A Treasury of Great Science Fiction 1

by Anthony Boucher (ed)

  “I will kill you!” Lantry let it slip out. He cursed himself. That was the worst possible thing to say.

  Lantry lunged across the chair, clutching at McClure.

  McClure was very logical. “It won’t do you any good to kill me. You know that.” They wrestled and held each other in a wild, toppling shuffle. Tables fell over, scattering articles. “You remember what happened in the morgue?”

  “I don’t care!” screamed Lantry.

  “You didn’t raise those dead, did you?”

  “I don’t care!” cried Lantry.

  “Look here,” said McClure, reasonably. “There will never be any more like you, ever, there’s no use.”

  “Then I’ll destroy all of you, all of you!” screamed Lantry.

  “And then what? You’ll still be alone, with no more like you about.”

  “I’ll go to Mars. They have tombs there. I’ll find more like myself!”

  “No,” said McClure. “The executive order went through yesterday. All of the tombs are being deprived of their bodies. They’ll be burned in the next week.”

  They fell together to the floor. Lantry got his hands on McQure’s throat.

  “Please,” said McClure. “Do you see, you’ll die.”

  “What do you mean?” cried Lantry.

  “Once you kill all of us, and you’re alone, you’ll die! The hate will die. That hate is what moved you, nothing else! That envy moves you. Nothing else! You’ll die, inevitably. You’re not immortal. You’re not even alive, you’re nothing but a moving hate.”

  “I don’t care!” screamed Lantry, and began choking the man, beating his head with his fists, crouched on the defenseless body. McClure looked up at him with dying eyes.

  The front door opened. Two men came in.

  “I say,” said one of them. “What’s going on? A new game?”

  Lantry jumped back and began to run.

  “Yes, a new game!” said McClure, struggling up. “Catch him and you win!”

  The two men caught Lantry. “We win,” they said.

  “Let me go!” Lantry thrashed, hitting them across their faces, bringing blood.

  “Hold him tight!” cried McClure.

  They held him.

  “A rough game, what?” one of them said. “What do we do now?”

  The beetle hissed along the shining road. Rain fell out of the sky and a wind ripped at the dark green wet trees. In the beetle, his hands on the half-wheel, McClure was talking. His voice was susurrant, a whispering, a hypnotic thing. The two other men sat in the back seat. Lantry sat, or rather lay, in the front seat, his head back, his eyes faintly open, the glowing green light of the dash dials showing on his cheeks. His mouth was relaxed. He did not speak.

  McClure talked quietly and logically, about life and moving, about death and not moving, about the sun and the great sun Incinerator, about the emptied tombyard, about hatred and how hate lived and made a clay man live and move, and how illogical it all was, it all was, it all was. One was dead, was dead, was dead, that was all, all, all. One did not try to be otherwise. The car whispered on the moving road. The rain spattered gently on the windshield. The men in the back seat conversed quietly. Where were they going, going? To the Incinerator, of course. Cigarette smoke moved slowly up on the air, curling and tying into itself in gray loops and spirals. One was dead and must accept it

  Lantry did not move. He was a marionette, the strings cut. There was only a tiny hatred in his heart, in his eyes, like twin coals, feeble, glowing, fading.

  I am Poe, he thought. I am all that is left of Edgar Allan Poe, and I am all that is left of Ambrose Bierce and all that is left of a man named Lovecraft. I am a gray night bat with sharp teeth, and I am a square black monolith monster. I am Osiris and Bal and Set. I am the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead. I am the house of Usher, falling into flame. I am the Red Death. I am the man mortared into the catacomb with a cask of Amontillado . . . I am a dancing skeleton. I am a coffin, a shroud, a lightning bolt reflected in an old house window. I am an autumn-empty tree, I am a rapping, flinging shutter. I am a yellowed volume turned by a claw hand. I am an organ played in an attic at midnight. I am a mask, a skull mask behind an oak tree on the last day of October. I am a poison apple hobbling in a water tub for child noses to bump at, for child teeth to snap . . . I am a black candle lighted before an inverted cross. I am a coffin lid, a sheet with eyes, a foot-step on a black stairwell. I am Dunsany and Machen and I am the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I am The Monkey’s Paw and I am The Phantom Rickshaw. I am the Cat and the Canary, The Gorilla, the

  Bat. I am the ghost of Hamlet’s father on the castle wall.

