Star Science Fiction 5 - [Anthology]

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Star Science Fiction 5 - [Anthology] Page 14

by Edited By Frederik Pohl


  “But,” Edgerton asked solicitously, “you’ll let us provide for upkeep of the forces, won’t you?”

  The official smiled. “Only to the extent of four-fifths of the cost. The Greater Community pays the rest.”

  A familiar figure rose at the Department of Contact, Survey and Recordation table. “And now,” D’Loon asked eagerly, “where did you say the Solcensir Empire was located?”

  “In the Backwash Area,” Munsford answered eagerly.

  “We know that. But there are seventy-four million suns in that region. What are the exact coordinates of Sol, Centauri and Sirius?”

  “Oh,” said Munsford innocently, “Toveen has that information. He found us, you know. We’ll have to get it from him. He’s outside now.”

  Arm in arm, Munsford and the Secretary of Interplanetary Affairs started up the aisle.

  The huge room settled down into a drone of casual conversation and the President leaned back in his chair, folding his arms patiently.

  “We’ll be right back,” Edgerton called over his shoulder.

  And Munsford added under his breath, “—like hell!”

  * * * *

  Centralia dwindled to a pea-sized disc, hidden in the brilliance of the backblast, as Toveen’s cargo ship slipped into the untraceable regions of hyperspace.

  Suddenly concerned, the trader asked, “This hasn’t queered my chances for that estate on New Terra?”

  “On the contrary,” Munsford reassured, “we’d like nothing better than to have you as a permanent guest. That way you won’t be likely to tell anybody where Solcensir is located.”

  “But,” Edgerton quickly qualified, “you’ll have to include the ship in the deal.”

  “Now, boys,” Toveen chided. “If I wanted to keep out from under the nose of the Contact Bureau, I wouldn’t go gadding about the Backwash Area on Cosmic Drive.”

  Munsford straightened disdainfully. “After we get home this ship is going to go gadding unmanned and in only one direction—directly sunward.”

  Toveen nodded. “I see,” he said. “Well, excuse me.”

  * * * *

  He engaged the autocontrol circuit, rose, stretched, glanced casually at the two diplomats; and stepped aft into his cabin.

  He locked the door.

  He listened for a second, then, satisfied, pulled a suitcase from under his bunk. He threw back its lid, exposing a metal chassis cluttered with electronic parts and knurled knobs.

  “Toveen calling,” he said softly.

  Pause.

  “This is Toveen calling,” he said with some asperity.

  There was a click and a whisper from the suitcase. Then a voice as soft as his own said, “Report, Toveen.”

  “We’re leaving Andromeda now,” he whispered, one eye on the door. “We’re heading back for their own galaxy. They want to destroy this ship.”

  Hesitation from the suitcase. “Well,” said the voice cautiously, “that is a problem. We won’t be able to come in and rescue you.”

  “Rescue? Hell, I want to stay there. It ought to be an easy life. And, you know, looking at a galactic civilization through their eyes, I began to feel the way we wanted them to feel. I think I’ll like the quiet backwoods life on New Terra.”

  The voice coughed warningly.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Toveen said easily, “I won’t say anything against our Andromedan civilization. Except, of course, to them. For them I’ll keep on dropping little hints about the fierce and unpredictable Andromedans.”

  The voice cautioned: “Don’t overplay it, Toveen. We don’t want them getting second thoughts and deciding to join the mythical Galactic Federation after all. . . . Well, I guess this is good-by, Toveen. We’ll miss you.” The voice assumed a ritual chant. “In the name of the Andromedan people, you are commended on the successful completion of your mission. The three hundred and thirteenth Galactic culture has now been successfully indoctrinated to avoid attempts at making contact with other cultures, thus permitting us Andromedans to remain at peace. Your sacrifice has not been in vain. The people of the Andromedan systems wish you well.” And the voice clicked off.

  Toveen, grinning widely, shut the lid, locked the suitcase and shoved it back under the bed. It was his only contact with his home civilization in the Andromedan nebula. He paused thoughtfully. Then, thinking of telepathic saurians and the ubiquitous con-men of the world where he had grown up, he took it out, opened the lid and picked up a hammer.

  In half a minute, he had reduced it to powder, chuckling to himself all the while.

  <>

  * * * *

  THE SCENE SHIFTER

  by Arthur Sellings

  It is a well-known fact in editorial offices: American science-fiction writers have the scope and excitement, but their English opposite numbers own the insight and the wit. Like most well-known facts, it is riddled with more exceptions than one can count; but for proof of the second half of the proposition, Arthur Sellings reliably delivers perception and pleasure to us all.

  This man was named Boyd Corry—the deed had been done by his press-agent, not his parents—and he was perfectly normal for a fading movie star, except for one thing. He thought the world was out to get him.

  He wandered one night, as he had done many nights, through the downtown fog. He never said what it was he was looking for, but it was perfectly simple—he needed to be reassured. He needed to discover incontrovertibly that he existed and that he was loved. What it took to prove this was an old movie of his own.

