Robert Mills - Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 11th

THE BEST FROM FANTASY

AND SCIENCE FICTION

Eleventh Series

Edited by ROBERT P. MILLS

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and

measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause

in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. —Walt Whitman

For ISAAC ASIMOV,

the Good Doctor of F&SF,

without whose nobly lucid

explanations of scientific matters,

and inhumanly faithful

observance of deadlines,

this book would have been

put together just as easily,

but far less pleasantly

CONTENTS

THE SOURCES OF THE NILE by Avram Davidson

SOMEBODY TO PLAY WITH by Jay Williams

SOFTLY WHILE YOU'RE SLEEPING by Evelyn E. Smith

THE MACHINE THAT WON THE WAR by Isaac Asimov

GO FOR BAROQUE by Jody Scott

TIME LAG by Paul Anderson

GEORGE by John Anthony West

SHOTGUN CURE by Clifford D. Simak

THE ONE WHO RETURNS by John Berry

THE CAPTIVITY by Charles G. Finney

ALPHA RALPHA BOULEVARD by Cordwainer Smith

EFFIGY by Rosser Reeves

E=MC2 by Rosser Reeves

HARRISON BERGERON by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

THE HAUNTED VILLAGE by Gordon R. Dickson

____________________________

Great wealth can be yours, and happiness, and the girl of your dreams, if

only you can locate and hold for yourself alone...

THE SOURCES OF THE NILE

by Avram Davidson

It was in the Rutherford office on Lexington that Bob Rosen met Peter ("Old

Pete"—"Sneaky Pete"—"Poor Pete": take your pick) Martens for the first and

almost last time. One of those tall, cool buildings on Lexington with the

tall, cool office girls it was; and because Bob felt quite sure he wasn't and

damned well never was going to be tall or cool enough for him to mean

anything to them, he was able to sit back and just enjoy the scenery. Even

the magazines on the table were cool: Spectator, Botteghe Oscuro, and

Journal of the New York State Geographical Society. He picked up the last

and began to leaf through "Demographic Study of The Jackson Whites."

He was trying to make some sense out of a mass of statistics relating to

albinism among that curious tribe (descended from Tuscorora Indians,

Hessian deserters, London street women, and fugitive slaves), when one of

the girls—delightfully tall, deliciously cool—came to usher him into

Tressling's office. He lay the magazine face down on the low table and

followed her. The old man with the portfolio, who was the only other person

waiting, got up just then, and Bob noticed the spot of blood in his eye as

he passed by. They were prominent eyes, yellowed, reticulated with tiny

red veins, and in the corner of one of them was a bright red blot. For a

moment it made Rosen feel uneasy, but he had no time then to think about

it.

"Delightful story," said Joe Tressling, referring to the piece which had

gotten Rosen the interview, through his agent. The story had won first prize

in a contest, and the agent had thought that Tressling ... if Tressling ...

maybe Tressling...

"Of course, we can't touch it because of the theme," said Tressling.

"Why, what's wrong with the Civil War as a theme?" Rosen said.

Tressling smiled. "As far as Aunt Carrie's Country Cheese "is concerned," he

said, "the South won the Civil War. At least, it's not up to Us to tell Them

differently. It might annoy Them. The North doesn't care. But write another

story for us. The Aunt Carrie Hour is always on the lookout for new dramatic

material."

"Like for instance?" Bob Rosen asked.

"What the great cheese-eating American public wants is a story of resolved

conflict concerning young contemporary American couples earning over ten

thousand dollars a year. But nothing sordid, controversial, outre, or passe."

Rosen was pleased to be able to see Joseph Tressling, who was the J.

Oscar Rutherford Company's man in charge of scripts for the Aunt Carrie

Hour. The Mene Mene of the short story was said that year to be on the

wall, the magazines were dying like May flies, and the sensible thing for

anyone to do who hoped to make a living writing (he told himself) was to

get into television. But he really didn't expect he was going to make the

transition, and the realization that he didn't really know any contemporary

Americans—young, old, married, single—who were earning over ten

thousand dollars a year seemed to prophesy that he was never going to

earn it himself.

"And nothing avant-garde," said Tressling.

The young woman returned and smiled a tall, cool smile at them. Tressling

got up. So did Bob. "Mr. Martens is still outside," she murmured.

"Oh, I'm afraid I won't be able to see him today," said Joe Tressling. "Mr.

Rosen has been so fascinating that the time seems to have run over, and

then some ... Great old boy," he said, smiling at Bob and shaking his hand.