  All of these things am I. And now these last things will be burned. While I lived they still lived. While I moved and hated and existed, they still existed. I am all that remembers them. I am all of them that still goes on, and will not go on after tonight. Tonight, all of us, Poe and Bierce and Hamlet’s father, we bum together. They will make a big heap of us and burn us like a bonfire, like things of Guy Fawkes’ day, gasoline, torches, cries, and all!

  And what a wailing will we put up. The world will be clean of us, but in our going we shall say, oh what is the world like, clean of fear, where is the dark imagination from the dark time, the thrill and the anticipation, the suspense of old October, gone, never more to come again, flattened and smashed and burned by the rocket people, by the Incinerator people, destroyed and obliterated, to be replaced by doors that open and close and lights that go on and off without fear. If only you could remember how once we lived, what Halloween was to us, and what Poe was, and how we gloried in the dark morbidities. One more drink, dear friends, of Amontillado, before the burning. All of this, all, exists but in one last brain on earth. A whole world dying tonight. One more drink, pray.

  “Here we are,” said McClure.

  The Incinerator was brightly lighted. There was quiet music nearby. McClure got out of the beetle, came around to the other side. He opened the door. Lantry simply lay there. The talking and the logical talking had slowly drained him of life. He was no more than wax now, with a small glow in his eyes. This future world, how the men talked to you, how logically they reasoned away your life. They wouldn’t believe in him. The force of their disbelief froze him. He could not move his arms or his legs. He could only mumble senselessly, coldly, eyes flickering.

  McClure and the two others helped him out of the car, put him in a golden box, and rolled him on a roller table into the warm glowing interior of the building.

  I am Edgar Allan Poe, I am Ambrose Bierce, I am Halloween, I am a coffin, a shroud, a Monkey’s Paw, a Phantom, a Vampire . . .

  “Yes, yes,” said McClure, quietly, over him. “I know. I know.”

  The table glided. The walls swung over him and by him, the music played. You are dead, you are logically dead.

  I am Usher, I am the Maelstrom, I am the MS Found In A Bottle, I am the Pit and I am the Pendulum, I am the Telltale Heart, I am the Raven nevermore, nevermore.

  “Yes,” said McClure, as they walked softly. “I know.”

  “I am in the catacomb,” cried Lantry.

  “Yes, the catacomb,” said the walking man over him.

  “I am being chained to a wall, and there is no bottle of Amontillado here!” cried Lantry weakly, eyes closed.

  “Yes,” someone said.

  There was movement. The flame door opened.

  “Now someone is mortaring up the cell, closing me in!”

  “Yes, I know.” A whisper.

  The golden box slid into the flame lock.

  “I’m being walled in! A very good joke indeed! Let us be gone!” A wild scream and much laughter.

  “We know, we understand . . .”

  The inner flame lock opened. The golden coffin shot forth into flame.

  “For the love of God, Montresor! For the love of God!”

  Copyright 1948 by Fiction House, Inc.

  Reprinted by permission of Harold Matson Company. />
  WALDO

  by Robert Heinlein

  THE ACT WAS BILLED as ballet tap—which does not describe it.

  His feet created an intricate tympany of crisp, clean taps. There was a breath-catching silence as he leaped high into the air, higher than a human being should—and performed, while floating there, a fantastically improbable entrechat douze.

  He landed on his toes, apparently poised, yet producing a fortissimo of thunderous taps.

  The spotlights cut, the stage lights came up. The audience stayed silent a long moment, then realized it was time to applaud, and gave.

  He stood facing them, letting the wave of their emotion sweep through him. He felt as if he could lean against it; it warmed him through to his bones.

  It was wonderful to dance, glorious to be applauded, to be liked, to be wanted.

