In the Beginning: Tales From the Pulp Era

by Robert Silverberg

  We certainly did. Getting an open invitation like that from a two-cents-a-word market was like being handed the key to Fort Knox. In late June I wrote “Collecting Team” for him, which he published as “Catch ’em All Alive” in the first issue—December, 1956 of Super-Science. (Under its original title it has been reprinted dozens of times in school readers.) I also did a batch of science fillers for Scottie to use in rounding off blank pages—little essays on space exploration, computer research, and an interesting new drug called LSD. Harlan had a story in that first issue, too, and two in the second one. (I was too busy to do anything but science fillers for that issue.) The third issue had one Ellison and one Silverberg story; the fourth, two of mine, one of his. And so it went, month after month. As I got into the swing of it, I began doing longer pieces for the magazine. A 12,000-word story—and I was writing at least one for almost every issue from the fifth number on—paid $240, more than the monthly rent on my West End Avenue apartment, and I could turn one out in two working days.

  By 1957, Harlan had moved along to an army base, having been careless enough to let himself get drafted, and the job of filling the pages of Super-Science Fiction, Trapped, and Guilty devolved almost entirely on me. Just as well, too, because I didn’t have good personal chemistry with Paul Fairman of Amazing and Fantastic and he had begun to cut back on buying stories from me. Around the same time, Bill Hamling found that the sales figures of Imagination and Imaginative Tales were trending sharply downward, leading him to buy fewer stories from his staff and soon afterward to kill both magazines. My writing partnership with Randall Garrett had ended, too, at the urging of my wife, Barbara, who disliked Garrett intensely and didn’t want him coming around to see me. Faced with the loss of my two most reliable markets and the separation from my collaborator, I needed to be fast on my feet if I wanted to go on earning a decent living as a writer, and so I made myself very useful to W. W. Scott indeed. For Trapped and Guilty I wrote bushels of crime stories (“Mobster on the Make,” “Russian Roulette,” “Murder for Money,” etc., etc., etc.) and for Super-Science Fiction I did two or three stories an issue under a wide assortment of pseudonyms. At two cents a word for lots and lots of words I could support myself very nicely from that one market.

  “The Hunters of Cutwold,” which I wrote in April, 1957 for the December, 1957 Super-Science Fiction under the pseudonym of Calvin M. Knox, is typical of the many novelets I did for Scottie: stories set on alien planets with vivid scenery, involving hard-bitten characters who sometimes arrived at bleak ends. I suspect I derived the manner and some of the content from the South Sea stories of Joseph Conrad and W. Somerset Maugham, both favorite writers of mine. Scholars who have been writing theses on such Conrad-influenced novels of mine as Downward to the Earth and Hot Sky at Midnight, published at much later stages of my career, please take note.

  ——————

  It was morning on Cutwold, fifth planet in the Caveer system. And there would be betrayal by nightfall, Brannon knew. He knew it the way he knew the golden-green sun would rise, or the twin, blank-faced moons. He knew it ahead of time, half-sensing it with the shadowy precognitory sense that made him so terribly valuable as a guide in the deadly forests of Cutwold.

  He crouched in the sandy loam outside his cabin, staring down the yet-unpaved street, a lean tanned figure with thin sharp-curving lips and deepset sepia eyes that had seen too much of the galaxy and of men. He was waiting for the betrayal to begin.

  He did not have to wait long.

  The morning had started like all the others: at dawn Caveer broke through the haze, showering its eight worlds with golden-green brightness, and moments later on Cutwold the dawnbirds set up their keening icy shriek as if in antiphonal response. Brannon always rose when the dawnbirds’ cry was heard; his day began and ended early.

  It was eleven years since he had drifted to Cutwold when the money ran out. For eleven years he had led hunting parties through the vine-tangled Cutwold forests, keeping them from death by his strange foresight. He had made some friends in his eleven years on Cutwold, few of them human.

  It was eleven days since he had last had any money. This was the off season for hunting. The tourists stayed away, amusing themselves on the pleasure-worlds of Winter V or losing themselves in dream-fantasy on the cloud-veiled planets in Procyon’s system. And on Cutwold the guides grew thin, and lived off jungle vines and small animals if they had not saved any money.

