Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 11th Part 23

The broken edge of Alpha Ralpha Boulevard was just ahead. Ugly yellow clouds swam through the break like poisonous fish hastening on an inexplicable errand.

Virginia was shouting. I could not hear her, so I leaned down. That way her mouth could almost touch my ear. "Where's Macht?" she shouted.

Carefully I took her to the left side of the road, where the railing gave us some protection against the heavy racing air, and against the water commingled with it. By now neither of us could see very far. I made her drop to her knees. I got down beside her. The falling water pelted our backs. The light around us had turned to a dark dirty yellow. We could still see, but we could not see much. I was willing to sit in the shelter of the railing, but she nudged me. She wanted us to do something about Macht.

What anyone could do, that was beyond me. If he had found shelter, he was safe, but if he was out on those cables, the wild pus.h.i.+ng air would soon carry him off and then there would be no more Maximilien Macht. He would be "dead" and his interior parts would bleach somewhere on the open ground.

Virginia insisted. We crept to the edge.

A bird swept in, true as a bullet, aiming for my face. I flinched. A wing touched me. It stung against my cheek like fire. I did not know that feathers were so tough. The birds must all have damaged mental mechanisms, thought I, if they bit people on Alpha Ralpha. That is not the right way to be-have toward true people.

At last we reached the edge, crawling on our bellies. I tried to dig the fingernails of my left hand into the stone-like material of the railing, but it was flat, and there was nothing much to hold to, save for the ornamental fluting. My right arm was around Virginia. It hurt me badly to crawl for-ward that way, because my body was still damaged from the blow against the edge of the road, on the way coming up. When I hesitated, Virginia thrust herself forward. We saw nothing. The gloom was around us. The wind and the water beat at us like fists. Her gown pulled at her like a dog worrying its master. I wanted to get her back into the shelter of the railing, where we could wait for the air-disturbance to end.

Abruptly, light shone all around us. It was wild electricity, which the ancients called lightning. Later I found that it occurs quite frequently in the areas beyond the reach of the weather machines.

The bright quick light showed us a white face staring at us. He hung on thecables below us. His mouth was open, so he must have been shouting. I shall never know whether the expression on his face showed "fear" or great happiness. It was full of excitement. The bright light went out and I thought that I heard the echo of a call. I reached for his mind telepathically and there was nothing there. Just some dim, obstinate bird thinking at me, no-no-no-no-no!

Virginia tightened in my arms. She squirmed around. I shouted at her in French. She could not hear.

Then I called with my mind.

Someone else was there.

Virginia's mind blazed at me, full of revulsion. "The cat girl. She is going to touch me!"

She twisted. My right arm was suddenly empty. I saw the gleam of a golden gown flash over the edge, even in the dim light. I reached with my mind, and I caught her cry: "Paul, Paul, I love you. Paul ... help me!"

The thoughts faded as her body dropped.

The someone else was C'mell, whom we had first met in the corridor.

"I came to get you both," she thought at me; "not that the birds cared about her."

"What have the birds got to do with it?"

"You saved them. You saved their young, when the red-topped man was killing them all. All of us have been wor-ried about what you true people would do to us when you were free. We found out. Some of you are bad and kill other kinds of life. Others of you are good and protect life."

Thought I, is that all there is to good and bad?

Perhaps I should not have left myself off guard. People did not have to understand fighting, but the homunculi did. They were bred amidst battle and they served through troubles. C'mell, cat-girl that she was, caught me on the chin with a piston-like fist. She had no anesthesia, and the only way-cat or no cat-that she could carry me across the cables in the "typhoon" was to have me unconscious and relaxed.

I awakened in my own room. I felt very well indeed. The doctor-robot was there. Said he: "You've had a shock. I've already reached a subcommissioner of the Instrumentality, and I can erase the mem-ories of the last full day, if you want me to." His expression was pleasant.

Where was the racing wind? The air falling like stone around us? The water driving where no weather machines controlled it? Where was the golden gown and the wild fear-hungry face of Maximilien Macht?I thought these things, but the doctor-robot, not being telepathic, caught none of it. I stared hard at him.

"Where," I cried, "is my own true love?"

