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

by Edited By Judith Merril

  Hours or centuries.

  Who could tell them apart?

  The herd went back to its usual life, except that the intervals between needles were much shorter. The once-commander, Suzdal, refused the needle when he heard the news. Whenever he could walk, he followed the customs robots around as they photographed, took soil samples, and made a count of the bodies. They were particularly interested in the mountain of the Go-Captain Alvarez and professed themselves uncertain as to whether there was organic life there or not. The mountain did appear to react to super-condamine, but they could find no blood, no heart-beat. Moisture, moved by the dromozoa, seemed to have replaced the once-human bodily processes.

  5

  And then, early one morning, the sky opened.

  Ship after ship landed. People emerged, wearing clothes.

  The dromozoa ignored the newcomers. Mercer, who was in a state of bliss, confusedly tried to think this through until he realized that the ships were loaded to their skins with communications machines; the “people” were either robots or images of persons in other places.

  The robots swiftly gathered together the herd. Using wheelbarrows, they brought the hundreds of mindless people to the landing area.

  Mercer heard a voice he knew. It was the Lady Johanna Gnade. “Set me high,” she commanded.

  Her form rose until she seemed one-fourth the size of Alvarez. Her voice took on more volume.

  “Wake them all,” she commanded.

  Robots moved among them, spraying them with a gas which was both sickening and sweet. Mercer felt his mind go clear. The super-condamine still operated in his nerves and veins, but his cortical area was free of it. He thought clearly.

  “I bring you,” cried the compassionate feminine voice of the gigantic Lady Johanna, “the judgment of the Instrumentality on the planet Shayol.

  “Item: the surgical supplies will be maintained and the dromozoa will not be molested. Portions of human bodies will be left here to grow, and the grafts will be collected by robots. Neither man nor homunculus will live here again. “

  “Item: the underman B’dikkat, of cattle extraction, will be rewarded by an immediate return to Earth. He will be paid twice his expected thousand years of earnings.”

  The voice of B’dikkat, without amplification, was almost as loud as hers through the amplifier. He shouted his protest, “Lady, Lady!”

  She looked down at him, his enormous body reaching to ankle height on her swirling gown, and said in a very informal tone, “What do you want?”

  “Let me finish my work first,” he cried, so that all could hear. “Let me finish taking care of these people.”

  The specimens who had minds all listened attentively. The brainless ones were trying to dig themselves back into the soft earth of Shayol, using their powerful claws for the purpose. Whenever one began to disappear, a robot seized him by a limb and pulled him out again.

  “Item: cephalectomies will be performed on all persons with irrecoverable minds. Their bodies will be left here. Their heads will be taken away and killed as pleasantly as we can manage, probably by an overdosage of super-condamine.”

  “The last big jolt,” murmured Commander Suzdal, who stood near Mercer. “That’s fair enough.”

  “Item: the children have been found to be the last heirs of the Empire. An over-zealous official sent them here to prevent their committing treason when they grew up. The doctor obeyed orders without questioning them. Both the official and the doctor have been cured and their memories of this have been erased, so that they need have no shame or grief for what they have done.”

  “It’s unfair,” cried the half-man. “They should be punished as we were!”

  The Lady Johanna Gnade looked down at him. “Punishment is ended. We will give you anything you wish, but not the pain of another. I shall continue.

  “Item: since none of you wish to resume the lives which you led previously, we are moving you to another planet nearby. It is similar to Shayol, but much more beautiful. There are no dromozoa.”

  At this an uproar seized the herd. They shouted, wept, cursed, appealed. They all wanted the needle, and if they had to stay on Shayol to get it, they would stay.

  “Item,” said the gigantic image of the lady, overriding their babble with her great but feminine voice, “you will not have super-condamine on the new planet, since without dromozoa it would kill you. But there will be caps. Remember the caps. We will try to cure you and to make people of you again. But if you give up, we will not force you. Caps are very powerful; with medical help you can live under them many years.”

  A hush fell on the group. In their various ways, they were trying to compare the electrical caps which had stimulated their pleasure-lobes with the drug which had drowned them a thousand times in pleasure. Their murmur sounded like assent.

  “Do you have any questions?” said the Lady Johanna.

  “When do we get the caps?” said several. They were human enough that they laughed at their own impatience.

  “Soon,” said she reassuringly, “very soon.”

  “Very soon,” echoed B’dikkat, reassuring his charges even though he was no longer in control.

  “Question,” cried the Lady Da.

  “My Lady ... ?” said the Lady Johanna, giving the ex-empress her due courtesy.

  “Will we be permitted marriage?”

  The Lady Johanna looked astonished. “I don’t know.” She smiled. “I don’t know any reason why not—”

  “I claim this man Mercer,” said the Lady Da. “When the drugs were deepest, and the pain was greatest, he was the one who always tried to think. May I have him?”

