A Treasury of Great Science Fiction 1

by Anthony Boucher (ed)

  what was it?”

  “I only meant if” I protested. I was alarmed, and too confused to explain that I had only happened to use one way of expressing a difficulty which might have been put in several ways. I was aware that the rest had stopped gaping at me, and were now looking apprehensively at my father. His expression was grim.

  “You—my own son—were calling upon the Devil to give you another hand!” he accused me.

  “But I wasn’t. I only—”

  “Be quiet, boy. Everyone in this room heard you. You’ll certainly make it no better by lying.”

  “But—”

  “Were you, or were you not, expressing dissatisfaction with the form of the body God gave you—the form in his own image?”

  “I just said if I—”

  “You blasphemed, boy. You found fault with the Norm. Everybody here heard you. What have you to say to that? You know what the Norm is?”

  I gave up protesting. I knew well enough that my father in his present mood would not try to understand. I muttered, parrot-like:

  “ ‘The Norm is the Image of God.’ ”

  “You do know. And yet, knowing this, you deliberately wished yourself a Mutant. That is a terrible thing, an outrageous thing. You, my son, committing blasphemy before his parents!” In his sternest pulpit voice, he added: “What is a Mutant?”

  “ ‘A thing accursed in the sight of God and man,’ ” I mumbled.

  “And that is what you wished to be! What have you to say?”

  With a heart-sunk certainty that it would do useless to say anything I kept my lips shut and my eyes lowered.

  “Down on your knees!” he commanded. “Kneel and pray!” The others all knelt, too. My father’s voice rose:

  “Lord, we have sinned in omission. We beg thy forgiveness that we have not better instructed this child in thy laws . . .” The prayer seemed to go booming on for a long time. After the “Amen” there was a pause, until my father said:

  “Now go to your room and pray. Pray, you wretched boy, for a forgiveness you do not deserve, but which God, in his mercy, may yet grant you. I will come to you later.”

  I went to my room, but I did not pray. I sat miserably on the side of my bed while a feeling of bewildered shame gave way slowly to a feeling of injustice that glowed in my chest like a hot coal.

  In the night, when the anguish which had followed my father’s visit was somewhat abated, I lay awake, puzzling. I had had no idea of wishing for a third hand, but even if I had . . .? If it was such a terrible thing just to think of having three hands, what would happen if one really had them—or anything else wrong; such as, for instance, an extra toe . . .?

  And when at last I fell asleep I had a dream.

  We were all gathered in the yard, just as we had been at the last Purification. Then it had been a little hairless calf that stood waiting, blinking stupidly at the knife in my father’s hand; this time it was a little girl, Sophie, standing barefooted and trying uselessly to hide the whole long row of toes that everyone could see on each foot. We all stood looking at her, and waiting. Presently she started to run from one person to another, imploring them to help her, but none of them moved, and none of their faces had any expression. My father started to walk toward her, the knife shining in his hand. Sophie grew frantic; she flitted from one unmoving person to another, tears running down her face. My father, stern, implacable, kept on coming nearer; still no one would move to help her. My father came closer still, with long arms outspread to prevent her bolting as he cornered her.

  He caught her, and dragged her back to the middle of the yard. The sun’s edge began to show above the horizon, and everyone started to sing a hymn. My father held Sophie with one arm just as he had held the struggling calf. He raised his other hand high, and as he swept it down the knife flashed in the light of the rising sun, just as it had flashed when he cut the calf’s throat . . .

  If John and Mary Wender had been there when I woke up struggling and crying, and then lay in the dark trying to convince myself that the terrible picture which still hung in my mind was nothing more than a dream, they would, I think, have felt quite a lot easier in their minds.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  This was a time when I passed out of a placid period into one where things kept on happening. There wasn’t much reason about it; that is to say, only a few of the things were connected with one another. It was more as if an active cycle had set in, just as a spell of different weather might come along.