  Brannon had not saved. But when the dawnbirds woke him that morning, something in their shrill sound told him that before noon he would be offered work, if he wanted it…and if his conscience could let him accept.

  He waited.

  At quarter past ten, when hunger started to grab Brannon’s vitals in a cold grasp, Murdoch came down the road. He paused for a moment where Brannon crouched, looking down at him, shading his eyes from the brightness of the sun.

  “You’re Kly Brannon, aren’t you?”

  “I am. Hello, Murdoch.”

  The other stared. He was tall, taller even than Brannon, with shadows shading his craggy face. Strange suns had turned Murdoch’s face a leathery brown, and his eyebrows were a solid thick worm above his dark eyes, meeting. He said, “How did you know my name?”

  “I guessed,” Brannon said. He came slowly to his feet and met Murdoch’s eyes, an inch or two above his own. He moistened his lips. “I don’t want the job, Murdoch.”

  Somewhere in the thick jungle a scornful giant toad wheezed mockingly. Murdoch said, “I haven’t said anything about any jobs yet.”

  “You will. I’m not interested.”

  Calmly, Murdoch drew a cigarette-pack from his waist-pouch. He tapped the side of the pack; the magnetic field sent a cigarette popping three-quarters of the way out of the little jeweled-metal box. “Have one?”

  Brannon shook his head. “Thanks. No.”

  Murdoch took the extended cigarette himself, flicked the igniting capsule on its tip, and made an elaborate ceremony out of placing it in his mouth. He puffed. After a long moment he said, “There’s ten thousand units cold cash in it for you, Brannon. That’s the standard guide fee multiplied by ten. Let’s go inside your shack and talk about it, shall we?”

  Brannon led the way. The shack was dark and musty; it hadn’t been cleaned in more than a week. Brannon’s few possessions lay scattered about carelessly. He had left Dezjon VI in a hurry, eleven years before, leaving behind everything he owned save the clothes on his back. He hadn’t bothered to accumulate any property since then; it was nothing but a weight around a man’s neck.

  He nudged the switch and the dangling solitary illuminator glowed luminously. Brannon sprawled down on an overstuffed pneumochair that had long since lost its buoyancy, and gestured for his visitor to take a chair.

  “Okay,” Brannon said finally. “What’s the deal?”

  Murdoch waited a long moment before speaking. A gray cloud of cigarette smoke crept about his face, softening the harsh angularity of his features. At length he said, “I have been told that a race calling themselves the Nurillins lives on this planet. You know anything about them?”

  Brannon flinched, even though his extra sense had warned him this was coming. His eyes slitted. “The Nurillins are out of my line. I only hunt animals.”

  Sighing, Murdoch said, “The Extraterrestrial Life Treaty of 2977 specifically designates one hundred eighty-six life forms as intelligent species and therefore not to be hunted, on pain of punishment. The Treaty Supplement of 3011 lists sixty-one additional life forms which are prohibited to game hunters. I have both those lists with me. You won’t find the Nurillins of Cutwold named anywhere on either.”

  Brannon shoved away the two brown paper-covered documents Murdoch held out to him. “I don’t want to see the list. I know the Nurillins aren’t on them. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t people. They ran away into the interior of the forests when humans settled on Cutwold. When the survey team made up the lists, they didn’t have any
Nurillins to judge by. Naturally they weren’t included.”

  Murdoch nodded. “And thus they are free game to any hunters. I’ve brought a party of nine to Cutwold, Brannon. They’re interested in hunting Nurillins. They say you’re the only man on Cutwold who knows where the Nurillins are.” Murdoch drew a thick bankroll from his pouch and held it by the tips of finger and thumb. “Ever see this much money before, Brannon?”

  “Ten thousand? Not all in one lump. But it’s too much. All you need to offer is thirty pieces of silver.”

  Murdoch whitened. “If that’s the way you feel about this job, you—”

  “The Nurillins are human beings,” Brannon said tiredly. Sweat streamed down his body. “I happened to stumble over their hiding-place one day. I’ve gone back there a few times. They’re my friends. Am I supposed to sell them for ten thousand units—or ten million?”

