The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 7 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  But the next evening I knew the difference. While I performed my ablutions and the routine ceremonies to the full moon I thought with increasing horror of my state of mind during my conscious trance. What my state of mind actually had been I cannot with confidence now represent, for what I know of it is colored by my reaction against it the next day. I had remained conscious, in that I could recall what happened, yet that observer and commentator in myself of whose existence I had scarcely been aware, but whom I had always taken for my consciousness, had vanished. I no longer had been thinking, but had lost control so that my consciousness had become what I was doing; almost worse, when I told the story of Christ I had done it not because I had wanted to or believed in it but because, in some obscure sense, I had had to. Thinking about it afterward I did not understand or want to understand what I was drifting toward, but I knew it was something that I feared. And I got out of there as soon as I was physically able.

  Here in Sansom what I have learned has provided me with material for an honorable contribution to knowledge, has given me a tenure to a professorship—thereby pleasing my wife—whereas if I had stayed there among the Dangs much longer I would have reverted until I had become one of them, might not have minded when the time came to die under the sacrificial knife, would have taken in all ways the risk of prophecy—as my Dang son intends to do—until I had lost myself utterly.

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  * * * *

  IMMEDIATELY YOURS

  by Robert Beverly Hale

  Now this one is not science fiction. It is, very much, “S-F.” Mr. Hale was not concerned with how or why his strange events occurred, or with the logic of the situation—and neither am I.

  Rationale here is not just unnecessary; it could have been ruinous. What Mr. Hale has done is to paint an alien viewpoint in an unknown perspective, and do it so graphically that (to return to the earlier metaphor), the resultant rainbow seems the natural way for light to be.

  Of course, he has some special advantages. Possibly, this story could only have been written by an author who is both architect (by training) and anatomist (lecturer on, at the Art Students’ League) as well as a painter and poet of some years’ standing, and an editor, writer, and teacher of art. (Among other things, Curator of American Painting and Sculpture at New York’s Metropolitan Museum.)

  * * * *

  Let me tell you about a dream I had and what happened afterward, because I think it all adds up.

  You see, when this poet turned up a while back telling me he could live upstairs because Mrs. Stettheimer had said he could, there wasn’t much I could do. After all, Mr. Stettheimer had let us have the place free, as long as I painted him one picture a year. And upstairs wasn’t much anyway: it was where they used to keep the hay. There was an old sofa up there full of moths, and we gave him a blanket. He didn’t need a table, he said, because he never wrote anything down, he was extemporaneous. His name was Virgil Cranbrook; he came from Taos and San Francisco.

  He wasn’t much trouble in the beginning. Mornings, Olivia used to pound on the ceiling with a mop handle and wake him up. Soon he would open the trap door, call for the stepladder and join us at breakfast. He took mescaline, or peyote, the drug that Huxley wrote about. He’d picked a supply of peyote buds near Taos and carried them around in his pockets. Every now and then he’d slice some with a razor blade, toast them in our toaster, and crumble them into powder. He’d put this powder in a jar of instant coffee, shake it up, and then at breakfast drink a couple of cups. After breakfast he would go upstairs and walk back and forth being extemporaneous.

  The trouble was the moths up there couldn’t get used to him. He disturbed them. They’d crawl through the cracks in the ceiling and fly around my studio. Once so many of them got on a wet canvas of mine that they ruined it. I complained to Olivia, so she bought some moth balls and put them around upstairs. She also persuaded Virgil to carry some in his pockets along with the peyote buds.

  Let me explain about Olivia. Thelonious Monk was playing at the Jazz Gallery one evening, and I found her next to me in the balcony. She had blank gray eyes, a thin body, and rather fat arms and legs. She wasn’t very attractive, but then I’m afraid I’m not either—and so far I haven’t been very successful. So we worked out an arrangement. She kept house well enough for me, and the nice thing about her was you didn’t know she was around when she was around.

  The first thing that made me suspect there was something up between Virgil and Olivia were those whistles. Olivia and Virgil used to like to go to the beach, and one day they came back with a couple of tin whistles they’d found near some empty packages of Cracker Jack. Then they worked up a kind of game in the woods behind my studio—they’d separate from each other and start blowing the whistles. Ultimately they’d find each other and stop blowing. This used to go on while I was painting.

  One morning Virgil came down to breakfast as usual, but after breakfast he didn’t go up again; he started declaiming right there—some crazy poem about what sex was like in outer space. Olivia sat on the bed and watched him. She was showing, I thought, a little too much appreciation. For me, this went on too long, so I told him to go upstairs or keep quiet; I wanted to paint. Since he wouldn’t pay any attention, I picked him up and threw him out the door. This wasn’t very hard to do because his co-ordination had been all shaken up by his morning coffee. Nevertheless, I handled him pretty roughly; he lost a couple of moth balls. Olivia looked irritated. I told them they could go out in the woods and blow their damn whistles, then slammed the door on both of them.