  In a second-run theater on a side street he found what he needed: An image of himself, twice as large as life and haloed in neon lights. He lurched into the lobby.

  Cradled in the darkness inside, drugged by a travelogue commentary, he closed his eyes. His chin sagged. He slept. Then, like a Dalmatian responding to a fire alarm, his sleeping self heard the blare of trumpets that announced the opening credits of his motion picture and dutifully shook him awake. He sat up eagerly, in time to see the monumental letters that blazed on the screen:

  ONLY ONCE IN ETERNITY

  starring

  BOYD CORRY

  Tears started to his eyes.

  That picture was all of three years old. Things had been different then, hadn’t they? Everyone at his feet. Before they’d seen what a selfless guy he was and had ganged up against him. Well, he’d shown them. Let them kick their heels for a couple of days. That might give them time to learn that the star was still the man who counted —not these jumped-up producers and directors.

  And the public was on his side.A-ah, feel that stir in the audience as on the screen he came galloping over rolling greensward—as he swung, doubleted, lithely from the saddle.

  This was what made everything worth-while. His public understood. They knew that the real artist crucified himself for their sake—for the sake of their dreams. It was the gossip columnists who didn’t understand—the narrow-nosed skunks.

  The sense of injured virtue generated a maudlin glow that bathed him lovingly. Then he began to grow impatient, angered by the unbridgeable discrepancy between the face he saw there and the one that gaped at him every morning out of his shaving mirror.

  He started to his feet, but dropped back, frowning at the screen. The frown deepened into a scowl. He shook his head dazedly and stared again.

  Something was wrong.

  The scene on the screen was not the one he had acted in. Impossible!

  Then it dawned on him. They were getting at him again, the mangy tribe of columnists and jealous rivals and soulless executives. The ones that were always trying to get between him and his loyal public. Well, they weren’t going to get away with this.

  He jumped to his feet, waving his arms wildly. “Turn it off! It’s all wrong! It’s a fake!”

  Faces turned up whitely in the flickering darkness. People started to sssh, to yell back at him. The burly shadow of an attendant did a clumsy fandango along the row toward him.

  “Turn it
off!” Corry raved. “They’re cheating you, I tell you!”

  The attendant reached him.

  Twenty seconds later, Boyd Corry, no longer protesting, was being dragged like a sack up the aisle. A minute after that, the manager, who had picked up the phone to call the police, took another look at the profile that lolled against the back of a chair in his office. His eyes widened. Then, shaking his head sadly, he dialed Mammoth Studios.

  * * * *

  “Butwhy?” Cavanagh lamented. “If you have to cut loose, why the hell don’t you come over to my place? You can get as drunk as you like there!”

  “But you don’t understand, Vince,” Corry whined, wiping a clammy forehead with a trembling hand. “They’re getting at me again.”

  Cavanagh’s sigh exploded like a swearword. “They! Can’t you get it into your handsome fat head that nobody’s getting at you? Everybody’s for you.” He knew that wasn’t exactly true, but he also knew that the few hundred people who would like to see the paranoid star toppled from an already shaky throne were not in league with each other. Not yet, anyway.

  Corry laughed hollowly. “Oh yeah? Well, I saw it with my own eyes. They’re wrecking my pictures.”

  Cavanagh looked tired. “This one’s been around, hasn’t it? A few feet always get scratched and have to be cut out.” He turned to the manager. “Isn’t that so?”

  The manager nodded.

  Corry glared at him. “It wasn’t just cutting, and you know it.” He turned back to Cavanagh. “I tell you, that picture was being murdered. It’s a plot to make me look ridiculous.”

  Cavanagh looked at the manager, who shook his head blankly. Cavanagh nodded in sympathy.

  Corry, stirring, caught the glance. “So you don’t believe me either? Well, I can prove it. You ought to know the film. You scripted it, didn’t you?”

  “I scripted the first version,” Cavanagh agreed.

  Corry persisted, “You remember that bit near the beginning where I’m fighting the Duke of Anjou’s mercenaries?”

  Cavanagh rolled his eyes heavenward.

  “Well, remember where I vault over the battlements and kill four men with one sweep of my—my—”

  “Halberd?” Cavanagh prompted gently.

  “That’s right,” Corry said eagerly. Then his face became savage. “In the version I just saw I miss the lot of them and fall flat on my—” He spluttered. “It was humiliating!”

  Cavanagh turned to the manager. “Did you see this scene?”

  The manager shifted feet. “No, I was busy out front. And this is the first day we’ve run the film. But there can’t be anything wrong with it. It came through the usual channels.”

  “He’s lying,” Corry yelped.

  Cavanagh waved him down but, to placate him, asked the manager, “Is there a chance that a wrong reel could have slipped in?”

  “It’s extremely unlikely. Of course, I can check.”

  “But it was me,” Corry broke in. “Well, a double. It’s a deliberate plot.”

