DAW 30th Anniversary Science Fiction Part 4

Whatever it was he was eating, it gave him strength. Now he could see, although what he could see was hard to make out. By what he took to be his bedside two rubbery cylinders were standing, or perhaps floating. He was in a room with no corners or windows. The illumination came from a globular object which drifted about the room, although the light it projected remained steady.

"Where am I?" he asked.

The two cylinders wobbled and parts of them changed color. "There you are, you see.

Typical question, 'Where am I?' Always the emphasis on the Self. I, I, I. Very typical of a human species. Probably to be blamed on the way in which they reproduce. It's a bis.e.xual species, you know."

"Yes, I know. Fatherhood, motherhood ... I shall never understand it. Reproduction by fission is so much more efficient-the key to immortality indeed."

They exchanged warm colors.

"Quite. And the intense pleasure, the joy, of fission itself . . ."

"Look, you two, would you mind telling me where I am. I have other questions I can ask, b.u.t.that one first." He felt the nutrients flowing through his body, altering his const.i.tution.

"You're on the Beat.i.tude, of course."

Despite his anxiety, he found he was enjoying their color changes. The colors were so various. After a while he discovered he was listening to the colors. It must, he thought, be something he ate.

Over the days that followed, Hungaman came slowly to understand his situation. The aliens answered his questions readily enough, although he realized there was one question in his mind he was unable to ask or even locate.

They escorted him about the s.h.i.+p. He was becoming more cylindrical, although he had yet to learn to float. The s.h.i.+p was empty with one exception: a Bullball game was in progress. He stood amazed to see the players still running, the big black bulls still charging among them. To his astonishment, he saw Surtees Slick again, running like fury with the heavy blue ball, his yellow hair flowing.

The view was less clear than it had been. Hungaman fastened his attention on the bulls. With their head-down shortsighted stupidity, they rushed at individual players as if, fl.u.s.tered by their erratic movements, the bulls believed a death, a stillness, would resolve some vast mystery of life they could never formulate.

Astonished, Hungaman turned to his companions.

"It's for you," they said, coloring in a smile. "Don't worry, it's not real, just a simulation.

That sort of thing is over and done with now, as obsolete as a silicon-based semiconductor."

"To be honest, I'm not sure yet if you are real and not simulations. You are Slipsoids, aren't you? I imagined we had destroyed you. Or did I only imagine I imagined we had destroyed you?"

But no. After their mitochondria had filled the s.h.i.+p, they a.s.sured him, they were able to reestablish themselves, since their material was contained aboard the Beat.i.tude. They had cannibalized the living human protoplasm, sparing only Hungaman, the captain.

It was then a comparatively simple matter to redesign quanta-s.p.a.ce and rebuild their sun and the two linked planets. They had long ago mastered all that technology had to offer. And so here they were, and all was right with the world, they said, in flickering tones of purple and a kind of mauve.

"But we are preserving you on the s.h.i.+p," they said.

He asked a new variant of his old question. "And where exactly are we and the Beat.i.tude now?"

"Velocity killed. Out of the eotemporal."

They told him, in their colors, that the great s.h.i.+p was in orbit about the twin planets of Slipsoid, "forming a new satellite."

He was silent for a long while, digesting this information, glad but sorry, sorry but glad.

Finally, he said-and now he was rapidly learning to talk in color-"I have suffered much. My brain has been under great pressure. But I have also learned much. I thank you for your help, and for preserving me. Since I cannot return to Earth, I hope to be of service to you."

Their dazzling bursts of color told Hungaman they were gazing affectionately at him. They said there was one question they longed to ask him, regarding a matter which had worried them for many centuries."What's the question? You know I will help if I can."

There was some hesitation before they colored their question.

"What is the meaning of this hiseobiw we see in our night sky?"

"Oh, yes, that! Let me explain," said Hungaman.

He explained that the so-called letters of hiseobiw, or preferably miqoesiy, were not letters but symbols of an arcane mathematics. It was an equation, more clearly written-for the s.p.a.ce fires had drifted-as They colored, "Meaning?"

"We'll have to work it out between us," Hungaman colored back. "But I'm pretty sure it contains a formula that will clear brains of phylogenetically archaic functions. Thereby, it will, when applied, change all life in the universe."