  Mercer thought the procedure arbitrary but he was so happy that he said nothing. The Lady Johanna scrutinized him and then she nodded. She lifted her arms in a gesture of blessing and farewell.

  The robots began to gather the pink herd into two groups. One group was to whisper in a ship over to a new world, new problems and new lives. The other group, no matter how much its members tried to scuttle into the dirt, was gathered for the last honor which humanity could pay their manhood.

  B’dikkat, leaving everyone else, jogged with his bottle across the plain to give the mountain-man Alvarez an especially large gift of delight.

  <>

  * * * *

  THE ASTEROIDS, 2194

  by John Wyndham

  The “space story” (the one science caught up with) was originally concerned with the techniques of space travel— with our ability to manufacture and control what we now call “the hardware” of space flight. The “planet story” has traditionally been rollicking-romance-adventure (prototypically. Burroughs’ “Princess of Mars.”) Both of these varieties dealt primarily with man’s effect on the environments of space. A third type, and indeed the earliest one, has been the philosophic novel, in which the space (or, most usually. Moon, setting) was essentially a stage for a passion play; in these there was no real interaction; the voyageur was primarily an observer.

  Now, more and more, writers confronted by the imminence of space travel, are considering the effects of the trip into the unknown on mankind. One hears the old phrase, the “conquest of space,” less frequently now. That there will be immediate and perhaps profound effects on us, physiologically and culturally, is dear; equally obvious, but much less clearcut, are the potential effects on our psychology, philosophy, religion, and mystique.

  * * * *

  My first visit to New Caledonia was in the summer of 2199. At that time an exploration party under the leadership of Gilbert Troon was cautiously pushing its way up the less radioactive parts of Italy, investigating the prospects of reclamation. My firm felt that there might be a popular book in it, and assigned me to put the proposition to Gilbert. When I arrived, however, it was to find that he had been delayed, and was now expected a week later. I was not at all displeased. A few days of comfortable laziness on a Pacific island, all paid for and counting as work, is the kind of perquisite I
like.

  New Caledonia is a fascinating spot, and well worth the trouble of getting a landing permit—if you can get one. It has more of the past—and more of the future, too, for that matter—than any other place, and somehow it manages to keep them almost separate.

  At one time the island, and the group, were, in spite of the name, a French colony. But in 2044, with the eclipse of Europe in the Great Northern War, it found itself, like other ex-colonies dotted all about the world, suddenly thrown upon its own resources. While most mainland colonies hurried to make treaties with their nearest powerful neighbors, many islands such as New Caledonia had little to offer and not much to fear, and so let things drift.

  For two generations the surviving nations were far too occupied by the tasks of bringing equilibrium to a half-wrecked world to take any interest in scattered islands. It was not until the Brazilians began to see Australia as a possible challenger of their supremacy that they started a policy of unobtrusive and tactful mercantile expansion into the Pacific. Then, naturally, it occurred to the Australians, too, that it was time to begin to extend their economic influence over various island-groups.

  The New Caledonians resisted infiltration. They had found independence congenial, and steadily rebuffed temptations by both parties. The year 2194, in which Space declared for independence, found them still resisting; but the pressure was now considerable. They had watched one group of islands after another succumb to trade preferences, and thereafter virtually slide back to colonial status, and they now found it difficult to doubt that before long the same would happen to themselves when, whatever the form of words, they would be annexed—most likely by the Australians in order to forestall the establishment of a Brazilian base there, within a thousand miles of the coast.

  It was into this situation that Jayme Gonveia, speaking for Space, stepped in 2150 with a suggestion of his own. He offered the New Caledonians guaranteed independence of either big Power, a considerable quantity of cash, and a prosperous future if they would grant Space a lease of territory which would become its Earth headquarters and main terminus.

  The proposition was not altogether to the New Caledonian taste, but it was better than the alternatives. They accepted, and the construction of the Space-yards was begun.

  Since then the island has lived in a curious symbiosis. In the north are the rocket landing and dispatch stages, warehouses, and engineering shops, and a way of life furnished with all modem techniques, while the other four-fifths of the island all but ignores it, and contentedly lives much as it did two and a half centuries ago. Such a state of affairs cannot be preserved by accident in this world. It is the result of careful contrivance both by the New Caledonians who like it that way, and by Space which dislikes outsiders taking too close an interest in its affairs. So, for permission to land anywhere in the group one needs hard-won visas from both authorities. The result is no exploitation by tourists or salesmen, and a scarcity of strangers.

  However, there I was, with an unexpected week of leisure to put in, and no reason why I should spend it in Space-Concession territory. One of the secretaries suggested Lahua as a restful spot, so thither I went

  * * * *

  Lahua has picture-book charm. It is a small fishing town, half-tropical, half-French. On its wide white beach there are still canoes, working canoes, as well as modem. At one end of the curve a mole gives shelter for a small anchorage, and there the palms that fringe the rest of the shore stop to make room for the town.