Robots cannot sneer, but this one attempted to do so. "The naked cat-girl with the blazing hair? She left to get some clothing."

I stared at him.

His fuddy-duddy little machine mind cooked up its own nasty little thoughts: "I must say, sir, you 'free people' change very fast indeed..."

Who argues with a machine? It wasn't worth answering him.

But that other machine? Twenty-one minutes. How could that work out?

How could it have known? I did not want to argue with that other machine either. It must have been a very powerful leftover machine-perhaps something once used in ancient wars. I had no intention of finding out.

Some people might call it a G.o.d. I call it nothing. I do not need "fear" and I do not propose to go back to Alpha Ralpha Boulevard again.

But hear, oh heart of mine!-how can you ever visit the cafe again?

C'mell came in and the doctor-robot left.

____________________________.

Rosser Reeves, Chairman of the Board of Ted Bates & Co., Inc.-the world's fifth largest advertising agency-and author of the best-seller REALITY IN ADVERTISING (Knopf), first ap-peared in F & SF with a longish poem t.i.tled "Infinity." It drew more favorable letters than any poem we have pub-lished in some years-which led us to ask him for more...

EFFIGY.

by Rosser Reeves

Could it be that under death's disguise The man who loved my mother lies?

Whose seed helped shape my heart, my eyes?

My brain? My hands? My blood? My size?

No, this is a wax-work. Strange new face.

Propped in lace, Hands in place.

Cheap, crude art. Different. Queer.

Shed no tear On this bier!

This is a dummy, with an air of unction, Waxed and rouged for a tribal function.Where now, wax-work, where away In your black frock coat?

To the Eden Musee?

Where away, with your silent candles?

Your long gray box with the silver handles?

You're not the man with the prophet's eye, The holy fire, the battle cry.

You're not the man with the scholar's face, The open books, the gentle grace.

Nor are you the one condemned to bed, The paralyzed, whom doctors fed When all except his mind was dead.

Nor are you the corpse, poor things of rust, Whose hand I held, as all sons must.

Ashes to ashes! Dust to dust!

What are you?

You know what you are, With your ascot tie, Your hair so prim, And your mouth so sly?

You're a wax-work thing, with an air of unction, Waxed and rouged for a tribal function.

Go-and leave but this to me: A little more of memory, My father's image, clear and plain.

I do not think we'll meet again.

___________________________.

E=MC2.

by Rosser Reeves

Some day, perhaps, some alien eye or eyes, Blood red in cold and polished h.o.r.n.y lids, Set in a chitinous face Will sweep the arch of some dark, distant sky And see a nova flare, A flick of light, no more, A pinpoint on a photographic plate, A footnote in an alien chart of stars Forgotten soon on miles of dusty shelves Where alien beetles feed.

A meal for worms,Sole epitaph To mark the curious end of restless man, Who for a second of galactic time Floated upon a speck of cosmic dust Around a minor sun.

___________________________.

The author of SIRENS OF t.i.tAN, and a mordant little tale with rather more to say that its size would indicate...

HARRISON BERGERON.

by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before G.o.d and the law, they were equal every which way. n.o.body was smarter than anybody else; n.o.body was better looking than anybody else; n.o.body was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th, Amendments to the Const.i.tution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear-he was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter, and every twenty sec-onds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about, as the ballerinas came to the end of a dance.

A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burgular alarm.

"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel.

"Huh?" said George.

"That dance-it was nice," said Hazel.

"Yup," said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. Theyweren't really very good-no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat dragged in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped.

But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.

George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.

Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.

"Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ballpeen hammer," said George.

"I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the dif-ferent sounds,"

said Hazel, a little envious. "The things they think up."

"Um," said George.

"Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?" said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Clampers. "If I was Diana Moon Clam-pers," said Hazel, "I'd have chimes on Sunday-just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion."

"I could think, if it was just chimes," said George.

"Well-maybe make 'em real loud," said Hazel. "I think I'd make a good Handicapper General."

"Good as anybody else," said George.

"Who knows better'n I do what normal is?" said Hazel.

"Right," said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one gun salute in his head stopped that.

"Boy!" said Hazel, "that was a doozy, wasn't it?"