  “Yes,” Murdoch said. He extended the bankroll. “Until the Galactic Government declares them otherwise, they’re fit and legitimate quarry for hunting parties, without fear of legal trouble. Well, my clients want to hunt them. And I happen to know both that you’re the only man who can find them for us, and that you don’t have a cent. What do you say?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t be stubborn, Brannon. I’ve brought nine people to Cutwold at my own expense. I don’t get a cent back unless I deliver the goods. I could make it hard for you if you keep on refusing.”

  “I keep on refusing.”

  Murdoch shook his head and ran lean strong fingers through the blue-died matting of close-cropped hair that covered it. He looked peeved, more than angry. He jammed the bankroll into Brannon’s uneager hand. “I want nine Nurillin heads—no more, no less. You’re the man who can lead us to them. But let me warn you, Brannon: if we have to go out into that jungle ourselves, without you, and if we happen to come across your precious Nurillins ourselves, we’re not just going to settle for nine heads. We’ll wipe out the whole damned tribe of them. You know what a thermoton bomb can do to animals in a jungle?”

  Brannon’s mind had already pictured the fierce white brightness of the all-consuming flash. “I know,” he said hoarsely. His eyes met Murdoch’s: metal against metal. After a long silence Brannon said, “Okay. You win. Get your party together and I’ll lead them.”

  News traveled fast on Cutwold. It was noon by the time Brannon reached the main settlement, noon by the time he had rid his mind of the jangling discord of Murdoch’s stony presence.

  He came down the lonely road into the Terran settlement alone, and blank-faced men turned to look at him and looked away again, knowing he carried a hundred hundred-unit bills tucked carelessly in his hip pocket, and hating him for it. The road at noon was sunbaked and hot: squat diamond-backed reptiles with swollen heads hopped across the path, inches from Brannon’s feet.

  There were perhaps fifty thousand Terrans on Cutwold, located in six settlements scattered over the face of the planet. It was a warm and fertile planet, good mostly for farming and hunting, weak on minerals. Once there had been a few thousand Nurillins living where the Terrans now lived; remnants of a dying race, they had fled silently into the darkly warm depths of the forest when the first brawling Earthman arrived.

  Kly Brannon had discovered the Nurillins. Everyone knew that. Whether it had been through some trick of his extra sense or by sheer blind luck, no one knew. But now everyone also knew that Brannon had sold the Nurillins out to a hard-faced man named Murdoch for a roll of bills. They could see it in Brannon’s eyes, as he came down out of the lonely glade where he had built his shack.

  He was supposed to meet Murdoch and his nine nimrods at two-thirty. That left Brannon a couple of hours and a half yet to soak the bitterness out of himself. He stopped in at a shingled hut labelled VUORNIK’S BAR.

  Vuornik himself was tending bar, a sour-faced Terran with the pasty puffy flesh of a man who spent his time indoors. Seven or eight settlers were in the bar. They turned as Brannon kicked open the door, and swiveled their heads away again as they saw who it was.

  “Morning, Vuornik. Long time no see.”

  The barkeep swabbed a clean place at the bar for Brannon and rumbled, “Nothing on the cuff today, Brannon. You know the rules here. I can’t stretch your credit any.”

  “I didn’t say a word about credit. Here, Vuornik. Suppose you give me a double khalla, straight, and honest change for this bill.”

  With elegant precision Brannon peeled a hundred off the roll Murdoch had given him, and laid it in the outstretched, grasping, fleshy palm of the barkeep. Vuornik stared at the bill strangely, rubbing it between the folds of flesh at the base of his thumb. After a moment he poured Brannon a drink. Then he went to the till, drew forth a fifty, two twenties, a five, and four singles, shuffled them into a neat stack, and handed them to Brannon.

  “You ain’t got anything smaller than hundreds?” Vuornik asked.

  “All I have is hundreds,” said Brannon. “Ninety-nine of them plus change.”

  “So you took the job, then,” Vuornik said.