  Many of Lahua’s houses are improved-traditional, still thatched with palm, but its heart is a cobbled rectangle surrounded by entirely untropical houses, known as the Grande Place. Here are shops, pavement cafés, stalls of fruit under bright striped awnings guarded by Gauguinesque women, a statue of Bougainville, an atrociously ugly church on the east side, a pissoir, and even a Maine. The whole thing might have been imported complete from early twentieth-century France, except for the inhabitants—but even they, some in bright sarongs, some in European clothes, must have looked much the same when France ruled there.

  I found it difficult to believe that they are real people living real lives. For the first day I was constantly accompanied by the feeling that an unseen director would suddenly call “Cut,” and it would all come to a stop.

  On the second morning I was growing more used to it. I bathed, and then with a sense that I was beginning to get the feel of the life, drifted to the Place, in search of an aperitif. I chose a café on the south side where a few trees shaded the tables, and wondered what to order. My usual drinks seemed out of key. A dusky, brightly saronged girl approached. On an impulse, and feeling like a character out of a very old novel I suggested a pernod. She took it as a matter of course.

  “Un pernod? Certainement, monsieur,” she told me.

  I sat there looking across the Square, less busy now that the dejeuner hour was close, wondering what Sydney and Rio, Adelaide and Sao Paulo had gained and lost since they had been the size of Lahua, and doubting the value of the gains whatever they might be...

  The pernod arrived. I watched it cloud with water, and sipped it cautiously. An odd drink, scarcely calculated, I felt, to enhance the appetite. As I contemplated it a voice spoke from behind my right shoulder.

  “An island product, but from the original recipe,” it said. “Quite safe, in moderation, I assure you.”

  I turned in my chair. The speaker was seated at the next table; a well-built, compact, sandy-haired man, dressed in a spotless white suit, a panama hat with a colored band, and wearing a neatly trimmed, pointed beard. I guessed his age at about 34 though the gray eyes that met my own looked older, more experienced, and troubled.

  “A taste that I have not had the opportunity to acquire,” I told him. He nodded.

  “You won’t find it outside. In some ways we are a museum here, but little the worse, I think, for that.”

  ”One of the later Muses,” I suggested. “The Muse of Recent History. And very fascinating, too.”

  I became aware that one or two men at tables within earshot were paying us—or, rather, me—some attention; their expressions were not unfriendly, but they showed what seemed to be traces of concern.

  “It is—” my neighbor began to reply, and then broke off, cut short by a rumble in the sky.

  I turned to see a slender white spire stabbing up into the blue overhead. Already, by the time the sound reached us, the rocket at its apex was too small to be visible. The man cocked an eye at it.

  “Moon-shuttle,” he observed.

  “They all sound and look alike to me,” I admitted.

  “They wouldn’t if you were inside. The acceleration in that shuttle would spread you all over the floor—very thinly,” he said, and then went on: “We don’t often see strangers in Lahua. Perhaps you would care to give me the pleasure of your company for luncheon? My name, by the way, is George.”

  I hesitated, and while I did I noticed over his shoulder an elderly man who moved his lips slightly as he gave me what was without doubt an encouraging nod. I decided to take a chance on it.

  “That’s very kind of you. My name is David—David Myford, from Sydney,” I told him. But he made no amplification regarding himself, so I was left still wondering whether George was his forename, or his surname.

  I moved to his table, and he lifted a hand to summon the girl.

  “Unless you are averse to fish you must try the bouillabaisse—speciality de la maison,” he told me.

  I was aware that I had gained the approval of the elderly man, and apparently of some others. The waitress, too, had an approving air. I wondered vaguely what was going on, and whether I had been let in for the town bore, to protect the rest.

  “From Sydney,” he said reflectively. “It’s a long time since I saw Sydney. I don’t suppose I’d know it now.”

  “It keeps on growing,” I admitted, “but Nature would always prevent you from confusing it with anywhere else.”

  We went on chatting. The bouillabais
se arrived; and excellent it was. There were hunks of first-class bread, too, cut from those long loaves you see in pictures in old European books. I began to feel, with the help of the local wine, that a lot could be said for the twentieth-century way of living.

  In the course of our talk it emerged that George had been a rocket pilot, but was grounded now—not, one would judge, for reasons of health, so I did not inquire further....

  The second course was an excellent coupe of fruits I never heard of, and, over all, iced passion-fruit juice. It was when the coffee came that he said, rather wistfully I thought:

  “I had hoped you might be able to help me, Mr. Myford, but it now seems to me that you are not a man of faith.”

  “Surely everyone has to be very much a man of faith,” I protested. “For everything a man cannot do for himself he has to have faith in others.”