The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy

by Edited by The Playboy Editors

  "Postponed. The reason is not important but it is complicated, and I simply do not wish to waste time explaining."

  "Assuming your decision is favorable, how will we get in touch with you to let you know our decision? You know enough about us, obviously, to know that I can't make it."

  "We will know your decision through our observers. One condition of acceptance is full and uncensored publication in your newspapers of this interview, verbatim from the tape we are now using to record it. Also of all deliberations and decisions of your government."

  "And other governments? We can't decide unilaterally for the world."

  "Your government has been chosen for a start. If you accept we shall furnish the techniques that will cause the others to fall in line quickly—and those techniques do not involve force or the threat of force."

  "They must be some techniques," said the colonel wryly, "if they'll make one certain country I don't have to name fall into line quickly, without even a threat."

  "Sometimes the offer of reward is more significant than the use of threat. Do you think the country you do not wish to name would like your country colonizing planets of far stars before they even reach Mars? But that is a minor point, relatively. You may trust the techniques."

  "It sounds almost too good to be true. But you said that you are to decide, here and now, whether or not we are to be invited to join. May I ask on what factors you will base your decision?"

  "One is that I am—was, since I already have—to check your degree of xenophobia. In the loose sense in which you use it, that means fear of strangers. We have a word that has no coun­terpart in your vocabulary: it means fear of and revulsion toward aliens. I—or at least a member of my race—was chosen to make the first overt contact with you. Because I am what you could call roughly humanoid—as you are what I would call roughly humanoid—I am probably more horrible, more repulsive to you than many completely different species would be. Because to you, I am a caricature of a human being, I am more horrible to you than a being who bears no remote resemblance to you.

  "You may think you do feel horror at me, and revulsion, but believe me, you have passed that test. There are races in the gal­axy who can never be members of the federation, no matter how they advance otherwise, because they are violently and incurably xenophobic; they could never face or talk to an alien of any spe­cies. They would either run screaming from him or try to kill him instantly. From watching you and these people"—he waved a long arm at the civilian population of Cherrybell not far outside the circle of the conference—"I know you feel revulsion at the sight of me, but believe me it is relatively slight and cer­tainly curable. You have passed that test satisfactorily."

  "And are there other tests?"

  "One other. But I think it is time that I—" Instead of finish­ing the sentence, the stick man lay back flat on the sand and closed his eyes.

  The colonel started to his feet. 'What in hell?" he said. He walked quickly around the mike's tripod and bent over the recumbent extraterrestrial, put an ear to the bloody-appearing chest.

  As he raised his head, Dade Grant, the grizzled prospector, chuckled. "No heartbeat, Colonel, because no heart. But I may leave him as a souvenir for you and you'll find much more in­teresting things inside him than heart and guts. Yes, he is a puppet whom I have been operating—as your Edgar Bergen operates his—what's his name?—oh yes. Charlie McCarthy. Now that he has served his purpose, he is deactivated. You can go back to your place, Colonel."

  Colonel Casey moved back slowly. "Why?" he asked.

  Dade Grant was peeling off his beard and wig. He rubbed a cloth across his face to remove make-up and was revealed as a handsome young man. He said, 'What he told you, or what you were told through him, was true as far as it went. He is only a simulacrum, yes, but he is an exact duplicate of a member of one of the intelligent races of the galaxy, the one toward whom you would be disposed—if you were violently and incurably xeno­phobic—to be most horrified by, according to our psychologists. But we did not bring a real member of his species to make first contact because they have a phobia of their own, agoraphobia—fear of space. They are highly civilized and members in good standing of the federation, but they never leave their own planet.

  "Our observers assure us you don't have that phobia. But they were unable to judge in advance the degree of your xenophobia and the only way to test it was to bring along something in lieu of someone to test it against, and presumably to let him make the initial contact."

  The colonel sighed audibly. "I can't say this doesn't relieve me in one way. We could get along with humanoids, yes, and will when we have to. But I'll admit it's a relief to learn that the master race of the galaxy is, after all, human instead of only humanoid. What is the second test?"

  "You are undergoing it now. Call me—" He snapped his fingers. "What's the name of Bergen's second-string puppet, after Charlie McCarthy?"

  The colonel hesitated, but the tech sergeant supplied the an­swer. "Mortimer Snerd."

  "Right. So call me Mortimer Snerd, and now I think it is time that I—" He lay back flat on the sand and closed his eyes just as the stick-man had done a few minutes before.

  The burro raised its head and put it into the circle over the shoulder of the tech sergeant. "That takes care of the puppets, Colonel," it said. "And now what's this bit about it being impor­tant that the master race be human or at least humanoid? What is a master race?"