  “All right,” Cavanagh sighed. “Either you dreamed it, or there was something wrong with that reel. Will it satisfy you if I check it personally?” His eyes sought and received assent from the manager.

  Corry scowled. “They’ve probably changed it by now.”

  Cavanagh’s thin face registered sudden vehemence. “Of all the twisted paranoid— All right then, go ahead and believe there’s one huge conspiracy against you. In that case, there’s no point in my checking the reel. I wash my hands of it. And if I ever hear any more nonsense out of you, there will be a conspiracy against you. And I’ll be the one leading it.”

  Corry squirmed. “Don’t say that, Vince. You’re the only true friend I’ve got.” His eyes were pleading. “You will check that reel?”

  Cavanagh smiled a sad and inward smile. “Okay, but let that be the end of it.” He went to the door, opened it and beckoned outside. A genial tough rolled in. “Here, Mike, take Mr. Corry home, will you? And he said he’d like you to stay by him tonight.”

  Mike grinned. “Sure thing, Mr. Cavanagh.” He hoisted Corry up and planted him on his feet in one effortless gesture.

  Corry twisted back. “All right, Vince, but you’ll tell Drukker?”

  “Only if there’s anything wrong with that reel,” Cavanagh called after him. He nodded to the manager, and they went up to the projection room. He examined the reel for a minute, then handed it back with a sigh. “Sorry about all that,” he murmured, and tipped the projectionist a five dollar bill.

  He went out into the night air, pondering sadly.

  * * * *

  So it was that Simon Drukker, chief of Mammoth Pictures, was left untroubled by the affair—for a week.

  Corry adopted what he called a “lofty disdain” toward the episode. In fact, his subconscious stored it furtively away as yet another item in the card-index of persecution with which he would confront his enemies the day that they went too far. As for Cavanagh, he bought the latest book on paranoia.

  Then the call came.

  Cavanagh and Corry both happened to be in Drukker’s expensively stark office. When Drukker made the substance of the call profanely clear, Corry gave Cavanagh a look of triumph.

  “Anyway, why bother me with it, you raving idiot?” Drukker was roaring, when Cavanagh tapped him on the shoulder.

  “I think you’d better be bothered,” Cavanagh cooed. “This isn’t the first time.”

  Drukker glared, barked into the phone that the matter would be seen to, and slammed the receiver back. He turned to Cavanagh. “And why wasn’t I told?”

  “And get that reception? Anyway, I didn’t believe it either.” He told Drukker briefly of the episode of a week before. He was conscious of Corry’s gloating over his shoulder.

  The star elbowed in. “You see, somebody is getting at me.” (The enemy within was craftily calculating Drukker’s pretended ignorance. A query in red went against his name.)

  Drukker only snorted. “Don’t overestimate yourself. You’re not in every picture this studio turns out.”

  “You mean—”

  “Somebody is getting at Mammoth.” Drukker’s bulk rose from the chair with surprising swiftness. “And that’s much more important.”

  * * * *

  Drukker, Cavanagh, Corry and Mike tumbled out of the car and almost collided with the manager who was jittering on the sidewalk. It wasn’t the same cinema, Cavanagh noted, but it was in the same district and the same kind of small neighborhood house.

  “Something awfully screwy’s going on,” the manager blurted. “I’ve seen this picture five times. It’s one of my favorites. But—”

  Drukker pushed brusquely past him. The other three tagged on.

  Cavanagh’s knowledge of the picture was limited to having seen a few scenes in production, but it needed no previous acquaintance at all to realize, in a very few seconds, that there was something odd about it. Something decidedly odd.

  For one thing, it was obviously designed to be a drama, right in the middle of the Stanwyck-Crawford-Wyman country. Coming from Mammoth, which had no claims on any of those estimable ladies, it featured Esther Fenn, with Allen Blaikie setting up the nasty situations for Esther to emote in.

  At least, he should have been; but this was being played strictly for laughs.

  Cavanagh was conscious, even in the darkness, of Drukker’s purpling. Yet the audience seemed to be enjoying it.

  For himself, he had to admit that it was a lot more entertaining than the usual Fenn-Blaikie opus. Surely in the original version Esther, when she came across the bottle concealed by her alcoholic husband, would have struck her famous fold-arms-stroke-triceps pose, the code symbol for furious thought? She seemed about to do just that. Instead, she stopped, gave the audience a conspiratorial leer, then uncorked the bottle and helped herself to a generous swig.

  The audience roared.

  They roared even louder when Esther elegantly burped.

  A strangled noise c
ame from Drukker. “Turn it off!” he spluttered.

  “But it’s nearly over,” the manager said, alarmed at what such an action might provoke.

  It was. In came Blaikie, catching his wife taking a second swig. He calmly reached in his coat, brought out a gun, pointed it at Esther and pulled the trigger three times. She expired on the carpet.

  What must have been the original score was still grinding out turgid chords in the background as the face of Allen Blaikie looked out of the screen. “Nobody,” he said, “steals my booze and gets away with it.”

 

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