  Brannon shrugged. “You told me no more drinks on the cuff. A man gets thirsty without money, Vuornik.”

  He raised the mug and sipped some of the thin greenish liquor. It had a hard cutting edge to it that stung his throat and slammed into his stomach solidly. He winced, then drank again. The raw drink eased some of the other pain—the pain of betrayal.

  He thought of the gentle golden-skinned people of the forest, and wondered which nine of them would die beneath the blazing fury of hunters’ guns.

  A hand touched his shoulder. Brannon had anticipated it, but he hadn’t moved. He turned, quite calmly, not at all surprised to find a knife six inches from his throat.

  Barney Karris stood there, eyes bleared, face covered by two days’ stubble. He looked wobbly, all of him but the hand that held the knife. That was straight, without a tremor.

  “Hello, Barney,” Brannon said evenly, staring at the knife. “How’s the hunting been doing?”

  “It’s been doing lousy, and you know it. I know where you got all that cash from.”

  From behind the bar, Vuornik said, “Put that sticker away, Barney.”

  Karris ignored that. He said, “You sold out the Nurillins, didn’t you? Murdoch was around; he talked to me. He got your address from me. But I didn’t think you’d—”

  Vuornik said, “Barney, I don’t want any trouble in my bar. You want to fight with Brannon, you get the hell outside to do it. Put that knife out of sight or so help me I’ll blast you down where you stand.”

  “Take it easy,” Brannon murmured quietly. “There won’t be any trouble.” To Karris he said, “You want my money, Barney? That why you pulled the knife?”

  “I wouldn’t touch that filthy money! Judas! Judas!” Karris’ red-rimmed eyes glared wildly. “You’d sell us all out! Aren’t you human, Brannon?”

  “Yes,” Brannon said. “I am. That’s why I took the money. If you were in my place you’d have taken it, too, Barney.”

  Karris scowled and feinted with the knife, but Brannon’s extra sense gave him ample warning. He ducked beneath the feint, pinwheeled, and shot his right arm up, nailing Karris in the armpit just where the fleshy part of the arm joined the body. Knuckles smashed into nerves; a current of numbness coursed down Karris’ arm and the knife dropped clatteringly to the floor.

  Karris brought his left arm around in a wild desperate swipe. Brannon met the attack, edged off to the side, caught the arm, twisted it. Karris screamed. Brannon let go of him, spun him around, hit him along the cheekbone with the side of his hand. Karris started to sag. Brannon cracked another edgewise blow into the side of Karris’ throat and he toppled. He landed heavily, like a vegetable sack.

  Stooping, Brannon picked up the knife and jammed it three inches into the wood of the bar. He finished his drink in two big searing gulps.

  The bar was very quiet. Vuornik was staring at him in terror, his pasty face dead white. The other eight men sat
frozen where they were. Karris lay on the floor, not getting up, breathing harshly, stertorously, half-sobbing.

  “Get this and get it straight,” Brannon said, breaking the frigid silence. “I took Murdoch’s job because I had to. You don’t have to love me for it. But just keep your mouths shut when I’m around.”

  No one spoke. Brannon set his mug down with exaggerated care on the bar, stepped over the prostrate Karris, and headed for the door. As he started to push it open, Karris half-rose.

  “You bastard,” he said bitterly. “You Judas.”

  Brannon shrugged. “You heard what I said, Barney. Keep your mouth shut, and keep out of my way.”

  He shoved the door open and stepped outside. It was only twelve-thirty. He had two hours to kill yet before his appointment with Murdoch.

  He spent two hours sitting on a windswept rock overlooking the wild valley of the Chalba River, letting the east wind rip warmly over his face, blowing with it the fertile smell of rotting vegetation and dead reptiles lying belly-upmost in tidal pools of the distant sea.

  Finally he rose and made his way back toward civilization, back toward the built-up end of the settlement near the spaceport, where Murdoch was waiting for him.

  When Brannon entered the hotel room, it was Murdoch’s face he saw first. Then he saw the other nine. They were grouped in a loose semicircle staring toward the door, staring at Brannon as if he were some sort of wild alien form of life that had just burst into the room.