  Right away they threw this stone, or rock, I guess you might call it, through the studio window. Outside, I heard them start up my car and head down the road.

  Virgil’s special brew was still on the table. I mixed up a cup and poured in a lot of sugar. It wasn’t too bad. I drank three cups altogether. Soon I began to feel uneasy and lay down on the bed.

  Outside the hole in the studio window, climbing up my rose bush, was a morning-glory vine. The blossoms were a very effective blue. On the floor a square of sunlight was making up into a nice arrangement with the rock they’d thrown through the window. As the sun moved across the floor, it occurred to me that the rock was not an ordinary Long Island rock. Long Island rocks look like Long Island potatoes, but this rock was a deep black, a real ivory black, and it had metallic flecks in it. I got off the bed, though it took a great deal of effort, and picked the rock up. It was terribly heavy for its size and roughly conical in shape— altogether, it had a lot of style. I decided I’d give it to Zogstein. He’d been making some very nice things out of iron lately, with a rock in the middle.

  There came a loud knock, so I put the rock on the bed and opened the door. On the doorstep was a tall man carrying an open can of beer in one hand and a live lobster in the other. At first I thought he was an artist, because he hadn’t shaved and his shirt was such a tasteful, faded blue. But he didn’t have that troubled look, he had a general air of assurance; I decided he was a native of the place.

  “Morning,” he said. “Got any pictures you want to trade?”

  I understood the situation immediately. Jackson Pollock had come to Springs in 1947, and very shortly a number of other Abstract Expressionists, who are now famous, had followed him. Things were not so good in those days, so the grocer had occasionally let them exchange paintings for groceries. Lately, the grocer had been written up in Life magazine as a great collector, and had sold his Pollock for a price that had increased at every telling.

  “I’m Lester Barnes, from over at Louse Point,” said the man at my door. “I’m putting up a little mess of drawings. They come cheaper than the big stuff, and I figure, I figure—” He seemed confused, and took a gulp of beer. “I figure that, well...”

  “You mean that though they’re sort of small they still carry the personality of the artist?”

  “Yep!” exclaimed Mr. Barnes enthusiastically. “That’s just what I mean. Now I’ve just been over to Mike
Goldfarb’s. He gave me a drawing for seven lobsters. But I figured that after that panning you got in Art News you might let me have one for three.”

  I didn’t like this much.

  “All right,” I said.

  “Here’s one down.” Mr. Barnes handed me the lobster. “I’ll bring the other two later.” He started down the path, hesitated, and came back. “The one I gave you—maybe you won’t eat him right away.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, you see—” He took another gulp of beer and looked down at the ground. “You see, we’ve had him for quite a while. You might call him sort of a household pet. He’s even learned to play marbles with the kids.”

  I took the lobster inside and put him down in the square of sunlight. He crawled across the room right away and went under the bed. That was all right, because it left the floor clear for me to do a little painting. I was feeling much better and was beginning to have ideas. Art News had said that my work was too busy, too many things in it. I decided I’d try for a very simple statement. Just two strong forms, one geometrical and one amorphous: And just two colors playing against each other, but strong ones.

  I placed a forty-eight-by-fifty canvas on the floor, mixed up some vermilion, and painted in a nice round disc up near the top of the canvas. Then I got a can of ivory black and poured some out in a little pool down near the bottom.

  I picked up another brush, wondering what shape I would tease this pool into. But then a really weird thing happened. I noticed that as a shape formed in my mind, the same shape would form on the canvas. I mean I didn’t touch the canvas or anything. The black pool of paint just took on what I was thinking. I worked through a series of shapes and finally hit on a very good one. It had a sort of cosmic quality: a nucleus, with five interrelated drips spiraling around it.

  I stepped back. The black form was in a very nice place, the tension was practically perfect. I was pleased and was admiring my work, when I began to get the feeling that somebody was watching me. You know that feeling you sometimes get in a bus or a subway and you look up and sure enough you meet the eyes of a character across the aisle. A detective or something. So I looked up.

  On the bed where I had put the rock was a girl. At first I thought she was Olivia. She was the same size, small, that is, had the same immature and somewhat nondescript face, and was wearing, as Olivia always did, a black turtle-neck sweater and blue jeans. But the eyes that were watching me were not Olivia’s. Olivia’s eyes were gray, as I’ve said, and sort of dull. These eyes were a burnt-sienna color. And over there on the dark side of the room they were glowing as if someone had lit a couple of little bonfires behind them.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  She didn’t answer. She sat there watching me, her elbow on her knee, her pointed chin resting on the palm of a somewhat pudgy hand.

  “Do you know,” she said finally, “you’re the first man I’ve ever seen. Ever, that is.”

  She shook her head slightly, as if to clear it, and looked at me again.

  “How did it happen, sister?” I asked. ‘They had you locked up?”