  My meeting with Sophie was, I suppose, the first incident; the next was that Uncle Axel found out about me and my halfcousin, Rosalind Morton. He—and it was lucky it was he, and no one else—happened to come upon me when I was talking to her, and I was doing it out loud because, although that way was slower, I could still be a lot clearer when I did it like that.

  It must have been a self-preservative instinct which had made us keep the thing to ourselves, for we’d no active feeling of danger—I had so little, in fact, that when Uncle Axel found me sitting behind a rick chatting apparently to myself, I made very little effort to dissemble. He may have been there a minute or more before I became aware of somebody just around the comer of my eye, and turned to see who it was.

  My Uncle Axel was a tall man, neither thin nor fat, but sturdy, and with a seasoned look, to him. I used to think when I watched him at work that his weathered hands and forearms had some sort of kinship with the polished wood of the helves they used. He was standing in his customary way, with much of his weight upon the thick stick he used because his leg had been wrongly set when it was broken at sea. His bushy eyebrows, a a little touched with gray, were drawn closer by a half-frown, but the lines on his tanned face were half-amused as he regarded me.

  “Well, Davie boy, and who would you be chattering away so hard to? Is it fairies, or gnomes, or only the rabbits?” he asked.

  I just shook my head. He limped closer, and sat down beside me, chewing on a stalk of grass from the rick.

  “Feeling lonely?” he inquired.

  “No,” I told him.

  He frowned a bit again. “Wouldn’t it be more fun to do your chatting with some of the other kids?” he suggested. “More interesting than just sitting and talking to yourself?”

  I hesitated, and then because he was Uncle Axel and my best friend among the grown-ups I said:

  “But I was.”

  “Was what?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Talking to one of them,” I told him.

  He frowned, and went on looking puzzled.

  “Who?”

  “Rosalind,” I told him.

  He paused a bit, looking at me harder.

  “H’mm—I didn’t see her around,” he remarked.

  “Oh, she isn’t here. She’s at home—at least, she’s near home, in a little secret tree-house her brothers built in the woods,” I explained. “It’s a favorite place of hers.”

  He was not able to understand what I meant at first. He kept on talking as though it were a make-believe game; but after I had tried for some time to explain he sat quite quiet, watching my face as I talked, and presently his expression became very serious. After I’d stopped he said nothing, for a minute or two, then he asked:

  “This isn’t play-stuff, it’s the real truth you’re telling me, Davie boy?” And he looked at me hard and steadily as he spoke.

  “Yes, Uncle Axel, of course,” I assured him.

  “And you’ve never told anyone else—nobody at all?”

  “No. It’s a secret,” I told him, and he looked relieved.

  He threw away the remains of his grass-stalk, and pulled another out of the rick. After he had thoughtfully bitten a few pieces off that and spat them out he looked directly at me again.

  “Davie,” he said, “I want you to make me a promise.”

  “Yes, Uncle Axel?”

  “It’s this,” he said, speaking very seriously. “I want you to keep it secret. I want you to promise that you will never, never tell anyo
ne else what you have just told me—never. It’s very important; later on you’ll understand better how important it is. You mustn’t do anything that would even let anyone guess about it. Will you promise me that?”

  His gravity impressed me greatly. I had never known him to speak with so much intensity. It made me aware, when I gave my promise, that I was vowing something more important than I could understand. He kept his eyes on mine as I spoke, and then nodded, satisfied that I meant it. We shook hands on the agreement. Then he said:

  “It would be best if you could forget it altogether.”

  I thought it over, and then shook my head.

  “I don’t think I could do that, Uncle Axel. Not really. I mean, it just is. It’d be like trying to forget—” I broke off, unable to express what I wanted to.

  “Like trying to forget how to talk, or how to hear, perhaps?” he suggested.

  “Rather like that—only different,” I admitted.

  He nodded, and thought again.

  “You hear the words inside your head?” he asked.

