The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  The United States delegate had gotten hold of a typewriter, slid in a piece of paper, typed rapidly, and was now scowling in frustration at the result.

  The Soviet delegate shook his head. “What’s the word for it? We’ve been bugged. The section of our vocabulary dealing with... with... you know what I mean...that section has been burned out.”

  The United States delegate scowled. “Well, we can still stick pins in maps and draw pictures. Eventually we can get across what we mean.”

  “Yes, but that is no way to run a wa... wa.. . a strong disagreement. We will have to build up a whole new vocabulary to deal with the subject.”

  The United States delegate thought it over, and nodded. “All right.” he said. “Now, look. If we’re each going to have to make new vocabularies, do we want to end up with ... say... sixteen different words in sixteen different languages all for the same thing? Take a... er... ‘strong disagreement.’ Are you going to call it ‘gosnik’ and we call it ‘gack’ and the French call it ‘gouk’ and the Germans call it ‘Gunck’? And then we have to have twenty dozen different sets of dictionaries and hundreds of interpreters so we can merely get some idea what each other is talking about?”

  “No,” said the Soviet delegate grimly. “Not that. We should have an international commission to settle that. Maybe there, at least, is something we can agree on. Obviously, it is to everyone’s advantage not to have innumerable new words for the same thing. Meanwhile, perhaps... ah... perhaps for now we had better postpone a final settlement of the present difficulty.”

  * * * *

  Six months later, a man wearing a tightly belted trench-coat approached the Pentagon building.

  A man carrying a heavy suitcase strode along some distance from the Kremlin.

  A taxi carrying a well-dressed man with an attaché case cruised past the United Nations building.

  Inside the United Nations building, the debate was getting hot. The Soviet delegate said angrily:

  “The Soviet Union is the most scientifically advanced and unquestionably the most gacknik nation on Earth. The Soviet Union will not take dictation from anybody. We have given you an extra half-year to make up your minds, and now we are going to put it to you bluntly:

  “If you want to cush a gack with us over this issue, we will mongel you. We will grock you into the middle of next week. No running dog of a capitalist imperialist will get out in one piece. You may hurt us in the process, but we will absolutely bocket you. The day of decadent capitalism is over.”

  A rush of marvelous dialectic burst into life in the Soviet delegate’s mind. For a split instant he could see with unnatural clarity not only why, but how, his nation’s philosophy was bound to emerge triumphant—if handled properly—and even without a ruinous gack, too.

  Unknown to the Soviet delegate, the United States delegate was simultaneously experiencing a clear insight into the stunning possibilities of basic American beliefs, which up to now had hardly been tapped at all.

  At the same time, other delegates were sitting straight, their eyes fixed on distant visions.

  The instant of dazzling certainty burnt itself out.

  “Yes,” said the Soviet delegate, as if in a trance. “No need to even cush a gack. Inevitably, victory must go to communi... commu ... comm... com—” He stared in horror.

  The American delegate shut his eyes and groaned. “Capi-talis ... capita ... capi... cap ... rugged individu .. . rugged indi... rugge ... rug ... rug—” He looked up. “Now we’ve got to have another conference. And then, on top of that, we’ve got to somehow cram our new definitions down the throats of the thirty per cent of the people they don’t reach with their device.”

  The Soviet delegate felt for his chair and sat down heavily. “Dialectic materia ... dialecti... dial... dia—” He put his head in both hands and drew in a deep shuddering breath.

  The British delegate was saying, “Thin red li... thin re ... thin ... thin— This hurts.”

  “Yes,” said the United States delegate. “But if this goes on, we may end up with a complete, new, unified language. Maybe that’s the idea.”

  The Soviet delegate drew in a deep breath and looked up gloomily. “Also, this answers one long-standing question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “One of your writers asked it long ago: ‘What’s in a name?’”

  The delegates all nodded with sickly expressions.

  “Now we know.”

  <>

  * * * *

  ENCHANTMENT

  by Elizabeth Emmett

  No matter how indistinct the boundary between fantasy and science fiction, there are clearly defined areas on either side —and this story is undoubtedly “pure fantasy,” quite outside the limits of what I ordinarily call “SF” . . .

  * * * *

  When she first saw the house, the spell of April lay upon it. Rain had changed to mist during the long drive. At journey’s end the sun was breaking through the clouds, and the house, still moist as from a morning bath, stood exposed before her, draped in green ivy.

  She pulled the car to an abrupt halt. That castlelike structure had no more place in an American setting than Pan in its groves and woods; and yet, at the end of a drive through woods silent except for woodland sounds, it seemed as natural as the white spire of a Baptist church in a New England village.

  While she stared, a gnarled and sourish-looking man appeared. She put the car in motion and drove to the entrance. He came forward with a gesture of hand to grizzled head. “You’ll be Miss Reed, no doubt?”