"Really one of the veterans of advertising, you know. Used to write copy for

Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup. Tells some fascinating yarns. Too bad I

haven't the time to listen. I expect to see you back here soon, Mr. Rosen,"

he said, still holding Bob's hand as they walked to the door, "with another

one of your lovely stories. One that we can feel delighted to buy. No

costume dramas, no foreign settings, nothing outre, passe, or avant-garde,

and above all—nothing controversial or sordid. You're not going to be one

of those hungry writers, are you?"

Even before he answered, Rosen observed Tressling's eyes dismiss him;

and he resolved to start work immediately on an outre, controversial, sordid

costume drama with a foreign setting, etc., if it killed him.

He made the wrong turn for the elevator and on coming back he came face

to face with the old man. " 'Demography of the Jackson Whites'," the old

man said, feigning amazement. "What do you care about those poor

suckers for? They don't buy, they don't sell, they don't start fashion, they

don't follow fashion. Just poach, fornicate, and produce oh-point-four

hydrocephalic albinos per hundred. Or something."

The elevator came and they got in together. The old man stared at him, his

yellow-bloody eye like a fertilized egg. "Not that I blame them," he went

on. "If I'd had any sense I'd've become a Jackson White instead of an

advertising man. The least you can do," he said, without any transition, "is

to buy me a drink. Since Truthful Tressling blames it onto you that he can't

see me, the lying bugger. Why, for crying out loud!" he cried. "What I've

got here in this little old portfolio—why, it's worth more to those men on

Madison, Lexington, Park—if they only—"

"Let me buy you a drink," said Rosen, resignedly. The streets were hot, and

he hoped the bar would be cool.

"A ball of Bushmill," said old Peter Martens.

The bar was cool. Bob had stopped listening to his guest's monologue

about what he had in his little old portfolio (something about spotting

fashion trends way in advance) and had begun talking about his own

concerns. By and by the old man, who was experienced beyond the norm in

not being listened to, had begun to listen to him.

"This was when everybody was reading Aku-Aku," Bob said. "So I thought

for sure that mine would go over good because it was about Rapa

Nui—Easter Island—and Peruvian blackbirders and hints of great legends of

the past and all that."

"And?"

"And it didn't. The publisher, the only one who showed any interest at all, I

mean, that publisher, he said he liked the writing but the public wouldn't

buy it. He advised me to study carefully the other paperbacks on the

stands. See what they're like, go thou and do likewise. So I did. You know

the stuff. On even-numbered pages the heroine gets her brassiere ripped

off while she cries, 'Yes! Yes! Now! Oh!' "

He was not aware of signalling, but from time to time a hand appeared and

renewed their glasses. Old Martens asked, "Does she cry 'rapturously'—or

'joyously'?"

"Rapturously and joyously. What's the matter, you think she's frigid?"

Martens perished the thought. At a nearby table a large blonde said,

lugubriously, "You know, Harold, it's a lucky thing the Good Lord didn't give

me any children or I would of wasted my life on them like I did on my

rotten stepchildren."

Martens asked what happened on the odd-numbered children.

"I mean, 'pages'," he corrected himself, after a moment.

The right side of Bob Rosen's face was going numb. The left side started

tingling. He interrupted a little tune he was humming and said, "Oh, the

equation is invariable: On odd-numbered pages the hero either clonks some

bastard bloodily on the noggin with a roscoe, or kicks him in the collions

and then clonks him, or else he's engaged—with his shirt off, you're not

allowed to say what gives with the pants, which are so much more

important; presumably they melt or something—he's engaged, shirtless, in

arching his lean and muscular flanks over some bimbo, not the heroine,

because these aren't her pages, some other female in whose anatomy he

reads strange mysteries..." He was silent for a moment, brooding.

"How could it fail, then?" asked the old man, in his husky voice. "I've seen

the public taste change, let me tell you, my boy, from A Girl of the

Limberlost (which was so pure that nuns could read it) to stuff which makes

stevedores blench: so I am moved to inquire, How could the work you are

describing to me fail?"

The young man shrugged. "The nuns were making a comeback. Movies

about nuns, books about nuns, nuns on TV, westerns ... So the publisher

said public taste had changed, and could I maybe do him a life of St.

Teresa?"

"Coo."

"So I spent three months doing a life of St. Teresa at a furious pace, and

when I finished it turned out I'd done the wrong saint. The simple slob had

no idea there was any more than one of the name, and I never thought to

ask did he mean the Spanish St. Teresa or the French one? D'Avila or The

Little Flower?"

"Saints preserve us ... Say, do you know that wonderful old Irish toast?

'Here's to the Council of Trent, that put the fasting on the meat and not on

the drink'?"

Bob gestured to the barkeeper. "But I didn't understand why if one St.

