A Treasury of Great Science Fiction 1

by Anthony Boucher (ed)

  “Tsst! Robin!”

  He looked up, and the trout was forgotten. He filled his powerful young lungs with air and his face with joy, and then made a heroic effort and stifled his noisy delight in obedience to that familiar finger-on-lips and its explosive “Shh!”

  Barely able to contain himself, he splashed straight across the brook, shoes and all, and threw himself into Bitty’s arms. “Ah Robin!” said the woman, “wicked little boy. Are you a wicked little boy?”

  “Yis. Bitty-bitty BITTY!”

  “Shh. Look who’s with me.” She put him down, and there stood old Sam. “Hey-y-y-y, boy?”

  “Ah Sam!” Robin clasped his hands together and got them between his knees, bending almost double in delight. “Ware you been, Sam?”

  “Around,” said Sam. “Listen, Robin, we came to say goodby. We’re going away now.”

  “Don’t go ’way.”

  “We have to,” said Bitty. She knelt and hugged him. “Goodby, •darling.”

  “Shake,” said Sam gravely. “Shake, rattle an’ roll,” said Robin with equal sobriety.

  “Ready, Sam?”

  “All set.”

  Swiftly they took off their bodies, folded them neatly and put them in two small green plastic cases. On one was lettered [widget] and on the other [wadget], but of course Robin was too young to read. Besides, he had something else to astonish him. “Boff!” he cried. “Googie!”

  Boff and Googie [waved] at him and he waved back. They picked up the plastic cases and threw them into a sort of bubble that was somehow there, and [walked] in after them. Then they [went].

  Robin turned away and without once looking back, climbed the slope and ran to Sue. He flung himself into her lap and uttered the long, whistlelike wail that preceded his rare bouts with bitter tears.

  “Why darling, whatever happened? What is it? Did you bump your—”

  He raised a flushed and contorted face to her. “Boff gone,” he said wetly. “Oh, oh-h-h, Boff an’ Googie gone.”

  He cried most of the way home, and never mentioned Boff again.

  INCIDENTAL (NOTES] ON FIELD REPORT: The discovery of total incidence and random use of Synapse Beta sub Sixteen in a species is unique in the known [cosmos]; yet introduction of the mass of data taken on the Field Expedition into the [master] [computer] alters its original [dictum] not at all: the presence of this Synapse in a species ensures its survival.

  In the particular case at hand, the species undoubtedly bears, and will always bear, the [curse] of interpersonal and intercultural frictions, due to the amount of paradox possible. Where so many actions, decisions, and organizational activities can occur uncontrolled by the Synapse and its [universal-interrelational] modifying effect, paradox must result. On the other [hand], any species with such a concentration of the Synapse, even in partial use, will not destroy itself and very probably cannot be destroyed by anything.

  Prognosis positive.

  Their young are delightful. [I] [feel good]. [Smith], [I] [forgive] [you].

  Copyright 1955 by Theodore Sturgeon.

  Reprinted by permission of the Sterling Lord Agency.

  SANDRA

  by George P. Elliott

  A FEW YEARS AGO I INHERITED a handsome neo-Spanish house in a good neighborhood in Oakland. It was much too large for a single man, as I knew perfectly well; if I had behaved sensibly I would have sold it and stayed in my bachelor quarters; I could have got a good price for it. But I was not sensible; I liked the house very much; I was tired of my apartment-house life; I didn’t need the money. Within a month I had moved in and set about looking for a housekeeper.

  From the moment I began looking, everyone assured me that I should get a domestic slave. I was reluctant to get one, not so much because of the expense as because of my own inexperience. No one in my family had ever had one, and among my acquaintances there were not more than three or four who had any. Nevertheless, the arguments in favor of my buying a slave were too great to be ignored. The argument that irritated me most was the one used by the wives of my friends. “When you marry,” they would say, “think how happy it will make your wife to have a domestic slave.” Then they would offer, zealously, to select one for me. I preferred to do my own selecting. I began watching the classified ads for slaves for sale.

