by Fritz Leiber
“Who are you?” asked the Prime Pseudoscientist greyly.
“I am a Time Traveler—time machine style.”
“I know my pseudoscience!” screeched Verminn XCVI. “No machine can travel ahead of its time-point of origin!”
“Did you try frumistating the corpiscon with the stupidor at half ablato?… Then you turn the branistan on the frumistat, and you swivitakel!”
Verminn XCVI looked at him in amazement.
“That’s right! Our pseudoscientists have endeavored for ages to frumistate the corpiscon! How do you do it?”
“Grattle the slives and torkle through the ifflewhich,” replied the Time Traveler. “It’s as simple as snerling off a crumistan!”
The great ghod Verminn clenched his fists and gave a snort of fiendish glee. “Now that I know how it is done,” cried he, “I shall send my minions back to the beginning of Time and start my Pseudoscientific Era from there! Semper pseudoscientia egobooensis! As soon as that has been accomplished, you will cease to exist; Mr. Time Traveler; for you and your Time will never have been!”
“Heh-heh!” snickered the Time Traveler politely.
“What are you giggling at?” growled the ninety-sixth generation descendant of the original Swampwaterr. Like his far progenitor, this Verminn could not bear another’s amusement in something beyond his own comprehension.
The Time Traveler drew Myra more closely to his side for the comfort her presence gave him.
“What do you know about the first Verminn?” asked he.
“As recorded on the History Tapes,” retorted Vermilionn Swampwaterr, little eyes blazing, “he founded in 1960, Dark Ages reckoning, the Pseudoscientific Era and the World of EGOBOO!”
“What did he do before I960?”
The Prime Pseudoscientist shook his head.
“I will tell you,” spoke the Time Traveler firmly. “Turn on your Intergalactic Instantaneous Visi-Space-o Phone, so that all the teeming billions of Fen—every last Fan in Fandom!—can hear my words. I am about to tell you the truth about your World of EGOBOO!”
“No!” Verminn spoke shortly. “I am the only one of any importance in Fandom. You can speak your piece to me—if you think I will listen.”
“Turn it on, I say!” thundered the Time Traveler. “Or I will frerogate the staniscope!”
He felt Myra tremble in the hollow of his arm. The Prime Pseudoscientist paled. Grudgingly, he manipulated a stud. This room was now the focus of attention of billions of worlds circling myriad upon myriad of suns. All in this Universe of Fen responded instantaneously to this visi-call from the great ghod, Vermilionn Swampwaterr XCVI!… The Time Traveler felt in his brain the enormous psychic pressure of their unified attention—the monotonous beat, beat, beat of their eager curiosity, replying to this unheard of call, as every brain in the Universe strained itself to wonder what was going on.
“Is it not correct,” intoned the Time Traveler, “that you Fen know nothing at all about Verminn the First prior to his invention of the pseudoscientific H-bomb?”
An all-pervading wave of force gripped and tore at the very fiber of Space, as billions upon quadrupled billions of pseudoscientific heads nodded simultaneously upon their pseudoscientific necks in confirmation.
“You do not know,” continued the Time Traveler, and his voice rose to a sonorous pitch and volume, “that Verminn the First was only an imagined reflection of a comic strip Buck Rogers, a perfunctory zealot of a scribe, a fellow who doodled with a typewriter, and who derived an egoboost from the practice of panning kindly, middle-aged ladies more! widely read than he, from ribbing high school youngsters who were more intelligent than he thought permissible; and from backbiting professional editors and publishers, whom he considered less able than himself to pursue their various professions? Exponent of a certain raucous type of yellow journalism exhumed from the musty newsprints of a century before his time, this poor man’s bibliocommentator and reviler of editorial aspiration resented the intrusion of new fans into the fandom which he personified as himself. He thought he was fandom—and you, Verminn XCVI, are Fandom in the Fortieth Century!”