Teresa could be sold, the other one couldn't. So I tried another publisher,

and all he said was, public taste had changed, and could I do him anything

with a background of juvenile delinquency? After that I took a job for a

while selling frozen custard in a penny arcade and all my friends said, BOB!

You with your talent? How COULD you?"

The large blonde put down a jungle-green drink and looked at her

companion. "What you mean, they love me? If they love me why are they

going to Connecticut? You don't go to Connecticut if you love a person," she

pointed out.

Old Martens cleared his throat. "My suggestion would be that you combine

all three of your mysteriously unsalable novels. The hero sails on a

Peruvian blackbirder to raid Easter Island, the inhabitants whereof he kicks

in the collions, if male, or arches his loins over, if female; until he gets

converted by a vision of both St. Teresas who tell him their life stories—as

a result of which he takes a job selling frozen custard in a penny arcade in

order to help the juvenile delinquents who frequent the place."

Bob grunted. "Depend on it, with my luck I would get it down just in time

to see public taste change again. The publishers would want a pocket

treasury of the McGuffey Readers, or else the memoirs of Constantine

Porphyrogenetus. I could freeze my arse climbing the Himalayas only to

descend, manuscript in hand, to find everybody on Publishers' Row

vicariously donning goggles and spearing fish on the bottom of the

Erythrean Sea ... Only thing is, I never was sure to what degree public

taste changed by itself or how big a part the publishers play in changing

it..."

The air, cool though he knew it was, seemed to shimmer in front of him,

and through the shimmer he saw Peter Martens sitting up straight and

leaning over at him, his seamed and ancient face suddenly eager and alive.

"And would you like to be sure?" old Martens asked. "Would you like to be

able to know, really to know?"

"What? How?" Bob was startled. The old man's eye looked almost all blood

by now.

"Because," Martens said, "I can tell you what. I can tell you how. Nobody

else. Only me. And not just about books, about everything. Because—"

There was an odd sort of noise, like the distant susurration of wind in dry

grass, and Rosen looked around and he saw that a man was standing by

them and laughing. This man wore a pale brown suit and had a pale brown

complexion, he was very tall and very thin and had a very small head and

slouched somewhat. He looked like a mantis, and a mustache like an

inverted V was cropped out of the broad blue surface of his upper lip.

"Still dreaming your dreams, Martens?" this man asked, still wheezing his

dry whispery laugh. "Gates of Horn, or Gates of Ivory?"

"Get the Hell away from me, Shadwell," said Martens.

Shadwell turned his tiny little head to Rosen and grinned. "He been telling

you about how he worked on old Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup account?

Too bad the Harrison Narcotics killed that business! He tell you how he

worked on the old Sapolio account. The old Stanley Steamer account?"

("Shove off, Shadwell," Martens ordered, planting his elbows on the table

and opening his mouth at Bob again.) "Or has he been muttering away like

an old Zambezi hand who claims to know the location of the Elephants'

Graveyard? Tell me, where is fashion bred?" he intoned. "In the bottle—or

in Martens' head?"

Martens' head, thinly covered with yellowish-white hair, jerked in the

direction of the new arrival. "This, my boy, is T. Pettys Shadwell, the most

despicable of living men. He runs—out of his pocket, because no one will

sell him a hat on credit—he runs a so-called market research business.

Though who in blazes would hire him since Polly Adler went respectable

beats the Hell out of me. I'm warning you, Shadwell," he said, "take off.

I've had my fill of you. I'm not giving you any more information." And with a

further graphic description of what else he would not give T. Pettys

Shadwell if the latter was dying of thirst, he folded his aims and fell silent.

The most despicable of living men chuckled, poked a bone-thin hand into a

pocket, plucked out a packet of white flaps of cardboard, one of which he

tore along a perforated line and handed to Bob. "My card, sir. My operation,

true, is not large, but it is Ever Growing. Don't take Mr. Martens too

seriously. And don't buy him too many drinks. His health is not as good as

it used to be—but then, it never was." And with a final laugh, like the

rustling of dried corn shucks, he angled away.

Martens sighed, lapped the last few dewy drops of Bushmill's off a molten

ice-cube. "I live in mortal fear that some day I'll have the money to buy all

the booze I want and wake up finding I have spilled the beans to that

cockatrice who just walked out. Can you imagine anyone having business

cards printed to be torn off of perforated pads? Keeps them from getting

loose and wrinkled, is his reason. Such a man has no right, under natural or

civil law, to live."