  Some days there would be no slaves listed for sale at all; on Sundays there might be as many as ten. There would be a middle-aged Negro woman, 22 years’ experience, best recommendations, $4500; or a 35-year-old Oriental, speaks English, excellent cook, recommendations, $5000; or a middle-aged woman of German descent, very neat, no pets or vices . . . sensible choices, no doubt, but none of them appealed to me. Somewhere in the back of my mind there was the notion of the slave I wanted. It made me restless, looking; all I knew about it was that I wanted a female. I was hard to satisfy. I took to dropping by the Emeryville stores, near where my plant is located, looking for a slave. What few there were in stock were obviously of inferior quality. I knew that I would have to canvass the large downtown stores to find what I wanted. I saw the ads of Oakland’s Own Department Store, announcing their January white sale; by some quirk, they had listed seven white domestic slaves at severely reduced prices. I took off a Wednesday, the first day of the sale, and went to the store at opening time, 9:45, to be sure to have the pick of the lot.

  Oakland’s Own is much the largest department store in the city. It has seven floors and two basements, and its quality runs from $1498 consoles to factory-reject cotton work socks. It has a good solid merchandising policy, and it stands behind its goods in a reassuring, old-fashioned way. The wives of my friends were opposed to my shopping in Oakland’s Own, because, they said, secondhand slaves were so much better trained than new, and cost so little more. Nevertheless, I went.

  I entered the store the moment the doors were opened, and went straight up to the sixth floor on the elevator. All the same I found a shapeless little woman in the slave alcove ahead of me picking over the goods—looking at their teeth and hair, telling them to bend over, to speak so she could hear the sound of their voices. I was furious at having been nosed out by the woman, but I could not help admiring the skill and authority with which she inspected her merchandise. She told me something about herself. She maintained a staff of four, but what with bad luck, disease and her husband’s violent temper she was always having trouble. The Federal Slave Board had ruled against her twice—against her husband, really, but the slaves were registered in her name—and she had to watch her step. In fact she was on probation from the FSB now. One more adverse decision and she didn’t know what she’d do. Well, she picked a strong, stolid-looking female, ordered two sets of conventional domestic costumes for her, signed the charge slip, and left. The saleswoman came to me.

  I had made my decision. I had made it almost the moment I had come in, and I had been in agonies for fear the dumpy little shopper would choose my girl. She was not beautiful exactly, though not plain either, nor did she look especially strong. I did not trouble to read her case-history card; I did not even find out her name. I cannot readily explain what there was about her that attracted me. A certain air of insouciance as she stood waiting to be looked over—the bored way she looked at her fingernails and yet the fearful glance she cast from time to time at us shoppers—the vulgarity of her make-up and the soft charm of her voice—I do not know. Put it down to the line of her hip as she stood waiting, a line girlish and womanly at once, dainty and strong, at ease but not indolent. It’s what I remember of her best from that day, the long pure line from her knee to her waist as she stood staring at her nails, cocky and scared and humming to herself.

  I knew I should pretend impartiality and indifference about my choice. Even Oakland’s Own permits haggling over the price of slaves; I might knock the price down as much as $300, particularly since I was paying for her cash on the line. But it wasn’t worth the trouble to me. After three weeks of dreary looking I had found what I wanted, and I didn’t feel like waiting
to get it. I asked the saleswoman for the card on my slave. She was the sixth child of a carpenter in Chico. Chico is a miserable town in the plains of the San Joaquin Valley; much money is spent each year teaching the people of Chico how to read and write; chico means grease wood. Her father had put her up for sale, with her own consent, at the earliest legal age, eighteen, the year of graduation from high school. The wholesaler had taught her the rudiments of cooking, etiquette, and housecleaning. She was listed as above average in cleanliness, intelligence and personality, superb in copulation, and fair in versatility and sewing. But I had known as much from just looking at her, and I didn’t care. Her name was Sandra, and in a way I had known that too. She had been marked down from $3850 to $3299. As the saleswoman said, how could I afford to pass up such a bargain? I got her to knock the price down the amount of the sales taxes, wrote out my check, filled out the FSB forms, and took my slave Sandra over to be fitted with clothes.