  “Well not exactly ‘hear,’ and not exactly ‘see,’ ” I told him. “There are—well, sort of shapes—and if you use words you make them clearer so that they’re easier to understand.”

  “But you don’t have to use words—not say them out loud as you were doing just now?”

  “Oh no, it just helps to make it clearer sometimes.”

  “It also helps to make things a lot more dangerous, for both of you. I want you to make another promise: that you’ll never do it out loud any more.”

  “All right, Uncle Axel,” I agreed again.

  “You’ll understand when you’re older how important it is,” he told me, and then he went on to insist that I should get Rosalind to make the same promises. I did not tell him anything about the others because he seemed so worried already, but I decided I’d get them to promise, too. At the end he put out his hand again, and once more we swore secrecy very solemnly.

  I put the matter to Rosalind and the others the same evening. It crystallized a feeling that was in all of us. I don’t suppose that there was a single one of us who had not at some time made a slip or two and brought upon himself, or herself, an odd, suspicious look. A few of these looks had been warnings enough to each; it was such looks, not comprehended, but clear enough as signs of disapproval just below the verge of suspicion, that had kept us out of trouble. There had been no acknowledged, cooperative policy among us. It was simply as individuals that we had all taken the same self-protective, secretive course. But now, out of Uncle Axel’s anxious insistence on my promise, the feeling of a threat was strengthened. It was still shapeless to us, but it was more real. Furthermore, in trying to convey Uncle Axel’s seriousness to them I must have stirred up an uneasiness that was in all their minds, for there was no dissent. They made the promise willingly, eagerly, in fact, as though it was a burden they were relieved to share. It was our first act as a group; it made us a group by its formal admission of our responsibilities toward one another. It changed our lives by marking our first step in corporate self-preservation, though we understood little of that at the time. What seemed most important just then was the feeling of sharing.

  Then, almost on top of that personal event came another which was of general concern; an invasion in force from the Fringes.

  As usual, there was no detailed plan to deal with it. As near as anyone came to organization was the appointment of headquarters in the different sectors. Upon an alarm it was the duty of all able-bodied men in the district to rally at their local headquarters, when a course of action would be decided according to the location and extent of the trouble. As a method of dealing with small raids it had proved good enough, but that was all it was intended for. As a result, when the Fringes people found leaders who could promote an organized invasion there had been no adequately organized system of defense to delay them. They were able to push forward on a broad front, mopping up little bands of our militia here and there, looting as they liked and meeting nothing to delay them seriously until they were twenty-five miles or more into civilized parts.

  By that time we had our forces in somewhat better order, and neighboring districts had pulled themselves together to head off a further widening, and harry the flanks. Our men were better-armed, too. Quite a lot of them had guns, whereas the Fringes people had only a few that they had stolen, and depended chiefly on bows, knives, and spears. Nevertheless, the width of their advance made them difficult to deal with. They were better woodsmen and cleverer at hiding themselves than proper human beings, so that they were able to press on another fifteen miles before we could contain them and bring them to battle.

  It was exciting for a boy. With the Fringes people little more than seven miles away, our yard at Waknuk had become one of the rallying points. My father who had had an arrow through his arm early in the campaign, was helping to organize the new volunteers into squads. For several days there was a great bustling and coming and going as men were registered and sorted, and finally rode off with a fine air of determination and all the women of the household waving handkerchiefs at them.

  When they had all departed, and our workers, too, the place seemed uncannily quiet for a day. Then there came a single rider, dashing back. He paused long enough to tell us that there had been a big battle and the Fringes people, with some of their leaders taken prisoner, were running away as fast as they could, then he galloped on with his good news.

  That same afternoon a small troupe of horsemen came riding into the yard, with two of the captured Fringes leaders in the middle of them.