  When the curtain rang down for the last time he let his dresser lead him away. He was always a little bit drunk at the end of a performance; dancing was a joyous intoxication even in rehearsal, but to have an audience lifting him, carrying him along, applauding him—he never grew jaded to it. It was always new and heartbreakingly wonderful.

  “This way, chief. Give us a little smile.” The flash bulb flared. “Thanks.”

  “Thank you. Have a drink.” He motioned toward one end of his dressing room. They were all such nice fellows, such grand guys—the reporters, the photographers—all of them.

  “How about one standing up?” He started to comply, but his dresser, busy with one slipper, warned him:

  “You operate in half an hour.”

  “Operate?” the news photographer said. “What’s it this time?”

  “A left cerebrectomy,” he answered.

  “Yeah? How about covering it?”

  “Glad to have you—if the hospital doesn’t mind.”

  “We’ll fix that.”

  Such grand guys.

  “—trying to get a little different angle on a feature article.” It was a feminine voice, near his ear. He looked around hastily, slightly confused. “For example, what made you decide to take up dancing as a career?”

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t hear you. I’m afraid it’s pretty noisy in here.”

  “I said, why did you decide to take up dancing?”

  “Well, now, I don’t quite know how to answer that. I’m afraid we would have to go back quite a way—”

  James Stevens scowled at his assistant engineer. “What have you got to look happy about?” he demanded.

  “It’s just the shape of my face,” his assistant apologized. “Try laughing at this one: there’s been another crash.”

  “Oh, cripes! Don’t tell me—let me guess. Passenger or freight?”

  “A Climax duo-freighter on the Chicago-Salt Lake shuttle, just west of North Platte. And, chief—”

  “Yes?”

  “The Big Boy wants to see you.”

  “That’s interesting. That’s very, very interesting, Mac—”

  “Yeah, chief.”

  “How would you like to be Chief Traffic Engineer of North American Power-Air? I hear there’s going to be a vacancy.”

  Mac scratched his nose. “Funny that you should mention that, chief. I was just going to ask you what kind of a recommendation you could give me in case I went back into civil engineering. Ought to be worth something to you to get rid of me.”

  “I’ll get rid of you—right now. You bust out to Nebraska, find that heap before the souvenir hunters tear it apart, and bring back its deKalbs and its control board.”

  “Trouble with cops, maybe?”

  “You figure it out. Just be sure you come back.” Stevens’s office was located immediately adjacent to the zone power plant; the business offices of North American were located in a hill, a good three quarters of a mile away. There was the usual interconnecting tunnel; Stevens entered it and deliberately chose the low-speed slide in order to have more time to think before facing the boss.

  By the time he arrived he had made up his mind, but he did not like the answer.

  The Big Boy—Stanley F. Gleason, Chairman of the Board—greeted him quietly. “Come in, Jim. Sit down. Have a cigar.”

  Stevens slid into a chair, declined the cigar and pulled out a cigarette, which he lit while looking around. Besides the chief and himself, there were present Harkness, head of the legal staff, Dr. Rambeau, Stevens’s opposite number for research, and Striebel, the chief engineer for city power. Us five and no more, he thought grimly—all the heavyweights and none of the middle weights. Heads will roll!—starting with mine.

  “Well,” he said, almost belligerently, “we’re all here. Who’s got the cards? Do we cut for deal?”

  Harkness looked faintly distressed by the impropriety; Rambeau seemed too sunk in some personal gloom to pay any attention to wisecracks in bad taste. Gleason ignored it. “We’ve been trying to figure a way out of our troubles, James. I left word for you on the chance that you might not have left.”

  “I stopped by simply to see if I had any personal mail,” Stevens said bitterly. “Otherwise I’d be on the beach at Miami, turning sunshine into vitamin D.”

  “I know,” said Gleason, “and I’m sorry. You deserve that vacation, Jimmie. But the situation has gotten worse instead of better. Any ideas?”

  “What does Dr. Rambeau say?”

  Rambeau looked up momentarily. “The deKalb receptors can’t fail,” he stated.

  “But they do.”