  And right there I had my first trouble as a master, right on the fifth floor of Oakland’s Own in the Women’s Wear department. As a master, I was supposed to say to Sandra, or even better to the saleswoman about. Sandra, “Plain cotton underwear, heavy-weight nylon stockings, two dark-blue maid’s uniforms and one street dress of conservative cut,” and so on and so on. The slave submits to the master; I had read it in the FSB manual for domestic slave owners. Now I find it’s all very well dominating slaves in my office or my factory. I am chief engineer for the Jergen Calculating Machine Corp., and I have had no trouble with my industrial and white-collar slaves. They come into the plant knowing precisely where they are, and I know precisely where I am. It’s all cut and dried. I prefer the amenities when dealing with, say, the PBX operator. I prefer to say, “Miss Persons, will you please call Hoskins of McKee Steel?” rather than “Persons, get me Hoskins of McKee.” But this is merely a preference of mine, a personal matter, and I know it and Persons knows it. No, all that is well set, but this business of Sandra’s clothes quite threw me.

  I made the blunder of asking her her opinion. She was quick to use the advantage I gave her, but she was very careful not to go too far. “Would you like a pair of high heels for street wear?” I asked her. “If it is agreeable with you, sir.”

  “Well, now, let’s see what they have in your size.—Those seem sturdy enough and not too expensive. Arc they comfortable?”

  “Quite comfortable, sir.”

  “There aren’t any others you’d rather have?”

  “These are very nice, sir.”

  “Well, I guess these will do quite well, for the time being at least.”

  “I agree with you, sir.”

  I agree with you: that’s a very different matter from I submit to you. And though I didn’t perceive the difference at the moment, still I was anything but easy in my mind by the time I had got Sandra installed in my house. Oh, I had no trouble preserving the proper reserve and distance with her, and I could not in the slightest detail complain of her behavior. It was just that I was not to the manner bred; that I was alone in the house with her, knowing certain external things to do, but supported by no customs and precedents as I was at the plant; that I found it very uncomfortable to order a woman, with whom I would not eat dinner at the same table, to come to my bed for an hour or so after she had finished washing the dishes. Sandra was delighted with the house and with her quarters, with the television set I had had installed for her and with the subscription to Cosmopolitan magazine that I had ordered in her name. She was delighted and I was glad she was delighted. That was the bad thing about it—I was glad. I should have provided these facilities only as a heavy industry provides half-hour breaks and free coffee for its workers—to keep her content and to get more work out of her. Instead I was as glad at her pleasure in them as though she were an actual person. She was so delighted that tears came to her eyes and she kissed my feet; then she asked me where the foot basin was kept. I told her I had none. She said that the dishpan would do until we got one. I told her to order a foot basin from Oakland’s Own the next day, along with any other utensils or supplies she felt we needed. She thanked me, fetched the dishpan and washed my feet. It embarrassed me to have her do it; I knew it was often done, I enjoyed the sensuous pleasure of it, I admired the grace and care with which she bent over my feet like a shoeshine, but all the same I was embarrassed. Yet she did it every day when I came home.

  I do not think I could describe more economically the earlier stages of my connection to Sandra than by giving an account of the foot washing.

  At first, as I have said, I was uneasy about it, though I liked it too. I was not sure that as a slave she had to do it, but she seemed to think she had to and she certainly wanted to. Now this was all wrong of me. It is true that domestic slaves usually wash their masters’ feet, but this is not in any sense one of the slave’s rights. It is a matter about which the master decides, entirely at his own discretion. Yet, by treating it as a set duty, a duty like serving me food in which she had so profound an interest as to amount to a right, Sandra had from the outset made it impossible for me to will not to have her wash my feet. She did it every day when I came home; even when I was irritable and told her to leave me alone, she did it. Of course, I came to depend upon it as one of the pleasures and necessary routines of the day. It was, in fact, very soothing; she spent a long time at it and the water was always just lukewarm, except in cold weather when it was quite warm; she always floated a slice of lemon in the water. The curve of her back, the gesture with which she would shake the hair out of her eyes, the happy, private smile she wore as she did it, these were beautiful to me. She would always kiss, very lightly, the instep of each foot after she had dried them—always, that is, when we were alone.

