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

by Edited By Judith Merril

  The man opposite Maggie set the front legs of his chair soundlessly on the pavement again and put his hands on the table edge, ready for action.

  “Yes?” she inquired.

  “American, no?” The red lips retained the perfect circle for a perceptible instant after the question was finished.

  “No,” said the big man. “Non. Pas du tout. Kenya. Dominion brittanique. Aimée de France—cawmprah?” His accent was as pure Cedar Rapids as she had ever heard. He pulled out a booklet and flipped the pages in front of their eyes.

  “Oh yays. Africain. Vairy nice for England, too bad for France. Ah, ah. A joke, is it not? And madame?”

  “Are you a cop?” she asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “Un flic?”

  He breathed nastily into her face, his chiseled features subordinate to his bad teeth. They can laugh all they want about American toothpaste, she thought, but I’d rather smell peppermint any time than yesterday’s pot-au-feu. “You insult!”

  “Beat it, Chester. I have no passport to show you and I wouldn’t if I had. Call a gendarme if you want action; meanwhile leave us alone. See?” She drank some of her beer—Pepsicola might have been an improvement after all—ignoring them until the older man finally succeeded in coaxing the younger to leave.

  “That wasn’t bright,” remarked the agent, tilting his chair again.

  “Wasn’t it?’ she asked indifferently. “I just happen to be fresh out of phony documents.”

  “The bottom dropped out of the hero market during the war,” he said. “Glory was running in the streets. If you’d been home you’d have died with the rest of the eagle scouts. We’re in business to survive now, not to sing ‘God Bless America’ and run up the flag on the Eiffel Tower. But I can see you’re our girl. How about it?”

  “How about what? What do you want?”

  “Hardly anything at all. Nothing dangerous. You still in that long hair committee?”

  It would be so easy to upstage him; all the formulas walked through her mind: What committee? Oh, you mean Americans Exiled for Freedom—the AEF? Well, naturally ... Of course a man like you ... I suppose you’ve run out of local victims; now you’ve gone into the overseas trade . . . let’s end this little chat right here, shall we? . . . Any one of these gambits would lead to the same end game. Was it conceivable she could be betrayed by simple biological weakness? Could she find herself in bed with a Defender? (Will Rock Hudson get girl?) Why, he was not even faintly physically attractive. When you had been living alone for a long time—for such an interminably long time—you began thinking like a man, feeling as a man does. Disgusting. “Yes. I suppose you want their names, addresses, letter-drops?”

  (What an absurdity; it only went to show how far nature imitated pulp fiction. As though the AEF were a cohesive, dedicated body instead of a number of wrangling, petulant groups, forming and reforming, changing factions, dissatisfied and impotent. The Defenders, having conspired melodramatically and achieved power through their ludicrous conspiracy, believed their opponents must have remodeled themselves in their image. A government which could imagine the dilettantes of the AEF a threat wasn’t competent to run Outer Baldonia or one of the smaller Micronesian atolls.)

  “Not to harm them. Believe me, kid, they’re worth their weight in isotopes to us. We want to work with them, convince them they’re making a mistake to criticize their country. Look, I’m not going to hand you a line, I’m not going to tell you the Defenders have thrown their whole program out of the window and the good guys have become bad guys and vice versa. I’m only saying you people never understood politics; now we want to get you back in on the ground floor.”

  “A bribe like my fifty thousand dollars and a good job?”

  “Bribe? It’s how you look at it. We’re all Americans— exiles, committee, Defenders—and we’re on the spot. No matter what, you wouldn’t want to see a bunch of limeys or frogs telling us how to run our country, would you?”

  “They aren’t telling us how to run our country. Just not to fight any more wars or put people in concentration camps.”

  “Education Centers. Nobody’s business but our own. Anyway, I see you wouldn’t work with the English.”

  “That isn’t exactly true. Let’s say I couldn’t go all the way with them. But don’t fool yourself: as between the Third Force and the Defenders, I pray the Third Force beats you.”

  “But you don’t pray hard enough to do something?”

  “Treason is an ugly word, even when you can argue that it isn’t treason.”

  “Look, Mrs. F, you lose me with fancy talk. Let me lay it on the line. All we want you to do is your duty to your country: Give us the names; nobody’s going to get mussed up, I swear, and anyway, what could we do to them? We need them because the war hurt us, even if it hurt the Russians worse, and they need us because a refugee is only half a man. Go back to London and say you’ve changed your mind and you’ll work with them. Just tip us off to what they’re doing. That’s all; no fireworks, no rough stuff, nobody hurt on either side, everything settled nice and smoothly.”

  “And the Defenders will continue to run the United States as a dictatorship?”

  “There’s still a vote, isn’t there? And Congress can yak.”

  “And pass laws which the Defender-in-Chief supersedes with new Regulations.”

  “The Defender-in-Chief isn’t going to resign and turn the job over to you, if that’s what you want, but there’s bound to be some easing up.”

