonably good-looking and reasonably facile, he no doubt would've garnered his fair share of conquests in the normal course of events. But this was not the way the mind of Harrison Wintergreen worked.

  Harry carefully cultivated a stutter, which he could turn on or off at will. Few girls could resist the lure of a good-looking, well-adjusted guy with a slick line who nevertheless carried with him some secret inner hurt that made him stutter. Many were the girls who tried to delve Harry's secret, while Harry delved them.

  In his sophomore year Harry grew bored with college and reasoned that the thing to do was to become Filthy Rich. He assiduously studied sex novels for one month, wrote three of them in the next two which he immediately sold at $1,000 a throw.

  With the $3,000 thus garnered, he bought a shiny new convertible. He drove the new car to the Mexican border and across into a notorious border town. He immediately contacted a disreputable shoeshine boy and bought a pound of marijuana. The shoeshine boy of course tipped off the border guards, and when Harry attempted to walk across the bridge to the States they stripped him naked. They found nothing and Harry crossed the border. He had smuggled nothing out of Mexico, and in fact had thrown the marijuana away as soon as he bought it.

  However, he had taken advantage of the Mexican embargo on American cars and illegally sold the convertible in Mexico for $15,000.

  Harry took his $15,000 to Las Vegas and spent the next six weeks buying people drinks, lending broke gamblers money, acting in general like a fuzzy-cheeked Santa Claus, gaining the confidence of the right drunks and blowing $5,000.

  At the end of six weeks he had three hot market tips which turned his remaining $10,000 into $40,000 in the next two months.

  Harry bought four hundred crated government surplus jeeps in four one-hundred-jeep lots of $10,000 a lot and immediately sold them to a highly disreputable Central American government for $100,000.

  He took the $100,000 and bought a tiny island in the Pacific, so worthless that no government had ever bothered to claim it. He set himself up as an independent government with no taxes and sold twenty one-acre plots to twenty millionaires seeking a tax haven at $100,000 a plot. He unloaded the last plot three weeks before the United States, with UN backing, claimed the island and brought it under the sway of the Internal Revenue Office
.

  Harry invested a small part of his $2,000,000 and rented a large computer for twelve hours. The computer constructed a betting scheme by which Harry parlayed his $2,000,000 into $20,000,000 by taking various British soccer pools to the tune of $18,000,000.

  For $5,000,000 he bought a monstrous chunk of useless desert from an impoverished Arabian sultanate. With another $2,000,000 he created a huge rumor campaign to the effect that this patch of desert was literally floating on oil. With another $3,000,000 he set up a dummy corporation which made like a big oil company and publicly offered to buy this desert for $75,000,000. After some spirited bargaining, a large American oil company was allowed to outbid the dummy and bought a thousand square miles of sand for $100,000,000.

  Harrison Wintergreen was, at the age of twenty-five, Filthy Rich by his own standards. He lost his interest in money.

  He now decided that he wanted to Do Good. He Did Good. He toppled seven unpleasant Latin American governments and replaced them with six Social Democracies and a Benevolent Dictatorship. He converted a tribe of Borneo headhunters to Rosicrucianism. He set up twelve rest homes for overage whores and organized a birth control program which sterilized twelve million fecund Indian women. He contrived to make another $100,000,000 on the above enterprises.

  At the age of thirty Harrison Wintergreen had had it with Do-Gooding. He decided to Leave His Footprints in the Sands of Time. He Left His Footprints in the Sands of Time. He wrote an internationally acclaimed novel about King Farouk. He invented the Wintergreen Filter, a membrane through which fresh water passed freely, but which barred salts. Once set up, a Wintergreen Desalinization Plant could desalinate an unlimited supply of water at a per-gallon cost approaching absolute zero. He painted one painting and was instantly offered $200,000 for it. He donated it to the Museum of Modern Art, gratis. He developed a mutated virus which destroyed syphilis bacteria. Like syphilis, it spread by sexual contact. It was a mild aphrodisiac. Syphilis was wiped out in eighteen months. He bought an island off the coast of California, a five-hundred-foot crag jutting out of the Pacific. He caused it to be carved into a five-hundred-foot statue of Harrison Wintergreen.

  At the age of thirty-eight Harrison Wintergreen had Left sufficient Footprints in the Sands of Time. He was bored. He looked around greedily for new worlds to conquer.