Star Science Fiction 5 - [Anthology]

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Star Science Fiction 5 - [Anthology] Page 16

by Edited By Frederik Pohl


  “Won’t you be doing that anyway?” the little man asked with a wan smile.

  Cavanagh nodded. “You worked that one out?”

  “It didn’t take much working out. Ah, this way.” The little man sighed as they started off down the street. “What else could he do? I didn’t need to look out of the window this morning and see that palooka down below.”

  “I’m not his relief,” Cavanagh thought it wise to explain. “Well, only voluntarily. Drukker looks on you as just a menace. But for me—well, I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking about that gift of yours. I’d like to know more about it.”

  Mr. Stephens turned a quizzical eye on him. “Did Drukker tell you to say that?” Then, seeing the look on Cavanagh’s face, “Sorry. What do you want to know?”

  “For one thing, has it only recently shown itself?”

  “Well, I’ve an idea I’ve done it before—but only in snatches, so that I didn’t know at the time. You realize it wouldn’t be so easy to know. But looking back now I guess that—no, I know that it happened before. But not so anyone would notice. Even me.”

  “And films are all you can move? Nothing else?”

  The little man chuckled. “Levitate furniture, you mean? No, only films. I’ve never dabbled in anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Out of the ordinary?” Cavanagh’s eyebrows rose. “What do you call what you can do, then?”

  “Anything psi, I mean. That’s what they call it, isn’t it? Anyway, perhaps it isn’t so strange that it should happen to me. I’m a shy man. Worked all my life alone in a dispensary. Never married. Lived all to myself. Films are the only abiding love I ever had. I guess my will has got more and more focussed on the screen—-much more than most people’s.”

  “Mmm,” Cavanagh pondered. “But that still leaves it a mystery.”

  They walked along in silence for a time, then the little man said, “Well, there’s one thing—” He hesitated.

  “Yes?” Cavanagh prompted gently.

  “Well, I guess that what a man thinks decides what he can do. And I think a lot—philosophize, if that’s not too grand a word for it. Shy men are great philosophers. They’re really rationalizing away the chances that they lose to the—the—”

  “The Drukkers?”

  “I guess that’s what I mean. Anyway, I was always impressed by what old Plato said—about all the world that men see being no more than a lot of shadows thrown on a cave wall.”

  “And the men who see them?” Cavanagh said quietly.

  “I don’t know.” The little man smiled. “Just shadows with eyes, maybe. And don’t ask me what the fire that casts the shadows is. That’s going a bit deeper than I ever wanted to. But that way of looking at things is a big consolation to a man who never really amounted to much in his life. It tells him that all the things that people strive for—money, power, possessions—are only shadows.”

  Cavanagh suddenly felt the loneliness of Mr. Stephens and his courage. The courage that faced up to the limitations of the being that housed it—the courage that could stand up to Drukker as the little man had done the night before. Cavanagh wasn’t used to expressing his true sentiments, not after ten years in Hollywood. But he said now, hesitantly, oddly shy himself, “But . . . you have amounted to something. This gift, surely, is something wonderful?”

  “Maybe. Thank you for saying so.” He shrugged and seemed about to say something more, but stopped. He stopped walking, too.

  Cavanagh looked up. They were outside a picture-house. It was very much like—yes, it was the very place where Corry had made that scene.

  That had only been a few weeks ago, but it seemed an age now. Somehow the little man with the strange talent seemed to have introduced something wider— something of the eternal—between.

  “I was going to the pictures,” Mr. Stephens said. “Coming in?”

  Cavanagh shook his head sadly. “I hoped you wouldn’t make it difficult for me.”

  “Ah, yes.” The little man fixed grave eyes upon him. “But Drukker doesn’t have the last word, you know. You see, if he tries to stop me, I shall simply give my story to the newspapers. They’ve already, I believe, got on to the fact that something odd has been going on. I think they will listen to me.”

  “But would you want that? The publicity and everything?”

  “Frankly, no. But it would be worth it to beat Drukker.”

  “But what good would it do?”

  “Only that. I told you I’d never had any experience of psi powers. There are plenty of people who have. They’ve evidently never thought of altering movies. If they have, I haven’t heard of it. Think what they might do if they knew it could be done. Like the four-minute mile.”

  Cavanagh went suddenly pale. “No!” He grabbed the little man by the arm. “You don’t know Drukker. Do you think he’ll stand by and see his whole world tottering about his ears?”

  The little man looked down, pained, at Cavanagh’s restraining hand. Shamefaced, Cavanagh let him go. The little man started to move toward the ticket-office.

  “You fool!” Cavanagh shouted wildly. “I’ll have to call him.”

  “If you have to,” Mr. Stephens said, turning. He looked sadly on Cavanagh. “I thought you had more guts.”

  Cavanagh stood there a long moment. Then he hunched his shoulders and called Drukker.