  “All through now?”

  “Let’s say I’ve reached a comma.”

  “All right. No.”

  “Now, let’s not paint ourselves into corners—”

  “Good-by. I can’t say it’s been nice knowing you, because it hasn’t. Or that you’ve clarified my thinking, because I’m afraid it’s as soupy as ever. But good-by, anyway.”

  The greedy fingers closed over hers. “You’re hysterical, kid. You’re making a mistake and you—somehow, somewhere, in your subconscious—”

  Maggie winced. She didn’t mean to, but she couldn’t help it. “Unconscious,” she corrected, hearing in the primness of her voice an echo of exactly what made the opponents of the Defenders ineffective.

  “O.k., o.k. In your unconscious, you know it. What you need is to simmer down and look at things coolly. Let’s go somewhere quiet—I hate these frog sidewalk joints—and talk everything over. Have a real get-together. I’ve got a room...”

  She could visualize the whole scene. If he tried— If he raped her, she would lie still and docile. Maybe afterward she would kill him (how?), Judith—or was it Jael?—and Holofernes. But during the act she would be complacent.

  His hand jerked away. ‘The damn frogs are coming back and they have the makings of an army with them.”

  She looked over her shoulder. A crowd, a mob, not led— no, certainly not led, but he was there, near the front, thrown up and forward—by the beautiful young man. His older, calmer friend wasn’t in evidence. Clearly they had been assembled, drilled, directed, outfitted, rehearsed by some demented escapee from the lushest days of Hollywood; some man with a limp and milky eye, gray stubble and beret, who in a Montmartre garret made nightly obeisance with a lipped cigarette to Griffith and Von Stroheim. There was a United Nations flag—a faded one whose tatters had been mended with coarse thread—tied to a bamboo stick (now I know what happens to the poles those old men fishing along the Seine use; they become implements of riot) and a large placard, VIVE LA FORCE TROISIEME.

  They didn’t seem in a particularly ugly or vicious mood. Rather they were like adolescents escaping boredom for some pointless horseplay. The bearer of the UN flag had a broken front tooth against which he kept thrusting his tongue; he looked bewildered and innocent. The man beside him was wall-eyed; Maggie wished profoundly he could take some position where both eyes looked at her simultaneously.

  The angelic leader stepped forward, epauletted with importance. “You ‘ave not finish yo
ur beer, Madame?”

  Now what happens? Does my compatriot with the Kenya passport produce a paper signed by the president of the republic attesting him a double-agent of long standing, who is loyal not only to la patrie but to la reine brittanique and the whole droning list of allies glorieux? Or does he whip out two Smith and Wessons from shoulder holsters and cow the whole mob until the US cavalry (read: paratroopers) comes to the rescue? She shifted her gaze slightly; the agent had vanished.

  The leader took her glass and brought it to his carven, pouted mouth. She saw she had left a lipstick smear on the rim and that he had carefully turned the glass so he would be drinking from the same spot. The ruling spirit, she thought, but not in death; this is farce, not drama. “What is it this time, Chester?”

  He took a full breath. “A bas les Etats Unis,” he shouted, and then translating for her benefit in a more confidential tone, “To ‘ell weeth Americains.” He swallowed what was left of the beer in a gulp.

  She pushed her chair back. “Excuse me.”

  “A minute, Madame.”

  Ceremony, ceremony, thought Maggie; it’ll be the death of me. The Queen opens Parliament, the President reviews the Republican Guard on the Champs de Mars, the ruler of Holland sticks her finger in the dike. You can’t even blame it on foreigners: the bailiff knocks subserviently on the jury room door to ask, What is your pleasure? The chairman inquires, For what purpose does the delegate from the Canal Zone arise? The Flag comes tenderly down as the bugle sounds Retreat and the Nation’s might yields to the inexorable processes of Nature.

  He caught her wrist. “Raymond! Içi!”

  Raymond was lantern-jawed, self-conscious, in constant danger of stumbling over his own feet as he advanced holding in his hands an American flag as aged as the UN banner. Though it was folded, she could see from the alignment of the stars that it dated before 1959. Raymond smiled at her deprecatingly. The leader took it and thrust it at her. “Speet, Madame,” he invited.

  She almost smiled at the theatricalism of it. Presumably if she made the gesture she would convince them of her political purity. Demonstrating indifference or contempt for the rectangle of red, white and blue material would establish her position in their eyes more firmly than the most fervent protestations or solemn oaths. The agent shouldn’t have run off; he would certainly have spat with zeal. And why not?

  “Thanks. You just drank my beer and my mouth is dry.” She tried to slide her wrist out of his grasp, but it was too tight.

  “You loaf these Defenders? These fascists?”

  ‘They killed my husband.”

  “Alors!” He turned, speaking so rapidly she couldn’t follow him, hearing only the words, “mari. . . assassine.” The crowd applauded rather listlessly.