  <>

  ~ * ~

  THE ROOM

  BY RAY RUSSELL

  Ray Russell is “a writer with a strong sense of the metaphysical ultimates of life,” according to a review of one of his books; while, on the other hand, “Mr. Russell’s forte is the lampoon,” according to a review of another of his books-testimonials to his protean range, or what Russell himself calls “the curse of versatility.” Curse or blessing, he assuredly is one of the most versatile and productive of playboy’s contributors, having written upward of a half-hundred novelettes, short stories, satires, articles and verse features for our pages, both during and after his seven-year tenure as Executive Editor of playboy. His books include “The Case Against Satan” “Sardonicus and Other Stories” “The Little Lexicon of Love” and “Unholy Trinity,” a group of three short Gothic novels. Since 1961, he has also written for most of the major Hollywood studios, among them, MetroGoldwynMayer, 20th Century-Fox, Columbia, Universal, Warner Brothers. His stories have appeared in three of Judith Merril’s annual volumes of “The Year’s Best Science Fiction.” The following story is Russell at his most ingeniously compact and enormously effective.

  ~ * ~

  CRANE AWOKE with the Tingle Toothfoam song racing through his head. Tingle, he realized, must have bought last night’s Sleepcoo time. He frowned at the Sleepcoo speaker in the wall next to his pillow. Then he stared at the ceiling: it was still blank. Must be pretty early, he told himself. As the Coffizz slogan slowly faded in on the ceiling, he averted his eyes and got out of bed. He avoided looking at the printed messages on the sheets, the pillowcases, the blankets, his robe, the innersoles of his slippers. As his feet touched the floor, the TV set went on. It would go off, automatically, at ten p.m. Crane was perfectly free to switch channels, but he saw no print in that.

  In the bathroom, he turned on the light and the TV’s audio was immediately piped in to him. He switched the light off and performed his first morning ritual in the dark. But he needed light in order to shave, and as he turned it on again, the audio resumed. As he shaved, the mirror flickered instantaneously once every three seconds. It was not enough to disturb his shaving, but Crane found himself suddenly thinking of the rich warm goodness of the Coffizz competitor, Teatang. A few moments later, he was reading the ads for Now, the gentle instant laxative, and Stop, the bourbon-flavored paregoric, which were printed on alternating sheets of the bathroom tissue.

  As he was dressing, the phone rang. He let it ring. He knew what he would hear if he picked it up: “Good
morning! Have vou had your Krakkeroonies yet? Packed with protein and—” Or, maybe, “Why wait for the draft? Enlist now in the service of your choice and cash in on the following enlistee benefits-” Or: “Feeling under the weather? Coronary disease kills four out of five! The early symptoms are-”

  On the other hand, it could be an important personal call. He picked up the phone and said hello. “Hello yourself,” answered a husky, insinuating feminine voice. “Bob?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bob Crane?”

  “Yes, who’s this?”

  “My name’s Judy. I know you, but you don’t know me.

  Have you felt logy lately, out of sorts-” He put down the phone. That settled it. He pulled a crumpled slip of paper from his desk drawer. There was an address on it. Hitherto, he had been hesitant about following up this lead. But this morning he felt decisive. He left his apartment and hailed a cab.

  The back of the cab’s front seat immediately went on and he found himself watching the Juice-O-Vescent Breakfast Hour. He opened a newspaper the last passenger had left behind. His eyes managed to slide over the four-color Glitterink ads with their oblique homosexual, sadistic, masochistic, incestuous and autoerotic symbols, and he tried to concentrate on a news story about the initiating of another government housing program, but his attempts to ignore the Breeze Deodorant ads printed yellow-on-white between the lines were fruitless. The cab reached its destination. Crane paid the driver with a bill bearing a picture of Abraham Lincoln on one side and a picture of a naked woman bathing with Smoothie Soap on the other. He entered a rather run-down frame building, found the correct door, and pressed the doorbell. He could hear, inside the flat, the sound of an old-fashioned buzzer, not a chime playing the EetMeet or Jetfly or Krispy Kola jingles. Hope filled him.

  A slattern answered the door, regarded him suspiciously, and asked, “Yeah?”

  “I—uh—Mrs. Ferman? I got your name from a friend, Bill Seavers? I understand you—” his voice dropped low “—rent rooms.”

  “Get outta here; you wanna get me in trouble? I’m a private citizen, a respectable-”

  “I’ll, I’ll pay. I have a good job. I-”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred? That’s twice what I’m paying at the housing project.”

  “Come on in.” Inside, the woman locked, bolted and chained the door. “One room,” she said. “Toilet and shower down the hall, you share it with two others. Get rid of your own garbage. Provide your own heat in the winter. You want hot water, it’s fifty extra. No cooking in the rooms. No guests. Three months’ rent in advance, cash.”

  “I’ll take it,” Crane said quickly; then added, “I can turn off the TV?”

  “There ain’t no TV. No phone neither.”

  “No all-night Sleepcoo next to the bed? No sublims in the mirrors? No Projecto in the ceiling or walls?”

  “None of that stuff.”

  Crane smiled. He counted out the rent into her dirty hand. “When can I move in?”

  She shrugged. “Any time. Here’s the key. Fourth floor, front. There ain’t no elevator.”

  Crane left, still smiling, the key clutched in his hand.