  I dropped what I was doing, and ran across to see. It was a bit disappointing at first sight. The tales about the Fringes had led me to expect creatures with two heads, or fur all over, or half a dozen arms and legs. Instead, they seemed at first glance to be just two ordinary men with beards—though unusually dirty, and with very ragged clothes. One of them was a short man with fair hair which was tufted as though he had trimmed it with a knife. But when I looked at the other I had a shock which brought me up dumbfounded, and staring at him. I was so jolted I just went on staring at him, for, put him in decent clothes, tidy up his beard, and he’d be the image of my father.

  As he sat his horse, looking round, he noticed me; casually at first, in passing, then his gaze switched back and he stared hard at me. A strange look that I did not understand at all came into his eyes.

  He opened his mouth as if to speak, but at that moment people came out of the house—my father, with his arm still in a sling, among them—to see what was going on.

  I saw my father pause on the step and survey the group of horsemen, then he, too, noticed the man in the middle of them. For a moment he stood staring, just as I had done; then all his color drained away, and his face went blotchy gray.

  I looked quickly at the other man. He was sitting absolutely rigid on his horse. The expression on his face made something clutch suddenly in my chest. I had never seen hatred naked before, the lines cut deep, the eyes glittering, the teeth suddenly looking like a savage animal’s. It struck me with a slap, a horrid revelation of something hitherto unknown, and hideous; it stamped itself on my mind so that I never forgot it.

  Then my father, still looking as though he was ill, put out his good hand to steady himself against the doorpost, and turned back into the house.

  One of the escort cut the rope which held the prisoner’s arms. He dismounted, and I was able to see then what was wrong with him. He stood some eighteen inches taller than anyone else, but not because he was a big man. If his legs had been right, he would have stood no taller than my father’s five-foot-ten, but they were not; they were monstrously long and thin, and his arms were long and thin, too. It made him look half-man, half-spider.

  The escort gave him food and a pot of beer. He sat down on a bench, and his bony knees stuck up to seem almost level with his shoulders. He looked around the yard, noticing everything as he munched his bread and cheese. In the co
urse of his inspection he perceived me again. He beckoned. I hung back, pretending not to see. He beckoned again. I became ashamed of being afraid of him. I went closer, and then a little closer still, but keeping warily out of range, I judged, of those spidery arms.

  “What’s your name, boy?” he asked.

  “David,” I told him. “David Strorm.”

  He nodded, as though that was satisfactory.

  “The man at the door, with his arm in a sling, that would be your father, Joseph Strorm?”

  “Yes,” I told him.

  Again he nodded. He looked around the house and the outbuildings.

  “This place, then, would be Waknuk?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said again.

  I don’t know whether he would have asked more, for at that point somebody told me to clear off. A little later they all remounted, and soon they moved away, the spidery man with his arms tied together once more. I watched them ride off in the Kentak direction, glad to see them go. My first encounter with someone from the Fringes had not, after all, been exciting; it had been unpleasantly disturbing.

  I heard later that both the captured Fringes men managed to escape that same night. I can’t remember who told me, but I am perfectly certain it was not my father. I never once heard him refer to that day, and I never had the courage to question him about it.

  Then scarcely, it seemed, had we settled down after the invasion and got the men back to catching up with the farm work, than my father was in the middle of a new row with my half-uncle, Angus Morton.

  Differences of temperament and outlook had kept them intermittently at war with each other for years. My father had been heard to sum up his opinion by declaring that if Angus had any principles they were of such infinite width as to be a menace to the rectitude of the neighborhood; to which Angus was reputed to have replied that Joseph Strorm was a flinty-souled pedant, and bigoted well beyond the brink of stupidity. It was not, therefore, difficult for a row to blow up, and the latest one occurred over Angus’s acquisition of a pair of greathorses.

  Rumors of greathorses had reached our district though none had been seen there. My father was already uneasy in his mind at what he had heard of them, nor was the fact that it was Angus who had imported them a recommendation; consequently, it may have been with some prejudice that he went to inspect them.