  “They can’t. You’ve operated them improperly.” He sunk back into his personal prison.

  Stevens turned back to Gleason and spread his hands. “So far as I know, Dr. Rambeau is right—but if the fault lies in the engineering department, I haven’t been able to locate it. You can have my resignation.”

  “I don’t want your resignation,” Gleason said gently. “What I want is results. We have a responsibility to the public.”

  “And to the stockholders,” Harkness put in.

  “That will take care of itself if we solve the other,” Gleason observed. “How about it, Jimmie? Any suggestions?”

  Stevens bit his lip. “Just one,” he announced, “and one I don’t like to make. Then I look for a job peddling magazine subscriptions.”

  “So? Well, what is it?”

  “We’ve got to consult Waldo.”

  Rambeau suddenly snapped out of his apathy. “What! That charlatan? This is a matter of science.”

  Harkness said, “Really, Dr. Stevens—”

  Gleason held up a hand. “Dr. Stevens’ suggestion is logical. But I’m afraid it’s a little late, Jimmie. I talked with him last week.”

  Harkness looked surprised; Stevens looked annoyed as well. “Without letting me know?”

  “Sorry, Jimmie. I was just feeling him out. But it’s no good. His terms, to us, amount to confiscation.”

  “Still sore over the Hathaway patents?”

  “Still nursing his grudge.”

  “You should have let me handle the matter,” Harkness put in. “He can’t do this to us—there is public interest involved. Retain him, if need be, and let the fee be adjudicated in equity. I’ll arrange the details.”

  “I’m afraid you would,” Gleason said dryly. “Do you think a court order will make a hen lay an egg?”

  Harkness looked indignant, but shut up.

  Stevens continued, “I would not have suggested going to Waldo if I had not had an idea as how to approach him. I know a friend of his—”

  “A friend of Waldo? I didn’t know he had any.”

  “This man is sort of an uncle to him—his first physician. With his help I might get on Waldo’s good side.”

  Dr. Rambeau stood up. “This is intolerable,” he announced. “I must ask you to excuse me.” He did not wait for an answer, but strode out, hardly giving the door time to open in front of him.

  Gleason followed his departure with worried eyes.

  “Why does he take it so hard, Jimmie? You would think h
e hated Waldo personally.”

  “Probably he does, in a way. But it’s more than that; his whole universe is toppling. For the last twenty years, ever since Pryor’s reformulation of the General Field Theory did away with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, physics has been considered an exact science. The power failures and transmission failures we have been suffering are a terrific nuisance to you and to me, but to Dr. Rambeau they amount to an attack on his faith. Better keep an eye on him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he might come unstuck entirely. It’s a pretty serious matter for a man’s religion to fail him.”

  “Hm-m-m. How about yourself? Doesn’t it hit you just as hard?”

  “Not quite. I’m an engineer—from Rambeau’s point of view just a high-priced tinker. Difference in orientation. Not but what I’m pretty upset.”

  The audio circuit of the communicator on Gleason’s desk came to life. “Calling Chief Engineer Stevens—calling Chief Engineer Stevens.” Gleason flipped the tab.

  “He’s here. Go ahead.”

  “Company code, translated. Message follows: ‘Cracked up four miles north of Cincinnati. Shall I go on to Nebraska, or bring in the you-know-what from my own crate?’ Message ends. Signed ‘Mac.’ ”

  “Tell him to walk back!” Stevens said savagely.

  “Very well, sir.” The instrument cut off.

  “Your assistant?” asked Gleason.

  “Yes. That’s about the last straw, chief. Shall I wait and try to analyze this failure, or shall I try to see Waldo?”

  “Try to see Waldo.”

  “O.K. If you don’t hear from me, just send my severance pay care of Palmdale Inn, Miami. I’ll be the fourth beachcomber from the right.”

  Gleason permitted himself an unhappy smile. “If you don’t get results, I’ll be the fifth. Good luck.”

  “So long.”

  When Stevens had gone, Chief Stationary Engineer Striebel spoke up for the first time. “If the power to the cities fails,” he said softly, “you know where I’ll be, don’t you?”