  “In a sense,” she said.

  I carried my canvas across the room and set it up against the wall.

  “It utterly overwhelms me!” she exclaimed. “I can see that one must exercise fantastic control.”

  I looked at my picture to see if it was that good, and shrugged my shoulders modestly.

  “I wasn’t talking about your picture,” she said. “I was talking about sex. This is the first time I’ve ever experienced it. You know, where I come from we don’t have any sex. We have something entirely different.”

  “And what is that?” I asked.

  “Oh, it’s a really grisly performance. It takes eight of us, and it’s run by the Department of Weights and Measures. It’s quite heavy.” She patted the bed. “Do come and sit beside me.”

  I said, somewhat nervously, “Perhaps you’d better come over here and sit on this chair.” Since she didn’t move, I added, “As a matter of fact, I’m afraid you’re sitting on a rock.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said, a little coldly. “Besides, it wasn’t a rock. It was a meteorite.” A small, reproachful wrinkle appeared on her forehead. She drew up her knees, and in a slow, weary way put her head down on the pillow. “I’m not happy,” she said. “It’s very evident that you don’t like me.” She began to look as if she were going to cry. “I gave a lot of thought to my appearance before I came. I’ve always heard that artists like you, who’d been through the mill, who’d really had it, wanted something quiet around. Something not too exciting. Something they call a studio mouse.”

  I began to feel sorry for her. I crossed the room and put my hand on her shoulder.

  “Listen, sister,” I explained, “the trouble is, I’ve just had one of what you describe. And I’m not too anxious to get mixed up with another.”

  “Oh,” she said, lightening up considerably. “So that’s all it is. Why, that can be taken care of in no time. Do you like my eyes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you like them better this way?” As she spoke her eyes changed from brown to a brilliant blue. The color of the morning-glory in the sun outside.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  At first I thought I wasn’t functioning properly. I put my hands over my own eyes and looked at her again. Then I went to the window. The grass was still green, the sky still blue. And across the marshes, across Acabonic Creek, I could see Seymore Harris’ red Jaguar speeding along his private causeway. Colorwise, my eyes were O.K.

  “Anything else?” she had asked. Slowly I grasped the significance of her remark. Evidently, all I had to do was to make a suggestion or so, and she would change into my conception of the perfect woman. The trouble was, I’d never done any work with the figure. I’d always painted abstractions (I’d studied with Hans Hofmann). I wasn’t sure I could carry the job through. So I went to the stepladder where Olivia had put some of my books and took down a large volume.

  “Have you ever heard of Leonardo da Vinci?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said brightly. “He was one of ours. How did he make out down here?”

  “Not at all badly.” I handed her the book. “I’ve always admired his women.”

  She leafed through the papers. “They seem,” she said, “they seem to me to be a little old-fashioned. Wouldn’t you like something less passé?” She pointed to a picture of Jacqueline Kennedy that I had tacked up over the sink. “Who’s that over there?” she asked. “Couldn’t I combine a little of that with a little of these?”

  “If you like.”

  “Then put your hands over your eyes, the way you did a moment ago, and count backward from ten. Very slowly.”

  I covered my eyes as she asked and started to count. At eight, I heard the town siren give a wail, there was a fire somewhere. At five, I began to notice a complicated perfume, as if the room were filling up with flowers. And then I heard an automobile horn on the road below. A very expensive horn.

  “Now, darling,” she said. “Now...”

  She was flawless, absolutely flawless. She was, to be sure, generally Leonardo, though I had the impression that he might have painted her some years after he had died, when things in Italy were more sensuous, more worldly. But her hair was definitely Jacqueline. She had kept her blue eyes.

  “Do you approve?” she murmured, smiling and holding out her hands toward me.

  She was completely irresistible. I took her in my arms.

  “Who,” she asked, “is that utterly fascinating man coming up the path?”

  I turned to see.

  “It’s Seymore Harris, the dealer,” I answered.

  He was striding up the path with all the purpose and vitality that had brought him such success in business. He was very smartly done up, in crushed-raspberry trousers and a well-cut plaid jacket. This was topped off with a handsome beret, the whole costume suggesting that he was a man of two worl
ds—which indeed he was, for he could move with us and with the others. His strong face was a type that often appeals to women: it was full of charm and animal cunning.

  “Look,” I said abruptly. “I’m afraid Mr. Harris has come to discuss a private matter. Would you mind going upstairs?”

  “Where’s upstairs?” she asked.

  I grabbed the stepladder, shook the books off the steps and set it up under the trap door.

  “Come!” I ordered. “Right up here.” And she followed obediently.

  Seymore Harris was knocking on the door below. I said to her, “Just make yourself at home on the sofa,” and she sat down. A small cloud of moths arose before her beautiful and bewildered face. I descended the ladder, then slammed the trap door above me.

  “Hi, Seymore,” I said.