“Yes I am Fandom!” spat the Prime Pseudoscientist. “Through the centuries, the race of Verminn has succeeded in stamping out that futile tribe, the fan publishers, and have eradicated the pros. My foozine is the only foo-zine published today. Every Fan has to read it, or he gets zapped! Hyak-yak-yak-yak!”
A sigh coursed through the listening Universe and seemed almost to make itself heard in the room. Billions of hurtling suns blazed in the chill depths of Space, pale mauve, green, purple, sapphire, red, and with pearly luminescence. Super-billions of inhabited worlds revolved in their orbits, and the Universe hung breathless on the heels of that transcendental sigh.
“Did you ever hear of the fanzine, Time-Trap?” asked the Time Traveler spiritedly.
“The Lost Codex!” whispered the Prime Pseudoscientist in complete awe. “The Great Foozine of the Ancients!”
The Time Traveler drew a sheaf of mimeographed paper from his pocket and held it up before the Intergalactic Instantaneous Visi-Space-o-Phone tele-panel. Every eye in the Universe beheld the holy, arcane vehicle of ancient fan writing.
“Time-Trap!” solemnly spoke the Time Traveler. “The instrument on which I swear the pseudoscientific truth of what l am about to tell you!”
Sweat popped out all over Vermilionn Swampwaterr’s face. He groaned aloud.
“Go ’way! You’re giving me engrams!”
The Time Traveler smiled with bored detachment.
“Engrams—shmengrams—who cares? Try this on your engrams—you do not even exist!”
The stars stood still in their courses. Wheeling planets paused a breathless instant in their eternal gyrations. The fabric of Space trembled.
“The reason you cannot travel into the Past before the beginning of your Era,” continued the Time Traveler inexorably, “is that you have no Past to travel to! You cannot travel into the Future, because you have no Future! You are merely One of the Wheels of If, and I am going to destroy you, to save the human race from even the remote probability of this highly undesirable end to its aspirations! By destroying the probability, I insure that the reality shall never exist. The truth is that the entire warp and woof of your mighty Pseudoscientific Era is nothing more than a concept, an aberrated mental projection of the puerile mind of Vermilionn Swampwaterr, the First, Last, and Only Verminn ever to exist!”
“Lies!” husked the Prime Pseudoscientist. “All lies!”
“On the contrary, retorted the Time Traveler coldly, “it is simple; pseudoscientific truth! In this issue of Time Trap is bound the promise of your dissolution!”
He paused and continued. “The first Verminn was accustomed to receive free in the mail simples of current fanzines, which he dissected in his writings, excoriated, sneered at, trampled upon, frothed at, and in other ways made of himself a figure of ludicrous and bitter envy. Affairs got to the point where new faneditors refused to send him their ’zines free. Either unable or unwilling to pay for what he thought he should get for nothing, Verminn cunningly conceived a plan! He dug out a moth-eaten back-issue of his own mimeographed mutterings and mailed it to the new faneditor. That fellow, embarrassed, replied then in kind and mailed to Verminn his own effort, only to see it suffer the venting of that creature’s monomania… One day, a new faneditor, shortly after his second issue, received an ancient, dilapidated fanzine in the mail. There was no doubt that it was published by Vermilionn Swampwaterr, for his name was all over the thing. Moreover, he mentioned himself at least ten times on every page, in the form of the first person perpendicular pronoun. The new editor took a copy of his own ’zine, carefully sprinkled the pages with roach rid, a kralsis of the sensiform, and mailed it to Verminn. When the ’zine arrived, Verminn seized it with greedy li
ttle eyes alight. He went through the pages in an oestrus of glee, licking his thumb the better to flip the pliant paper! And then, sir, the roach rid (harmless to man or beast, it said on the box) took effect. Framistance! Donnerwetter! Vermilion Swampwaterr abruptly stiffened and quickly fell down…extinct! He never lived to found the Pseudoscientific Era. News of his demise is reported in this issue of the fanzine, Time-Trap!”
He tossed the mimeographed sheets upon the Prime Pseudo scientist’s desk. Verminn XCVI licked his lips.