In the buzzing coolness of the barroom Bob Rosen tried to catch hold of a

thought which was coyly hiding behind a corner in his mind. His mind

otherwise, he felt, was lucid as never before. But somehow he lost the

thought, found he was telling himself a funny story in French and—although

he had never got more than an 80 in the course, back in high

school—marvelled at the purity of his accent and then chuckled at the

punch-line.

" 'Never mind about black neglijays,' " the stout blonde was saying. " 'If you

want to keep your husband's affections,' I said to her, 'then listen to me—'

"

The errant thought came trotting back for reason of its own, and jumped

into Bob's lap. " 'Spill the beans'?" he quoted, questioningly. "Spill what

beans? To Shadwell, I mean."

"Most despicable of living men," said old Martens, mechanically. Then a

most curious expression washed over his antique countenance: proud,

cunning, fearful...

"Would you like to know the sources of the Nile?" he asked. "Would you?"

" 'Let him go to Maine,' I said. 'Let him paint rocks all day,' I said. 'Only for

Heaven's sake, keep him the Hell off Fire Island,' I said. And was I right,

Harold?" demanded the large blonde.

Pete Martens was whispering something, Bob realized. By the look on his

face it must have been important, so the young man tried to hear the

words over the buzzing, and thought to himself in a fuddled fashion that

they ought to be taken down on a steno pad, or something of that sort ...

want to know, really know, where it begins and how, and how often? But

no; what do I know? For years I've been Clara the rotten step-mother, and

now I'm Clara the rotten mother-in-law. Are there such in every generation?

Must be ... known for years ... known for years ... only, Who?—and

Where?—searched and sought, like Livingstone and all the others searching

and seeking, enduring privation, looking for the sources of the Nile...

Someone, it must have been Clara, gave a long, shuddering cry and then for

a while there was nothing but the buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, in Bob

Rosen's head; while old Martens lolled back in the chair, regarding him

silently and sardonically with his blood-red eye, over which the lid slowly

drooped: but old Martens never said a word more.

It was one genuine horror of a hangover, subsiding slowly under (or perhaps

despite) every remedy Bob's aching brain could think of: black coffee,

strong tea, chocolate milk, raw-egg-red-pepper-worcestershire sauce. At

least, he thought gratefully after a while, he was spared the dry heaves. At

least he had all the fixings in his apartment and didn't have to go out. It

was a pivotal neighborhood, and he lived right in the pivot, a block where

lox and bagels beat a slow retreat before the advance of hog maw and

chitterlings on the one hand and bodegas, comidas criollas, on the other;

swarms of noisy kids running between the trucks and buses, the

jackhammers forever wounding the streets.

It took him a moment to realize that the noise he was hearing now was not

the muffled echo of the drills, but a tapping on his door. Unsteadily, he

tottered over and opened it. He would have been not in the least surprised

to find a raven there, but instead it was a tall man, rather stooping, with a

tiny head, hands folded mantis-like at his bosom.

After a few dry, futile clickings, Bob's throat essayed the name "Shadburn?"

"Shadwell," he was corrected, softly. "T. Pettys Shadwell ... I'm afraid

you're not well, Mr. Rosen..."

Bob clutched the doorpost, moaned softly. Shadwell's hands unfolded,

revealed—not a smaller man at whom he'd been nibbling, but a paper bag,

soon opened.

"...so I thought I'd take the liberty of bringing you some hot chicken broth."

It was gratefully warm, had both body and savor. Bob lapped at it, croaked

his thanks. "Not at all, not-a-tall," Shadwell waved. "Glad to be of some

small help." A silence fell, relieved only by weak, gulping noises. "Too bad

about old Martens: Of course, he was old. Still, a shocking thing to happen

to you. A stroke, I'm told. I, uh, trust the police gave you no trouble?"

A wave of mild strength seemed to flow into Bob from the hot broth. "No,

they were very nice," he said. "The sergeant called me, 'Son.' They brought

me back here."

"Ah." Shadwell was reflective. "He had no family. I know that for a fact."

"Mmm."

"But—assume he left a few dollars. Unlikely, but—And assume he'd willed

the few dollars to someone or some charity, perhaps. Never mind. Doesn't

concern us. He wouldn't bother to will his papers ... scrapbooks of old copy

he'd written, so forth. That's of no interest to people in general. Just be

thrown out or burned. But it would be of interest to me. I mean, I've been

in advertising all my life, you know. Oh, yes. Used to distribute handbills

when I was a boy. Fact."

Bob tried to visualize T. Pettys Shadwell as a boy, failed, drank soup.

"Good soup," he said. "Thanks. Very kind of you."

Shadwell urged him strongly not to mention it. He chuckled. "Old Pete used

to lug around some of the darndest stuff in that portfolio of his," he said.