"Then maybe we should leave it alone."

"No," he said. "We must solve it. That's human nature."

Ron Goulart.

Since Don Wollheim was one of the people who got me hooked on science fiction in the first place, it seemed only fair that he eventually bought some twenty of my books in the genre, the majority of them for DAW.

Back in 1947, by way of a junior high book club, I acquired a copy of The Pocket Book of Science-Fiction, edited by Donald A. Wollheim.

This was the first time I'd encountered the work of such writers as Heinlein, Sturgeon, John Collier, and Stanley Weinbaum. Weinbaum's A Martian Odyssey helped plant the idea that there was a place for humorists in science fiction. About a year later, I discovered Wollheim's Avon Fantasy Reader and I bought every issue from then on.

I first met Don Wollheim in the middle Sixties, when he was visiting San Francisco and addressed a group I belonged to. Later in the decade, when my wife and I had relocated in the East, I encountered him again at Ace. I'd gone up there to pitch something to Terry Carr and he reintroduced me to Don. In a fairly short time I sold a book to Don (The Fire Eater) and one to Terry (After Things Fell Apart). That sale to Don Wollheim caused me to part company with my then agents. A sedate and conservative outfit, they didn't want me to taint my reputation by writing directly for paperbacks.

When Don left Ace to start DAW, I sent him pitches there. Between 1972 and 1983, I sold him sixteen novels and a short story collection.

Like my father, Don Wollheim never turned my head with enthusiasticPraise. I'd send him a proposal-usually three chapters and an outline- and in a few weeks he'd send a note. Usually he'd say something like, This is okay. Contract follows." For a freelancer that was better than effusive words of encouragement. The only thing Wollheim ever changed was some of my t.i.tles-Naps became When The Waker Sleeps and Slow Virus was converted to Upside Downside, etc. But he seldom changed a word of any of the novels and he allowed me to be as funny as I wanted. He even mentioned in the cover blurbs that the novels were humorous. Outside of larger advances, who could ask for anything more?

-RG.

ODD JOB #213.

Ron Goulart.

THEIR new client arrived in a small neometal carrying case. Jake Pace had been in the large kitchen of their Redding Sector, Connecticut estate dictating a recipe for vegan curry to the database of the botstove. His wife Hildy was loafing in the solarium, idly playing new Goldberg Variations on the banjo.

The voxbox of the secsystem said, "Visitors."

"Be right back," Jake told the stove.

"I can carry on without you, sir," offered the stove.

"Not unless you wish to cease to be." A long, lanky man in his middle thirties, Jake went hurrying into the main living room.

Hildy, long-legged and auburn-haired, was already at one of the high, wide viewindows. Her electronic banjo dangled from her left hand. "It's merely John J. Pilgrim," she informed her approaching husband.

Out on the realgra.s.s back acre a venerable skycar was in the process of executing a wobbly landing. "That souse," muttered Jake.

"John J. quit drinking over a year ago," Hildy reminded, leaning her banjo against a plazchair. "In the spring of 2032. He hasn't had a drink since."

"His previous lifetime of boozing has permanently affected him," observed Jake. "His sense of balance is shot for good and his sense of decorum is worse than it-"

"He's a brilliant attorney." Hildy watched the small rumpled lawyer come scrambling out of the landed blue skycar. "And, keep in mind, Jake, that he's brought Odd Jobs, Inc. some very lucrative cases."

We are, and I say this with all modesty and humility, one of the best private investigating outfits in the land," her husband mentioned. "Therefore, in point of fact, we really don't need a rumdum-an erstwhile rumdum shyster to hustle up jobs for us."

"What's that John J. brought along?"

Pilgrim had tugged a small silvery carrying case out of the rear of the battered skycar. He was squatting now on the gra.s.s, seemingly arguing with theneometal box.

"In the old days it would've been a suitcase full of plazflasks of Chateau Discount fortified wine," said Jake.

The silvery case did a backflip, somersaulting on the sward.

"You'd best go out and escort him in," suggested Hildy. "He appears to be having a squabble with his carrying case."