  He shook out the ensign with elaborate deliberation. She saw again the posters in the history museum, Remember December 7, with the colors coming down in unmistakable, unbelievable surrender. This is utterly ridiculous, she thought, ridiculous, pointless, futile. Such an allegedly logical people confusing cause and effect. Indulging in sympathetic magic, making the tableau to induce the events leading up to what it represented.

  The man threw the flag on the pavement and smeared his foot over the field of stars. “Oh, you mustn’t do that,” she cried, in a high, little girl’s voice of shock at impropriety. “You mustn’t!”

  She hurried forward and snatched up the bunting, clutching it to her. The kicking did not really hurt intolerably. Sol had been hurt much, much worse than this. Only her jaw, and her eye, and now her stomach ...

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  * * * *

  MY TRIAL AS A WAR CRIMINAL

  by Leo Szilard

  Another FPS—First Published Story—although first published some lime back (1949, in The University of Chicago law Review)—and once again, by a writer already more than well established in other fields (although very little of his work had been published outside Top Classified circles for some years). *

  Dr. Szilard was born In Budapest in 1898. After teaching In England for several years, he came here, to Columbia University, in 1939. Three years later, he went out to the University of Chicago, where, with Dr. Fermi, he developed the first uranium-graphite reactor.

  * * * *

  I was just about to lock the door of my hotel room and go to bed when there was a knock on the door and there stood a Russian officer and a young Russian civilian. I had expected something of this sort ever since the President signed the terms of unconditional surrender and the Russians landed a token occupation force in New York. The officer handed me something that looked like a warrant and said that I was under arrest as a war criminal on the basis of my activities during the Second World War in connection with the atomic bomb. There was a car waiting outside and they told me that they were going to take me to the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. Apparently, they were rounding up all the scientists who had ever worked in the field of atomic energy.

  Once we were in the car the young man introduced himself and told me that he was a physicist as well as a member of the Moscow Chapter of the Communist Party. I had never heard his name before and I was never able to remember it thereafter. He was obviously very eager to talk. He told me that he and the other Russian scientists were all exceedingly sorry that the strain of the virus which had been used had killed such a disproportionately large number of children. It was very fortunate, he said, that the first attack was limited to New Jersey and that the early cessation of hostilities made attacks of larger scope unnecessary. According to plan—so he said—stocks of this virus were merely held in reserve for an emergency. Another virus differing by five further mutational steps had been in the stage of pilot plant production, and it was this improved virus which was meant to be used in case of war. It would not affect children at all and would kill predominantly men between twenty and forty. Owing to the premature outbreak of the war, however, the Russian government found itself forced to use the stocks which it had on hand.

  He said that all the scientists arrested would be given a chance to go to Russia, in which case they need not stand trial as war criminals; but that if I should elect to stand for trial he personally hoped that I would be exonerated and that afterward I would be willing to collaborate with the Russians here in the United States.

  He said that the Russians were very anxious to get the support of people other than the American Communists for a stable political regime in the United States which would collaborate with them. Since they now had the support of the Communists anyway, he explained, they would rather bestow their favors on those whose co-operation was not yet assured. “We shall, of course, lean on the Communists for the next few months,” he said, “but, in the long run, dissatisfied elements who are used to conspiracy would not be relied on by us. It is difficult to work with fellows who have no sense of humor,” he added as an afterthought.

  He told me that no scientist would be forced to go to Russia and that no one who was innocent need go there for fear of having to stand trial as a war criminal, because, he said, Russia would do everything in her power to make the trials fair and impartial. ‘The outcome of a bona fide trial,” he added somewhat illogically, “is, of course, always something of a tossup.”

  He told me that he expected that Russia would, within a fortnight, change her position on the question of world government; that she would come out in favor of it, in principle, and that she would press for immediate strengthening of the United Nations. The tribunal which was being assembled to try war criminals would not be Russian-dominated, he said, but would, rather, be composed of representatives of all nations which were not at war with Russia.

  I was surprised to hear him say that he expected Great Britain to delegate the Lord Chief Justice to sit on the tribunal, and, frankly, I did not believe him then, though of course this was technically not impossible, since the coalition Cabinet had declared Britain’s neutrality twenty-four hours before the outbreak of the war. His prediction was con
firmed, however, the following morning when the newspapers reported the speech of the British Prime Minister, who had said that Great Britain, having participated in the Nuremberg trials, could not now refuse her participation without being guilty of displaying a double standard of morality. The information which I received from this young man proved to be most valuable to me, because it gave me time to make up my mind as to what line I would want to follow.

  As far as going to Russia was concerned, my mind was made up. After having been raised in Hungary, I had lived in Germany and in England before I settled in the United States, and that is as much migration as is good for any man. Moreover, when you are above fifty you are no longer as quick at learning languages. How many years would it take me to get a sufficient command of Russian to be able to turn a phrase and to be slightly malicious without being outright offensive? No, I did not want to go to Russia.