"In fact, some of it referred to a scheme we were once trying to work out

together. Nothing came of it, however, and the old fellow was inclined to

be a bit testy about that, still—I believe you'd find it interesting. May I

show you?"

Bob still felt rotten, but the death wish had departed. "Sure," he said.

Shadwell looked around the room, then at Bob, expectantly. After a minute

he said, "Where is it?"

"Where is what?"

"The portfolio. Old Martens'."

They stared at each other. The phone rang. With a wince and a groan, Bob

answered. It was Noreen, a girl with pretensions to stagecraft and

literature, with whom he had been furtively lecherous on an off-and-on

basis, the off periods' commencements being signaled by the presence in

Noreen's apartment of Noreen's mother (knitting, middle-class morality and

all) when Bob came, intent on venery.

"I've got a terrible hangover," he said, answering her first (guarded and

conversational) question; "and the place is a mess."

"See what happens if I turn my back on you for a minute?" Noreen clucked,

happily. "Luckily, I have neither work nor social obligations planned for the

day, so I'll be right over."

Bob said, "Crazy!", hung up, and turned to face Shadwell, who had been

nibbling the tips of his prehensile fingers. "Thanks for the soup," he said, in

tones of some finality.

"But the portfolio?"

"I haven't got it."

"It was leaning against the old man's chair when I saw the two of you in

the bar."

"Then maybe it's still in the bar. Or in the hospital. Or maybe the cops have

it. But—"

"It isn't. They don't."

"But I haven't got it. Honest, Mr. Shadwell, I appreciate the soup, but I

don't know where the Hell—"

Shadwell rubbed his tiny, sharp mustache, like a ^-mark pointing to his

tiny, sharp nose. He rose. "This is really too bad. Those papers referring to

the business old Peter and I had been mutually engaged in—really, I have

as much right to them as ... But look here. Perhaps he may have spoken to

you about it. He always did when he'd been drinking and usually did even

when he wasn't. What he liked to refer to as, "The sources of the Nile?

Hmmm?" The phrase climbed the belfry and rang bells audible, or at least

apparent, to Shadwell. He seemed to leap forward, long fingers resting on

Bob's shoulders.

"You do know what I mean. Look. You: Are a writer. The old man's ideas

aren't in your line. I: Am an advertising man. They are in my line. For the

contents of his portfolio—as I've explained, they are rightfully mine—I will

give: One thousand: Dollars. In fact: For the opportunity of merely looking

through it: I will give: One hundred. Dollars."

As Bob reflected that his last check had been for $17.72 (Monegasque

rights to a detective story), and as he heard these vasty sums bandied

about, his eyes grew large, and he strove hard to recall what the Hell had

happened to the portfolio—but in vain.

Shadwell's dry, whispery voice took on a pleading note. "I'm even willing to

pay you for the privilege of discussing your conversation with the old f—the

old gentleman. Here—" And he reached into his pocket. Bob wavered. Then

he recalled that Noreen was even now on her way uptown and crosstown,

doubtless bearing with her, as usual, in addition to her own taut charms,

various tokens of exotic victualry to which she—turning her back on the veal

chops and green peas of childhood and suburbia—was given: such as

Shashlik makings, lokoumi, wines of the warm south, baklava, provalone,

and other living witnesses to the glory that was Greece and the grandeur

that was Rome.

Various hungers, thus stimulated, began to rise and clamor, and he steeled

himself against Shadwell's possibly unethical and certainly inconveniently

timed offers.

"Not now," he said. Then, throwing delicacy to the winds, "I'm expecting a

girl friend. Beat it. Another time."

Annoyance and chagrin on Shadwell's small face, succeeded by an

exceedingly disgusting leer. "Why, of course," he said. "Another time?

Cer-tain-ly. My card—" He hauled out the perforated pack.

"I already got one," Bob said. "Goodbye."

He made haste to throw off the noisome clothes in which he had been first

hot, then drunk, then comatose; to take a shower, comb his mouse-colored

hair, shave the pink bristles whose odious tint alone prevented him from

growing a beard, to spray and anoint himself with various nostra which T.

Pettys Shadwell's more successful colleagues in advertising had convinced

him (by a thousand ways, both blunt and subtle) were essential to his

acceptance by good society; then to dress and await with unconcealed

anticipation the advent of the unchaste Noreen.

She came, she kissed him, she prepared food for him: ancient duties of

women, any neglect of which is a sure and certain sign of cultural

decadence and retrogression. Then she read everything he had written since

their last juncture, and here she had some fault to find.

"You waste too much time at the beginning in description," she said, with

Robert Mills - Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 11th

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