“It says here,” he mumbled suspiciously, “that he died of cause unknown. Where do you get that snuff about the fan editor and the roach rid?”
“I, sir,” said the Time Traveler modestly, “am that fan editor. I tired of Verminn’s ‘git out o’ town by sundown’ attitude and his continual gum-beating. The deed baffled scientific crime detectors, because it was consummated along pseudoscientific principles, based on the hypothesis that Vermilionn Swampwaterr was neither man nor beast, but an insect!”
“I don’t believe it!” cried Verminn XCVI, “But, I must believe it—it is so soundly pseudoscientific!”
Belief controlled, him, Throughout the vast, star-burdened reaches of the Pseudoscientific Universe, the legionary quadrillions of Fen quivered with the nascent throes of dissolution. Space twisted, warped. Mighty gouts of energy clawed at giant suns, and they flared into a frenzy of incandescence and abruptly winked out in the cold night of Nothingness. The roiling worlds of the Pseudoscientific Universe reeled, staggered, fragmented, and ceased to exist. The Time Traveler felt the floor shudder and heave under his feet.
Far away, there was a sound as of a giant wind, a rushing sibilancy of entropic energy flow.
The Prime Pseudoscientist vainly tried to pull him-self erect, but the big desk was melting and running under his hands. The green-garbed guardsmen staggered, their faces suddenly become gluey and awry. They were melting like so many wax candles in a fire.
The Time Traveler smiled frostily, held Myra close and did what he had to do to materialize the time machine. He hurled the stumbling girl inside, leaped in after her, and at once frumistanned the branistat, which process nullified the force that had statified him in this macabre era and transported them safely into hyper space. The Time Traveler halted the machine and gazed at the ex-Heroine with admiring eyes.
“You bore up splendidly!” said he. “For a minute, I was afraid…” He shook his head.
The girl was white of face, and her eyes were deep pools of violet that mirrored perplexity and fear.
“Whahoppen?” she cried in the vernacular. “All of a sudden, everything began to blur and spin around me—” She passed a hand across her forehead.
“Very simple, my dear,” smiled the Time Traveler. “When every Fan became convinced he did not exist, he simply did not, that is all. The principle of it is a soundly pseudoscientific one!”
Myra frowned. “Since Verminn did not create the world of EGOBOO in real time—how is it that I still exist?”
“Because,” grinned the Time Traveler, “I got you into hyper space quickly enough. Further, Vermilionn Swampwaterr still lives in my time sector. You see, I kind of fibbed to the Prime Pseudoscientist and the ultimate Fen. Verminn did not ingest roach poison! I am like most fen of my time, who believe in the maxim: Live and let live. Yet, so long as there is a Swampwaterr type, and petty sycophants to cheer his paranoiac delusions, human beings will be maligned for their beliefs, their position, or their color—and even for an attribute so trivial as taste in reading matter, or how one spends one’s money!… Still, there is yet room in fandom for all aspects of controversy—for all factions—even for the Swampwaterrs, if such a one can be persuaded to mitigate the derisive braying of his own personal opinions to the more prudent level of thoughtful and seemly disquisition, meriting some measure of attention. A hue, cry, and raillery, merely to be different, cannot earn for its instigator other than the full contempt of his audience. Therefore, I would advise a potential Swampwaterr, that a change of behavior is in order; for surely, to fly with intolerance in the face of good will and decent respect for the convictions of others, is to take the suicide route toward social extinction.”
“But how did you destroy the Universe?” asked Myra.
“The ultimate Fen,” explained the Time Traveler, “believed anything couched in the jargon of pseudoscientific double-talk. Further convinced by that forged copy of Time-Trap, they simply believed themselves out of existence. Froth as he may, Verminn will never re-create that particular probability!… And now, my dear, will you return to 1950 with me and help me edit my fanzine?”
“Yes, yes!” cried she, eyes shining. “What else?”