  Drukker’s reaction was immediate—and just what Cavanagh had feared it would be. Suddenly he knew that he had to get the little man out of danger.

  He paid for a ticket with trembling hands and hurried inside.

  The night scene was on the screen.

  Outlaws, by the look of it, closing in on clustered wagons. The auditorium was dark. The usherette seemed to be engaged elsewhere. Cavanagh groped his way, cursing, down the aisle.

  Then his eyes adapted to the dark.

  The cinema was sparsely occupied, and quiet. He suddenly knew that the little man hadn’t started operating. He felt a vague unease. He told himself not to be a fool, that that didn’t mean a thing. Then he saw him. In the middle of the third row, his tiny figure hunched up in his coat.

  Cavanagh started toward him—and jerked as the screen erupted noisily. Guns went off like lightning flashes. Cavanagh reached the little man—and stopped. His hand stretched out as if someone else was moving it.

  The outlaws had attacked. Drukker’s goons would have no need to.

  Little Mr. Stephens, his head lolling sideways, was dead.

  * * * *

  “Well,” said Drukker, turning to Cavanagh and Corry as they ducked the last flash-bulbs and entered their box, “this is all our picture tonight, eh?” He chuckled as he settled into his seat. “You know, little Mr. Stephens could have been a real nuisance.”

  Corry beamed. The affair had had the strange effect on him of stilling his paranoid fears. By demonstrating that people plotted against other people than himself, the fact had registered on his subconscious that not everybody could therefore be plotting against him.

  “Uh-huh,” Cavanagh said. It was two weeks now since Mr. Stephens’ sudden death; the inquest had returned a verdict of heart failure. Cavanagh had gone right out and bought a new book, on the guilt complex.

  The lights dimmed.

  The usual hubbub of a premiere died down, and Cavanagh resigned himself to the usual agony of a new Boyd Corry epic.

  At least, he thought in an effort to make it bearable, Corry certainly throws himself into a role. It was almost as if he believed in this technicolored world of plaster turrets and knights-at-arms, strutting and i’faith-ing as if he thought he really was the Black Prince.

  But the effort was drowned in a returning tide of revulsion. It was just that—Corry’s posturing and faked-up athletics—that made the whole spectacle insufferable.

  If only—

  He stiffened. On the screen the Black Prince was leaping onto his horse. But he never reached it. He missed the stirrup completely and fell flat on his face in the mud.
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  There was a sudden startled titter from the audience.

  Then a gale of laughter swept the auditorium. For a moment Cavanagh’s world lost certainty. Had they had the wrong man in Mr. Stephens? So that the little man’s story had been a pack of lies? And then he realized—

  What had the little man said that last afternoon of his life? That he’d tell the papers . . . that people hadn’t thought of it before . . . that it was like the four-minute mile; once people knew it could be done. . . .

  But no, that couldn’t be it. There hadn’t been anything in the newspapers. But had he told anyone? Yes, that was it—he’d told somebody . . . wakened in them a latent power.

  And then the truth impinged—shockingly.

  He had to get out. Drukker and Corry were both gaping at the screen. They didn’t notice when he got up and made for the door.

  For he had realized—it was just as the little man had said—the first time you weren’t sure. He hadn’t been for a moment—but he knew now. He had another’s experience to draw on. Mr. Stephenshad told somebody—

  Him!

  <>

  * * * *

  HAIR-RAISING ADVENTURE

  by Rosel George Brown

  A young Louisiana housewife sat down to a typewriter one day last year to find the answer toa question: Was there anything hard about writing science-fiction stories? The answer, it turns out, is “no”—provided you have the wit, the talent and the grace of Mrs. Brown. Because of the idiosyncrasies of publishing schedules, this may not be the first of her stories to see print, but it’s the first she sold— and STAR is proud to present it to the world.

  Sam had been a bachelor for many years. He liked it. He might have remained so all his life, if it hadn’t been for a girl named Ruth. The study of paleolinguistics had kept him happy until then; but Ruth’s face and figure began interposing themselves between Sam’s eyes and his beloved microfilms. It was a research problem which had to be solved. He solved it by marrying the girl.

  Then he learned the facts of life.

  This occurred some weeks after their return from their honeymoon. Ruth was knitting, on no evidence, little pink things. Sam was, as usual, working on deciphering some ancient Scythian script, new examples of which had recently been unearthed in lower Russia.

  “Sam,” Ruth said, in the tone of a wife who has just given a man a good dinner and let him relax long enough. “Sam,why do you spend all your spare time fooling around with that silly old stuff? Who cares whether you can read it or not?”

  “My daddy always told me,” Sam replied without looking up, “that if a thing is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.”

  If a man’s wife won’t tell him things, who will? “Dear,” Ruth said gently. “Dear, did it ever occur to you that maybe it’s not worth doing at all?”