  He took her bags, and she followed him into the house where she expected to spend several weeks alone, except for this caretaker and his wife. She had felt little curiosity as to what sort of place she was coming to. An old man had died, and among his assets was a library. The executor of the estate had sought a librarian with the proper credentials for cataloguing it before putting it up for sale. She had got the job.

  Where she worked never mattered much. Regardless of what place she was in she would always be slightly out of place. To her, books were kinder than life. She found her acquaintances, forged her friendships among the people created by man instead of by God.

  Never, however, had she worked in a castle. Small though it might seem in association with the word, it’s empty rooms might by their very silence prove distracting.

  The living room was a joy forever. She could look down upon it as she worked in the book-lined gallery that swept above it on two sides. If she paused in her work, she had but to swing her chair and see, reflected in a huge mirror below, the terrace upon which the living room opened, and beyond the terrace a world occupied only by nature.

  She had been there several days, making a preliminary survey of the library, before she climbed the four flights of stone steps to the tower. The person who came down was not the same person who went up.

  At first she thought it was the river that worked the transformation. Seen from the tower, it might have been time, without beginning and without end, flowing from and to eternity. To watch it was like being hypnotized, surrendering the mind to the river as a swimmer might surrender the body. On and on, her mind drifted in musing such as she rarely had allowed it, because she could not afford the habit. Suddenly she became aware that at some point she had left the river and was on the verge of a strange country.

  The complaint of aching feet brought her back to a realization that she had been standing an unconscionably long time. And with reality came a feeling of desolation such as Eve must have felt when looking back at the Eden from which she had been expelled.

  I don’t believe opium ever wafted anyone into a greater state of happiness, she thought as she went slowly, reluctantly down the stairs.

  The next day she came upon a privately printed book. Its one illustration showed a winged animal of unidentifiable species, bearing a shadowy something upon its back as it plunged through waves of mist. Its destination was Ultima Thule, a region that, as
she saw as soon as she began to read, made Olympus seem little better than a county fair for the gods, and the Elysian Fields but a country club for poets. This was paradise, without God, without cherub or seraph, without recording angel to grant permit for entry. One laid the body aside as one might lay aside clothes preparatory to bathing; but she gathered that it took superhuman effort for the self, thus stripped, to breast the waves or surmount the barriers that intervened between vision and attainment.

  Reluctantly she laid the book aside and resolutely she turned to work. But something tapped persistently at her mind for notice. She picked up the book and read on its cover, Ultima Thule by Thomas Wentworth Woods.

  Thomas Woods was the man whose library had brought her to this place of solitude. From that high tower his eyes, too, must have watched the river which might be time flowing on to eternity. From that tower too—

  She could not get her mind back to cataloguing books. She carried a chair up the four flights of stairs and placed it in front of one of the windows, deeply recessed in the thick walls of stone. She spent the morning there reading the book and thinking about it, feeling the presence of Thomas Woods, who had put such terribly beautiful visions on paper. While reading, she was tantalized by the feeling that its meaning escaped her even while it enthralled and frightened her. It represented no Faustlike deal with Satan; yet it recognized no deity beyond that of self. What self did, it did unaided, even to creating paradise. But when she laid the book aside and let her mind drift with the river, the meaning of the words became crystal clear—until something again called her back to reality.

  The noon hour was nearly over. Like one stealing from a liaison, she made her way down softly, carefully preventing her shoes from clicking against stone. She shrank from the thought that anyone should guess that all the morning she had been neglecting work for an excursion into what was little more than poppy-land.

  That projected a thought—had Thomas Woods been an opium addict? It was disclaimed by the tart second question, Am I? After luncheon she returned to the tower to test the experiment of trying to maintain consciousness of her own practical personality while crossing the borderland between reality and nonreality.

  She found that the latter state was preceded by a slow transformation of the outward sense—in somewhat the same manner as the sky, with its drifting clouds and dying splendor of sunset, seems to become the sea with islands shaping and reshaping, and colors paling or deepening as they merge. Gradually the scene she looked upon became something fascinatingly terrifying, because its beauty was like nothing she had ever seen before. Then came complete submergence of mind until brought back to earth by some disturbance, probably a manifestation of physical discomfort. And there was left memory only of ecstasy and a craving to recapture it.

  * * * *

  One day, while in the preliminary state so carefully observed, she heard steps. Was the caretaker spying on her? Her guilty conscience had suggested that he and his wife knew that she was not spending much time in the library. The steps ceased. Had she imagined them? Probably—but she ought to be fortified with material at hand to give the appearance of working, if necessary. Next morning she summoned the caretaker.

  “The light is so much better in the tower; I think I will take up some books to work on. Can you bring a table there for me?”

  The air in the tower was wonderful. Its peculiar ozone struck her for the first time as she surveyed her sanctuary. Here she would work. She sat down by the table which had been placed in front of a window more highly vaulted than the others and broader at the base. It had a platformlike step in front of it.