The Time Traveler grinned as he considered what else, thinking of orange blossoms. He branistanned the frumivalve, and laboratory walls swam out of the pearly mist that had theretofore surrounded them. At the same moment, the beautiful Myra grew pale and paler, thinned, wanned, and vanished quite away, still with a look of ethereal joy enhancing her goddess-like beauty.
The Time Traveler shrugged. “I was afraid she would do that,” he murmured. “As soon as she passed the time line of the Pseudoscientific Era, she had no existence, as she was only a figment of Vermilionn Swampwaterr’s projected future imagination. Well, she probably couldn’t cook, anyhow. I don’t suppose there are many science-fiction Heroines, other than Oona, who can!”
THE LONG REMEMBERED THUNDER, by Keith Laumer
Originally published in Worlds of Tomorrow, April 1963.
I
In his room at the Elsby Commercial Hotel, Tremaine opened his luggage and took out a small tool kit, used a screwdriver to remove the bottom cover plate from the telephone. He inserted a tiny aluminum cylinder, crimped wires and replaced the cover. Then he dialed a long-distance Washington number and waited half a minute for the connection.
“Fred, Tremaine here. Put the buzzer on.” A thin hum sounded on the wire as the scrambler went into operation.
“Okay, can you read me all right? I’m set up in Elsby. Grammond’s boys are supposed to keep me informed. Meantime, I’m not sitting in this damned room crouched over a dial. I’ll be out and around for the rest of the afternoon.”
“I want to see results,” the thin voice came back over the filtered hum of the jamming device. “You spent a week with Grammond—I can’t wait another. I don’t mind telling you certain quarters are pressing me.”
“Fred, when will you learn to sit on your news breaks until you’ve got some answers to go with the questions?”
“I’m an appointive official,” Fred said sharply. “But never mind that. This fellow Margrave—General Margrave. Project Officer for the hyperwave program—he’s been on my neck day and night. I can’t say I blame him. An unauthorized transmitter interfering with a Top Secret project, progress slowing to a halt, and this Bureau—”
“Look, Fred. I was happy in the lab. Headaches, nightmares and all. Hyperwave is my baby, remember? You elected me to be a leg-man: now let me do it my way.”
“I felt a technical man might succeed where a trained investigator could be misled. And since it seems to be pinpointed in your home area—”
“You don’t have to justify yourself. Just don’t hold out on me. I sometimes wonder if I’ve seen the complete files on this—”
“You’ve seen all the files! Now I want answers, not questions! I’m warning you, Tremaine. Get that transmitter. I need someone to hang!”
* * * *
Tremaine left the hotel, walked two blocks west along Commerce Street and turned in at a yellow brick building with the words ELSBY MUNICIPAL POLICE cut in the stone lintel above the door. Inside, a heavy man with a creased face and thick gray hair looked up from behind an ancient Underwood. He studied Tremaine, shifted a toothpick to the opposite corner of his mouth.
“D
on’t I know you, mister?” he said. His soft voice carried a note of authority.
Tremaine took off his hat. “Sure you do, Jess. It’s been a while, though.”
The policeman got to his feet. “Jimmy,” he said, “Jimmy Tremaine.” He came to the counter and put out his hand. “How are you, Jimmy? What brings you back to the boondocks?”
“Let’s go somewhere and sit down, Jess.”
In a back room Tremaine said, “To everybody but you this is just a visit to the old home town. Between us, there’s more.”
Jess nodded. “I heard you were with the guv’ment.”
“It won’t take long to tell; we don’t know much yet.” Tremaine covered the discovery of the powerful unidentified interference on the high-security hyperwave band, the discovery that each transmission produced not one but a pattern of “fixes” on the point of origin. He passed a sheet of paper across the table. It showed a set of concentric circles, overlapped by a similar group of rings.
“I think what we’re getting is an echo effect from each of these points of intersection. The rings themselves represent the diffraction pattern—”
“Hold it, Jimmy. To me it just looks like a beer ad. I’ll take your word for it.”
“The point is this, Jess: we think we’ve got it narrowed down to this section. I’m not sure of a damn thing, but I think that transmitter’s near here. Now, have you got any ideas?”