  This jolted Sam. He removed his glasses and put aside his microfilm viewer. “No, Ruth,” he replied, feeling vaguely around his person for cigarettes and matches. “No. I’ve never thought of that. Why isn’t it worth doing?” He never did locate a cigarette, but Ruth had so upset him he forgot about it and began chewing absently on the end of the pencil instead.

  “Dear,” Ruth said, removing the pencil and inserting a cigarette in his mouth, “you work hard all day at the Freight Depot and then you come home and work hard half the night deciphering some old script or other. And for all this your income is less than the milkman makes.”

  “But my work on epigraphy is for the sake of ... of scholarship. Of learning. My daddy always told me money wasn’t important.”

  “Sam,” Ruth said, taking his hand and patting it soothingly, “Sam, I wish I wasn’t the one to have to tell you this. But money is important.”

  “It is?”

  “Dear, you really shouldn’t have stayed a bachelor so long. You’ve been sort of, well, cut off from the practical aspects of life.”

  “But Ruth, you told me that money wasn’t. . . .”

  “Not for me, Sam, Though I wouldn’t mind...” Ruth’s voice trailed off as she looked meaningfully around the dingy little apartment. “It’s the Little Ones that may come along.”

  “Little Ones?” Sam echoed, frowning as he pictured an invasion of midgets.

  Ruth held up her knitting with a coy smile.

  “Oh, I see what you mean. You mean we might— well.” Sam turned pink and had a slight coughing fit. “Doesn’t it take longer than that? I mean, we’ve only been married three months. It really hadn’t occurred to me. About any progeny, I mean.”

  Ruth laughed reassuringly. “Oh, no. Not yet. I was just giving an example of why money is important.”

  “And epigraphy is not?” Sam was beginning to get his back up a little.

  “Not for children, no.”

  “I don’t know why epigraphy shouldn’t be important for children. I should think it would be of great benefit to the burgeoning intelligence.”

  Ruth burst into tears. “I almost hope we don’t have any children. What kind of father would you make, with your nose always in a microfilm machine and not caring if we all starve?”

  “Are you hungry, Ruth?” he asked anxiously. When she ran from the room and flung herself on the bed, Sam stood around frowning and trying to make some sense out of the whole conversation.

  A lesser man might, at this moment, have abandoned his hobby in the interests of domestic serenity. Had Sam been a lesser man, this hour of decision might have left the world balder. As it was, Sam, bent over his microfilm machine in all his spare time, was woven into that fantastic chain of events of which he was the last to be aware....

  * * * *

  Sam’s evenings with ancient Scythian script were soon curtailed. Ruth, finding the direct approach a total failure, tried the subtle approach. There was company over almost every night. Ambitious young couples jockeying their way bravely through the traffic jams of life, their chins jutting into the wind.

  The husbands were only momentarily stunned by Sam’s occupation. “Great room for big thinking there,” they would say. “You take an office like that, streamline it, get rid of the deadwood. Boy, you’ll be appreciated. Take a place like you’re in, use a little efficiency, and it’ll show, all the way down the line. And when they ask who did it, boy, you just step up and say, ‘Me.’“

  “But I didn’t,” Sam would say with a confused frown. “I like my job the way it is. It leaves my mind free. What I’m really interested in is epigraphy.”

  “Taking a flier in the hog market?”

  “No, no. Reading ancient scripts. Writings. You know, trying to figure out writing that no one’s been able to translate.”

  Ruth had finally given up trying to be proud of her husband’s epigraphical accomplishments. She’d finally just switch on the TV when it became obvious that Sam was not going to get interested in vacuum cleaners or selling insurance or advertising or whatever the eager young husband of the invited couple was engaged in.

  “Sam,” she would sneer, “wouldn’t know a good idea if it hit him in the head.”

  Ruth heard of Sam’s Discovery the way most wives find out what their husbands are doing—by listening to them talk to someone else at a party.

  “New hair oil?” he was saying. “Nothing new about hair restorers. I’ve just translated a recipe that works very well. Doubt if you’d be able to stack yours up against it. And this one is almost twenty-four centuries old.”

  “Yeah?” the young man answered skeptically. He smoothed his well-oiled hair. “Of course, we’re careful not to come out with the blank statement that Full Head actually grows hair. But we do say that people who use Full Head have more hair, more luxuriant hair, than people who do not. And more people with more hair use more Full Head than any other product. Furthermore, we’re prepared to back that statement with statistics.”

  “It is remarkable,” Sam said, “that anyone could think up a statement like that in the first place. I doubt if that could be written in an inflected langua
ge. But tell me, where did you get your statistics?”

  The young man looked a little sheepish and lowered his voice. “Well, don’t let this go any further. These statistics are a side line of a well known Educational Psychologist. It’s the same forty New York school children who learn to spell words written in red chalk three times faster than words written in white chalk.”

  “Well,” Sam said, “I don’t know how well my recipe would work on New York school children. But it grew hair on the ancient Scythians in 450 B.C. and it grew hair on me on June 22nd this year.”

  “You’re not really serious, are you?”

 

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