Orbit 8 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Knight

  You won’t find our little village on any map. Too small, I suppose. So when the new guest came to the manor it created a great deal of foolish talk—and ever since I was sworn in as a constable (the proudest day of my life, I might add), I have considered it a part of my duties to listen to that sort of talk. He was a big man, with a face somewhat like a St. Bernard’s that has worms, and would come into the public bar of the Royal James some nights just before closing and drink a glass or two of cognac and watch the moon through the big mullion window. It wasn’t full then, but what they call gibbous, meaning between the half and the full, and growing with every turn of the clock, like a bad girl without a ring. Talbot was what they said his name was, and he was an American.

  That night, the first night I can really remember, as I told you, nothing to speak of occurred until just a trifle after midnight. Then the ‘phone rang, and it was Wilkes, the butler at the manor. The poor chap was so taken I could hardly make out what he was saying, but I could tell it was serious and I hopped on my bike and pedaled out there. The fog had lifted from the high ground but it was still as thick as porridge in the low spots and looked silver-white in the moonlight—not yellow like one of your London fogs.

  Breakchain House is the manor’s right name, though it isn’t used much. The legend that goes with that name is ugly enough that most of us in Stoke-on-Wold don’t want to be reminded of it. Except when we can afflict it on trippers. (But then you’re a kind of tripper yourself, aren’t you? Thumbing your way through the pages.) It’s a castle, really, to which a Georgian wing—they call it the “new wing”—has been added. No one lives in the old part now; at least, no one the people in the new wing want to talk about.

  Wilkes answered the door for me, still white as paste; I had him assemble everyone in the library in the usual way. Besides Lord and Lady Breakchain, there was a very pretty Yank girl named Betty, and Talbot, and a Prof. Smith. This Smith was a striking-looking gent who called himself “a student of the occult.” I noticed that he carried a cane with a heavy silver knob shaped like a wolf’s head; that was unusual, of course, since in a place like the manor one usually gives one’s stick to the butler—although I had kept my cosh.

  I won’t bore you with what was said in the library that night about the unearthly howling that had been heard on the moor or the thing Wilkes and the girl had seen lapping water from the fountain in the garden at midnight, since none of that really bears on what’s bothering me now. But when I left there and rode back to the village I saw lights at the James, and thinking of that does put me off a bit. You see, the bar was open, just like any roadhouse in the States, and the barmaid and the owner didn’t seem to have any fear of losing the license either, not even when I walked in, even though it was hours after closing.

  What was more, they’d quite a number of patrons, late as it was, as if everyone had known the place would be open. Just now I was on the point of saying the patrons were ordinary enough village people, but they weren’t, really. Every person for miles around that had something odd or comic about him, something that perhaps might make a stranger laugh, was there. And none of the others were.

  The girl behind the bar too. A big strapping blonde. You’d expect her to be sour at having to work late like that and miss her beauty sleep; but she was chipper as a wren, pulling the old Major’s long mustaches and making jokes with everyone. I didn’t say anything about closing, but took a place at the bar and ordered a pint of the dark. When she brought it, I thought for a second or two that I’d come to the bottom of it all, but afterward I was more at sea than ever.

  You see, the stuff in the tankard she brought me wasn’t beer at all, but a kind of foaming ginger drink or some such slop. When I tasted it first I nearly spit it out on the floor, but then, as I said, for a moment I thought I had the whole game. “Going to have a good ‘un on the law,” I thought to myself, “when I tries to tag ‘em for servin’ after closin’ hours they’d give me the proper laugh and claim none of this stuffs alcoholic.” But then I looked around, and so help me none of it was! I couldn’t hardly believe my eyes, and when the Major left for a bit of a go at the WC, I took up his brandy and sniffed it and tasted it, and it was nothing but tea—nasty, bad, cold tea at that. It was the same with everyone. Those that was supposed to have beer had the same slops they’d served me, and those that was drinking whiskey or what-not had tea. Of course I should have piped up right then and said, “ ‘Ere now, isn’t there a one of you blighters with more sense than to sit up drinkin’ this ‘ere sweet bilge at two o’clock in the morn-in’?” But I didn’t. For the first few minutes I didn’t because I expected they’d have the laugh on me, and after that it was because I felt it in my bones they’d say I’d gone crackers and call the sergeant to have me locked up.

  Talking to one and another I tried to hint around about it, but it was no go. Nobody wanted to talk about anything except Talbot and what was happening out at the manor. Finally I told them what I had heard out there that night, very official about it so they wouldn’t think I was just spreading rumors, and, crikey! when I did, every one of them did just what it was he was famous for. The Major coughed and talked in his throat like a sheep so that no one could understand what he was saying, Harry Dorsey the barber swallowed so you could see the Adam’s apple bounce in his long neck, the barmaid patted her hair and said something smart and tartish, and so on.