"... and won the plaudits of all fourteen judges of the Supreme Court, including the two androids, I'll have you know," the rumpled little attorney was hollering as Jake came loping up. "So, buster, I can sure as h.e.l.l sum up your case so an overrated gumshoe like Jake Pace can comprehend it. You're, in my opinion, an extremely arrogant tin-plated piece of-"

"Special alloy, dopey, not tin," corrected a high-pitched little; voice from within the carrying case. "And, keep in mind, that it; is I who hired you to represent me. Therefore, I retain the privi-lege of instructing you, dimbulb, and-"

"You taking up ventriloquism, John?" inquired Jake, halting; nearby.

"You're looking extremely gaunt, Jake," observed the attor-ney, standing up.

"Something fatal eating away at you, perhaps?"

"No such luck." Jake grinned one of his bleaker grins. "What's in the carrying case?"

"A fiendish device." Very gingerly, Pilgrim reached out and, after hesitating for a few seconds, grabbed the handle of the neo-metal case. "Were I better able to avoid the temptation of sub-stantial fees, I'd never have hired out to the enclosed gadget nor agreed to ferry it here to consult you and the fair Hildy."

"Hey, halfwit," complained the voice in the case, "I'm not an it. I'm a male, so refer to me as 'he' henceforth."

Frowning, Jake took a look through the grilled side of the car-rying case in Pilgrim's freckled hand. "Some sort of toy?"

"Toy, my a.s.s," said the contents of the case. "I just happen to be, dumbbell, the most sophisticated robot cat in the world. I'm the latest, most advanced version of TomCat."

"And also, at the present time, a fugitive," added the attorney. "From out on the Coast, in SoCal."

"Why, exactly, have you brought him here?"

"Tom wants to hire you," replied the lawyer.

"I wish to employ Odd Jobs, Inc.," Tom corrected. "Not just you, Pace. I understand that it's Hildy who's the brains of the setup."

After giving a brief sigh, Jake invited, somewhat reluctantly, "Come on in, both of you."

Slouched in a yellow hip-hugger chair, Jake urged, "Give us some details of the d.a.m.n case."

The chrome-plated robot cat was reared up on the piano bench, whapping out Pinetop's Boogie Woogie on the white upright living room piano. "Youwere expressing doubts as to my versatility, dimwit," reminded Tom.

"Therefore, this demo."

Hildy, sitting on the rubberoid sofa, said, "You have to admit he's got a great left paw, Jake."

"For a cat," he conceded. "Now explain what you want to hire us for-and how you intend to pay our fee."

From his orange hip-hugger chair Pilgrim said, "He's got the dough."

"How can a robot cat, and a runaway at that, have money?"

The attorney, his face taking on an even more sour look, answered, "He's done very well on the stock market. And he wins the National Numbers Game with suspicious frequency."

Smacking out a final chord, the cat ceased playing and settled into a comfortable sprawl on the tufted piano bench. "I didn't rig anything, p.e.c.k.e.rwood. It's simply that I'm a bit psychic and the winning numbers come to me in dreams."

"Robots don't have dreams," said Jake.

"Sez you," said Tom, glancing over at Hildy. "How'd you come to hook up with such a nebbish?"

"I was just out of the convent school at the time and didn't know any better,"

she replied, crossing her long legs.

"Geeze," remarked the cat, "living with this goof has turned you into a wisea.s.s."

After coughing into his hand, Pilgrim said, "What it ... what he wants to consult you about is a missing dame who-"

"I'm capable of giving a coherent account of the situation," cut in the robot cat.

"Do so," suggested Jake.

Tom's silver tail switched back and forth twice. "As you probably know, the TomCat brand of robot felines is designed and created by BotPets International. Run by Ward McKey, a fughead if there ever was one, and based in the Laguna Sector of Greater Los Angeles in the state of SoCal, BotPets grosses just shy of a billion smackers per year. The majority of this impressive sum comes from the sale of the incredibly popular TomCat house pets for the well off and a few-"

"The Fido dogbots net over $400,000,000," put in the attorney.

"Dogs. Fooey," observed the cat. "Okay, we're getting close to the nub of the problem. The head of Research & Development/ Cat Division is a lovely, intelligent young woman named Mari-jane Kraft. She-"

"The little d.i.c.kens has got a terrific crush on this dame," supplied the attorney.