  Mrs. Ferman picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Hello?” she said. “Ferman reporting. We have a new one, male, about thirty.”

  “Fine, thank you,” answered a voice. “Begin treatment at once, Dr. Ferman.”

  <>

  ~ * ~

  DIAL “F” FOR FRANKENSTEIN

  BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  Stories by Arthur C. Clarke have an unsettling habit of coming true. (See his “I Remember Babylon,” earlier in this volume.) “Dial ‘F’ for Frankenstein” is his contribution to science fiction’s vast corpus of work on the revolt of the machines, a theme that was first explored in 1920 by Czech playwright Karel Capek in his “fantastic melodrama” (his own description), “R.U.R.,” wherein the word “robot” was first used in the meaning of a mechanical man. But Capek, writing before the advent of today’s transistors and highly sophisticated data processing systems, was interested in political allegory, not firmly fact-based prophecy, and although his theatrical novelty titillated, nobody believed it for a moment—probably not even Capek. The following story is all too believable. It is the final story in this book, and it begins in the same way as the first story with the omen-laden ringing of a telephone bell. If you never feel quite the same about telephones again, blame Messrs. Langelaan and Clarke, who, like the other authors represented between these covers, are masters of disquietude and sciencefictioneers par excellence.

  ~ * ~

  A QUARTER OF A BILLION people picked up their receivers, to listen for a few seconds with annoyance or perplexity. Those who had been awakened in the middle of the night assumed that some far-off friend was calling, over the satellite telephone network that had gone into service, with such a blaze of publicity, the day before. But there was no voice on the line; only a sound that to many seemed like the roaring of the sea—to others, like the vibrations “of harp strings in the wind. And there were many more, in that moment, who recalled a secret sound of childhood—the noise of blood pulsing through the veins, heard when a shell is cupped over the ear. Whatever it was, it lasted no more than 20 seconds; then it was replaced by the dialing tone.

  The world’s subscribers cursed, muttered “Wrong number” and hung up. Some tried to dial a complaint, but the line seemed busy. In a few hours, everyone had forgotten the incident—except those whose duty it was to worry about such things.

  At the Post Office Research Station, the argument had been going on all morning, and had got nowhere. It continued unabated through the lunch break, when the hungry engineers poured into the little cafe across the road.

  “I still think,” said Willy Smith, the solid-state electronics man, “that it was a temporary surge of current, caused when the satellite network was switched in.”

  “It was obviously something to do with the satellites,” agreed Jules Reyner, circuit designer. “But why the time delay? They were plugged in at midnight; the ringing was two hours later—as we all know to our cost.” He yawned violently.

  “What do you think, Doc?” asked Bob Andrews, computer programmer. “You’ve been very quiet all morning. Surely you’ve got some idea?”

  Dr. John Williams, head of the Mathematics Division, stirred uneasily.

  “Yes,” he said. “I have. But you won’t take it seriously.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Even if it’s as crazy as those science-fiction yarns you write under a pseudonym, it may give us some leads.”

  Williams blushed, but not very hard. Everyone knew about his stories, and he wasn’t ashamed of them. After all, they had been collected in book form. (Remainder at five shillings; he still had a couple of hundred copies.)

  “Very well,” he said, doodling on the tablecloth. “This is something I’ve been wondering about for years. Have you ever considered the analogy between an automatic telephone exchange and the human brain?”

  “Who hasn’t thought of it?” scoffed one of his listeners. “That idea must go back to Graham Bell.”

  “Possibly; I never said it was original. But I do say it’s time we started taking it seriously.” He squinted balefully at the fluorescent tubes above the table; they were needed on this foggy winter day. “What’s wrong with the damn lights? They’ve been flickering for the last five minutes.”

  “Don’t bother about that; Maisie’s probably forgotten to pay her electricity bill. Let’s hear more about your theory.”

  “Most of it isn’t theory; it’s plain fact. We know that the human brain is a system of switches—neurons—interconnected in a very elaborate fashion by nerves. An automatic telephone exchange is also a system of switches—selectors, and so forth— connected together with wires.”

  “Agreed,” said Smith. “But that analogy won’t get you very far. Aren’t there about fifteen billion neurons in the brain? That’s a lot more than the
number of switches in an autoexchange.”

  Williams’ answer was interrupted by the scream of a low-flying jet; he had to wait until the cafe had ceased to vibrate before he could continue.

  “Never heard them fly that low,” Andrews grumbled. “Thought it was against regulations.”

  “So it is, but don’t worry—London Airport Control will catch him.”

  “I doubt it,” said Reyner. “That was London Airport, bringing in a Concorde on Ground Approach. But I’ve never beard one so low, either. Glad I wasn’t aboard.”

  “Are we, or are we not, going to get on with this blasted discussion?” demanded Smith.

  “You’re right about the fifteen billion neurons in the human brain,” continued Williams unabashed. “And that’s the whole point. Fifteen billion sounds a large number, but it isn’t. Round about the 1960s, there were more than that number of individual switches in the world’s autoexchanges. Today, there are approximately five times as many.”