  That was the beginning of it, I suppose. That and the cinema and the time I walked by the widow Perry’s window and happened to glance in. Of course that wasn’t until later, but then the whole month, the month between the first call out to the manor and the second one, seemed just to pass in a dream anyway. I suppose I performed my regular duties, but I don’t remember it. All I was really thinking about was coming into the station house with all the fog blowing past me that time, and how the folk in the village never seemed to have anything to do but gossip now. Also—I know this is going to sound queer, but I can’t explain it better—how badly all of us spoke. Some, I mean, as though they were cockneys right out of Cheap-side although they were born and raised here. And others like Canadians or even Yanks. I found I was doing it myself.

  What I’m getting at is that the film set me thinking about how those method actor chaps are supposed to take a part—create a role is what they call it—and really make themselves believe they’re the person. As I understand it, if one of the method chaps is supposed to be a sea captain, for example, he’ll bloody well force his mind to believe he fairlyis that captain.

  Now when he’s the captain, if you take my meaning, how does he feel about it, eh?

  Does he like thinking that when the film’s over he’s going to be that twirpy little method chap again, not knowing the tiller from the main brace? Or does he even know it?

  You see, it seems to me that almost the only thing I’m good for in the village here is going out to the manor as I did tonight to sort of wrap things up officially when all the dust has settled, like tonight when this Prof. Smith winged poor old Talbot with one of his silver—and a rum idea that is if you ask me—bullets and I made my speech about how the best thing would be for me not to report the goings-on at all for fear there’d be a panic. What bothers me, you see, is not watching all that hair come off Talbot’s face and his teeth shrink up to normal ones again —that seems right enough, now that the Professor’s explained it all—but that when I looked into the widow Perry’s window there wasn’t any insides to her house. Just empty ground, if you understand me, and weeds.

  Don’t you ever get the feeling that there are things in the world—hydrogen bombs and Moon probes for example, and civilized people who paint flowers on their faces—which only belong in a “B” film? How do you know that we’re both not in one? Now that things at the manor seem to be about wound up, I’m getting this rotten feeling that if I was to climb up onto the hill yonder to look out over the moors, I might see a palm tree.

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  * * * *

>   R. A. LAFFERTY

  INTERURBAN QUEEN

  “It was the year 1907 when I attained my majority and came into a considerable inheritance,” the old man said. “I was a very keen young man, keen enough to know that I didn’t know everything. I went to knowledgeable men and asked their advice as to how I might invest this inheritance.

  “I talked with bankers and cattlemen and the new oilmen. These were not stodgy men. They had an edge on the future, and they were excited and exciting about the way that money might be made to grow. It was the year of statehood and there was an air of prosperity over the new state. I wished to integrate my patrimony into that new prosperity.

  “Finally I narrowed my choice to two investments which then seemed about of equal prospect, though you will now smile to hear them equated. One of them was the stock-selling company of a certain Harvey Goodrich, a rubber company, and with the new automobile coming into wider use, it seemed that rubber might be a thing of the future. The other was a stock-selling transportation company that proposed to run an interurban railway between the small towns of Kiefer and Mounds. It also proposed (at a future time) to run branches to Glenpool, to Bixby, to Kellyville, to Slick, to Bristow, to Beggs, even to Okmulgee and Sapulpa. At that time it also seemed that these little interurban railways might be things of the future. An interurban already ran between Tulsa and Sand Springs, and one was building between Tulsa and Sapulpa. There were more than one thousand of these small trolley railroads operating in the nation, and thoughtful men believed that they would come to form a complete national network, might become the main system of transportation.”

  But now the old man Charles Archer was still a young man. He was listening to Joe Elias, a banker in a small but growing town.

  “It is a riddle you pose me, young man, and you set me thinking,” Elias said. “We have dabbled in both, thinking to have an egg under every hen. I begin to believe that we were wrong to do so. These two prospects are types of two futures, and only one of them will obtain. In this state with its new oil discoveries, it might seem that we should be partial to rubber which has a tie-in with the automobile which has a tie-in with petroleum fuel. This need not be. I believe that the main use of oil will be in powering the new factories, and I believe that rubber is already oversold as to industrial application. And yet there will be a new transportation. Between the horse and the main-line railways there is a great gap. I firmly believe that the horse will be eliminated as a main form of transportation. We are making no more loans to buggy or buckboard manufacturers nor to harness makers. I have no faith in the automobile. It destroys something in me. It is the interurbans that will go into the smallest localities, and will so cut into the main-line railroads as to leave no more than a half dozen of the long-distance major lines in America. Young man, I would invest in the interurban with complete confidence.”

  * * * *

  Charles Archer was listening to Carl Bigheart, a cattleman.

  “I ask you, boy, how many head of cattle can you put into an automobile? Or even into what they call a lorry or trook? Then I ask you how many you can put into an honest cattle car which can be coupled onto any interurban on a country run? The interurban will be the salvation of us cattlemen. With the fencing regulations we cannot drive cattle even twenty miles to a railroad; but the little interurbans will go into the deep country, running along every second or third section line.