  If I brought a friend home with me, she would wash our feet all right, but matter-of-factly, efficiently, with no little intimacies as when I was alone. But if it was a woman who came with me, or a man and wife, Sandra would wash none of our feet. Nor did she wash the feet of any callers. I thought this was probably proper etiquette. I had not read my Etiquette for Slaves as well as Sandra obviously had. I let it go. During the first few weeks, all my friends, and particularly all my women friends, had to come to observe Sandra. She behaved surely and with complete consistency towards them all. I was proud of her. None of the women told me that Sandra was anything less than perfect, not even Helen who would have been most likely to, being an old friend and sharp-tongued. After the novelty had worn off, I settled down with her into what seemed to be a fine routine. To be sure, it was not long before I would think twice about bringing someone home for dinner with me; if there was much doubt in my mind about it, the difference in Sandra’s foot washing alone would sway me not to bring my friend along, especially if my friend was a woman.

  When I would come home late at night she would be waiting for me, with a smile and downcast eyes. I went, in October, to a convention in St. Louis for a week. When I came back, I think she spent an hour washing my feet, asking me to tell her about the physical conditions of my trip, nothing personal or intimate but just what I had eaten and what I had seen and how I had slept; but the voice in which she asked it—One night I came home very late, somewhat high, after a party. I did not want to disturb her, so I tried to go to my room noiselessly. But she heard me and came in in her robe to wash my feet; she helped me to bed, most gently. Not by a glance did she reproach me for having disturbed her sleep. But then, she never reproached me.

  I did not realize fully how much I had come to depend on her until she fell sick. She was in the hospital with pneumonia for three days and spent six days convalescing. It was at Thanksgiving time. I declined invitations out to dinner, in order to keep Sandra company—to tend to her, I said to myself, though she tended to herself very nicely. I was so glad to have her well again that the first time she could come to me I kept her in my bed all night—so that she might not chill herself going back to her own bed, I told myself. That was the first time, yet by Christmas we were slee
ping together regularly, though she kept her clothes in her own room. She still called me sir, she still washed my feet; according to the bill of sale I owned her: I thought her a perfect slave. I was uneasy no longer.

  In fact, of course, I was making a fool of myself, and it took Helen to tell me so.

  “Dell,” she said over the edge of her cocktail glass, “you’re in love with this creature.”

  “In love with Sandra!” I cried. “What do you mean?”

  And I was about to expostulate hotly against the notion, when I bethought me that too much heat on my part would only confirm her in her opinion. Therefore, seeming to study the problem, I relapsed into a brown study—under Helen’s watchful eye—and tried to calculate the best out for myself.

  I rang for Sandra.

  “More manhattans,” I said to her. She bowed, took the shaker on her tray, and left. She was impeccable.

  “No, Helen,” I said finally, “she does not make my pulses race. The truth is, I come a lot closer to being in love with you than with Sandra.”

  This threw her considerably of! balance, as I had hoped it would.

  “How absurd. You’ve never even made a pass at me.”

  “True.”

  But Sandra returned with the drinks, and after she had left we talked about indifferent matters.

  As I was seeing Helen to the door, she said to me, “All the same, Dell, watch out. You’ll be marrying this creature next. And who will drop by to see you then?”

  “If I ever marry Sandra,” I said, “it will not be for love. If I have never made a pass at you, my dear, it has not been for lack of love.”

  I looked at her rather yearningly, squeezed her hand rather tightly, and with a sudden little push closed the door behind her. I leaned against the wall for a moment and offered up a short prayer that Helen would never lose her present husband and come looking in my part of the world for another. I could have managed to love her all right, but she scared me to death.