  She resolutely set to work, but she found that whenever she looked up, there was something tantalizing about the view, cut off by the deep embrasures at just a point where the scenery seemed to verge with a lovelier blue. Irresistibly she was led to the broad step. Irresistibly she mounted it. The window ledge, unlike the other, was wide enough as well as broad enough to sit on comfortably. Turned up against each wall were thickly padded mats. She tipped them down and had a cushioned seat.

  She closed her eyes and, with the shallow breathing that she was always a little conscious of in the tower, drank in the ozone that brought reward exceeding that of nepenthe. She did not sleep. Yet she seemed to return to reality as from a dream and with the feeling that she had been roused therefrom by a sound. She sat erect, listening. There were steps on the stairs again slow and halting. Her first impulse was to get quickly to the table so as to seem at work if anybody came in; but all sound had ceased. She could not tell how long she sat there, looking straight at the entrance to the tower, with the feeling that she was looking right through someone standing there, while that somebody looked her over. And then she heard the steps again. Going down.

  It’s the solitude, she thought. I ought to pack up and leave, return the money I have not earned and live at ease again with conscience.

  But, instead of beginning straightway to transmute thought into decision, she turned her eyes toward the outside world—and almost swooned. It was like looking upon life on a different planet. Hills, vales, earth, sky and water were there. But they seemed to float in a thin transparent vapor, or to be mirrored in a lake that could be nothing but mirage. All her being tingled with ecstasy. Paradise could be no lovelier. Though there was no way by which she could reach the ethereal country, she felt as if she were the one human being to whom a glimpse of it had been vouchsafed.

  But, disturbingly, a sentence from Thomas Woods’s book intruded as distinctly as if somebody had spoken it aloud. But he who sees paradise with earth-bound eyes sheds hope of future paradise, because it has been given him to know that there is no reality beyond what the mind mirrors.

  So, Thomas Woods had sat in this window enclosure. What sort of man had he been? What had he looked like? She wished she knew more about him. She recalled the portrait opposite the gallery and how it drew the eye down when there, and upward when in the living room. It had impressed her, because it was the only painting in the room. Vaguely she had thought of it as something of such value that the eccentric—for everything proclaimed him that—had considered it worthy of the enhancement of solitariness. Could he have assigned a portrait of himself to such distinction?

  She went downstairs to the gallery and looked across to the full-length portrait. The face was not remarkable; but the total effect of the painting was one of indestructible vitality.

  She questioned the caretaker when he brought her lunch.

  “That’s a portrait of Mr. Woods, I suppose,” she said.

  He turned about, his face transfixed with astonishment that then gave way to sullenness. “Are you trying a joke on me?” he asked.

  “A joke? Why should I?”

  He gave her a long, curious look. “Do you mean to say you don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  He did not answer that. “No, it’s not the master,” he said and went out.

  She worked in the library the rest of the day. One of my few days of honest work, she thought; for she extended her labors so far into the evening that the late beginning was made up for. She lingered on, even after she had reached a point of tiredness that made meticulous work impossible. She sought a book to read, but was conscious of eyestrain and dared not ignore it. Yet she still did not want to go to bed. Her first reaction to the bedroom had been recoil from the impression of a cell—as if one were supposed to atone in a room of austerity for the sensuous pleasure afforded by other rooms. The feeling had retreated in the succession of nights; but now it advanced again, and she thought of the thick stone walls as of a tomb. The smallness of the room, the pale light which the deeply recessed window admitted during day, the starkly bright electric light that seemed to strive to push back walls that pressed in upon the narrow bed and strictly necessary furniture, gave her a feeling that when she closed the door she was shutting herself forever away from life.

  Nevertheless she went along the gallery to her room. She s
witched on the light and undressed; but in spite of mental fatigue, her mind was restless. She put on a dressing gown and turned back to the gallery. A pale radiance flowed over it, drifting upward from the big room below, which was so clearly, though softly, illuminated that every chair, table and everything at floor level stood out as distinctly as in daytime. And still the light poured in through the French windows that opened upon the terrace. With the light on, she had not noticed that the moon was rising; and now, with moonlight flooding the room below, she felt as if floating on a silvery sea from which she had just risen. Higher and brighter the light rose. Looking across the gallery, she saw the portrait, transfigured until the ordinarily good-looking face seemed of unearthly beauty.

  Almost in the same breath came gladness that she was wearing the rose-colored gown—more becoming than any of her dresses—and a thud of pain that he could not see her and would not notice her if he could. She could not bear the ache of the ifs that pushed between them—if he could arise from the dead, if she could discard ten years and match youth with youth, if he could come down from the frame, if she could be transformed into an Isolde, in place of a person that no one looked at twice, provided the disfigured side of her face was turned away.