  “And I will tell you another thing, boy: there is no future for the automobile. We cannot let there be! Consider the man on horseback, and I have been a man on horseback for most of my life. Well, mostly he is a good man, but there is a change in him as soon as he mounts. Every man on horseback is an arrogant man, however gentle he may be on foot. I know this in myself and in others. He was necessary in his own time, and I believe that time is ending. There was always extreme danger from the man on horseback.

  “Believe me, young man, the man in the automobile is one thousand times as dangerous. The kindest man in the world assumes an incredible arrogance when he drives an automobile, and this arrogance will increase still further if the machine is allowed to develop greater power and sophistication. I tell you, it will engender absolute selfishness in mankind if the driving of automobiles becomes common. It will breed violence on a scale never seen before. It will mark the end of the family as we know it, the three or four generations living happily in one home. It will destroy the sense of neighborhood and the true sense of nation. It will create giantized cankers of cities, false opulence of suburbs, rainized countryside, and unhealthy conglomeration of specialized farming and manufacturing. It will breed rootlessness and immorality. It will make every man a tyrant. I believe the private automobile will be suppressed. It will have to be! This is a moral problem, and we are a moral nation and world; we will take moral action against it. And without the automobile, rubber has no real future. Opt for the interurban stock, young man.”

  * * * *

  Young Charles Archer was listening to Nolan Cushman, an oilman.

  “I will not lie to you, young fellow, I love the automobile, the motorcar. I have three, custom-built. I am an emperor when I drive. Hell, I’m an emperor anyhow! I bought a castle last summer that had housed emperors. I’m having it transported, stone by stone, to my place in the Osage. Now, as to the motorcar, I can see how it should develop. It should develop with the roads, they becoming leveled and metaled or concreted, and the cars lower and lower and faster and faster. We would develop them so, if we were some species other than human. It is the logical development, but I hope it will not come, and it will not. That would be to make it common, and the commonality of men cannot be trusted with this power. Besides, I love a high car, and I do not want there to be very many of them. They should only be allowed to men of extreme wealth and flair. How would it be if the workingmen were ever permitted them? It would be murderous if they should come into the hands of ordinary men. How hellish a world would it be if all men should become as arrogant as myself! No, the automobile will never be anything but a rich man’s pride, the rubber will never be anything but a limited adjunct to that special thing. Invest in your interurban. It is the thing of the future, or else I dread that future.”

  * * * *

  Young Charles Archer knew that this was a crossroads of the world. Whichever turning was taken, it would predicate a certain sort of nation and world and humanity. He thought about it deeply. Then he decided. He went out and invested his entire inheritance in his choice.

  * * * *

  “I considered the two investments and I made my choice,” said Charles Archer, the old man now in the now present. “I put all I had into it, thirty-five thousand dollars, a considerable sum in those days. You know the results.”

  “I am one of the results, Great-grandfather,” said Angela Archer. “If you had invested differently you would have come to different fortune, you would have married differently, and I would be different or not at all. I like me here and now. I like everything as it is.”

  Three of them were out riding early one Saturday morning, the old man Charles Archer, his great-granddaughter Angela, and her fiancé Peter Brady. They were riding through the quasiurbia, the rich countryside. It was not a main road, and yet it had a beauty (partly natural and partly contrived) that was as exciting as it was satisfying.

  Water always beside the roadway, that was the secret! There were the carp ponds one after another. There were the hatcheries. There were the dancing rocky streams that in a less enlightened age might have been mere gutter runs or roadway runs. There were the small and rapid trout streams, and boys were catching big trout from them.

  There were the deep bush-trees there, sumac, witch hazel, sassafras—incense trees they might almost have been. There were the great trees themselves, pecan and hickory and black walnut, standing like high backdrops; and between were the lesser trees, willow, Cottonwood, sycamore. Catheads and sedge grass and reeds stood in the water itself, and tall Sudan grass and bluestem on the shores
. And always the clovers there, and the smell of wet sweet clover.

  “I chose the wrong one,” said old Charles Archer as they rode along through the textured country. “One can now see how grotesque was my choice, but I was young. In two years, the stock-selling company in which I had invested was out of business and my loss was total. So early and easy riches were denied me, but I developed an ironic hobby: keeping track of the stock of the enterprise in which I did not invest. The stock I could have bought for thirty-five thousand dollars would now make me worth nine million dollars.”

  “Ugh, don’t talk of such a thing on such a beautiful day,” Angela objected.

  “They heard another of them last night,” Peter Brady commented. “They’ve been hearing this one, off and on, for a week now, and haven’t caught him yet.”

  “I always wish they wouldn’t kill them when they catch them,” Angela bemoaned. “It doesn’t seem quite right to kill them.”