Philip Jose Farmer - 1952-1964

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The Classic Philip Jose Farmer
1952-1964
Edited and Introduction by Martin H. Greenberg
Foreword by Isaac Asimov
Series Editor: George Zebrowski
CROWN PUBLISHERS, INC. NEW YORK
Contents
Retrieving the Lost by Isaac Asimov
Introduction by Martin H. Greenberg
Sail On! Sail On!
Mother
The God Business
The Alley Man
My Sisters Brother
The King of Beasts
Retrieving the Lost
by Isaac Asimov
The history of contemporary science fiction begins with the spring of 1926, when the first magazine ever
to be devoted entirely to science fiction made its appearance. For a quarter-century thereafter science
fiction continued to appear in magazines—and only in magazines.
They were wonderful days for those of us who lived through them, but there was a flaw. Magazines are,
by their very nature, ephemeral. They are on the newsstands a month or two and are gone. A very few
readers may save their issues, but they are fragile and do not stand much handling.
Beginning in 1950, science fiction in book form began to make its appearance, and some of the books
retrieved the magazine short stories and serials in the form of collections, anthologies and novels. As time
went on, however, it became clear that the vast majority of science-fiction books were in paperback
form, and these, too, were ephemeral. Their stay on the newsstands is not entirely calendar-bound, and
they can withstand a bit more handling than periodicals can—but paperbacks tend to be, like magazines,
throwaway items.
That leaves the hardback book, which finds its way into public libraries as well as private homes, and
which is durable. Even there, we have deficiencies. The relatively few science-fiction books which appear
in hardback usually appear in small printings and few, if any, reprintings. Out-of-print is the usual fate,
and often a not very long delayed one, at that.
Some science-fiction books have endured, remaining available in hardcover form for years, even
decades, and appearing in repeated paperback reincarnations. We all know which these are because, by
enduring, they have come to be read by millions, including you and me.
It is, of course, easy to argue that the test of time and popularity has succeeded in separating the gold
from the dross, and that we have with us all the science-fiction books that have deserved to endure.
That, however, is too easy a dismissal. It is an interesting and convenient theory, but the world of human
affairs is far too complex to fit into theories, especially convenient ones. It sometimes takes time to
recognize quality, and the time required is sometimes longer than the visible existence of a particular
book. That the quality of a book is not recognizable at once need not be a sign of deficiency, but rather a
sign of subtlety. It is not being particularly paradoxical to point out that a book may be, in some cases,
too good to be immediately popular. And then, thanks to the mechanics of literary ephemerality,
realization of the fact may come too late.
Or must it?
Suppose there are dedicated and thoughtful writers and scholars like George Zebrowski and Martin H.
Greenberg, who have been reading science fiction intensively, and with educated taste, for decades. And
suppose there is a publisher such as Crown Publishers, Inc. which is interested in providing a second
chance for quality science fiction which was undervalued the first time round.
In that case we end up with Crowns Classics of Modern Science Fiction in which the lost is retrieved,
the unjustly forgotten is remembered, and the undervalued is resurrected. And you are holding a sample
in your hand.
Naturally, the revival of these classics will benefit the publisher, the editors, and the writers, but that is
almost by the way. The real beneficiaries will be the readers, among whom the older are likely to taste
again delicacies they had all but forgotten, while the younger will encounter delights of whose existence
they were unaware.
Read—
And enjoy.
Introduction
by Martin H. Greenberg
un/con/ven/tion/al. Not adhering to convention con/ven/tion. General usage or custom
Philip Jose Farmer certainly did not and does not adhere to the thematic and stylistic conventions of
science fiction; in fact, he was personally responsible for changing several of the most important and
long-lasting conventions in the field. Science fiction had ignored one of the most important of all human
concerns—sexuality—partly because pulp science fictions audience was considered to be adolescent
boys (a strange reason on the face of it), and partly because the men who controlled the field didn’t think
the readership wanted strong doses of it mixed in with the adventure and the technology.
Farmer proved them wrong with his first published work, “The Lovers,” which appeared in the August
1952 issue of Startling Stories. It’s gripping depiction of love and sex between a man and an alien
insectlike creature had a tremendous impact on the field, broadening what was “acceptable” and opening
up the market for others to explore. Largely because of this single story, he was voted a Hugo Award for
1953 as New Writer of 1952.“ It was the first of what to date constitutes a body of work totaling more
than forty novels and collections, characterized by originality, inventiveness, and a use of symbolism that
has yet to be equalled.
Philip Jose Farmer was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1918
but was raised in Peoria, Illinois, where he spent the bulk of his life. He enrolled at Bradley University in
1941 but had to drop out due to lack of funds. He later returned to school as an evening student, earning
a degree in 1950; he also worked in a steel mill for many years. Farmer began to write in the mid-1940s,
and “The Lovers” was published when he was thirty-four, an advanced age by the standards of the
science-fiction community. However, he quickly made up for lost time by an astounding^rolificity,
although he did not write for considerable portions of time during the first decade of his career.
His major literary themes and obsessions were clear from early on and have been noted by all who have
written on him—a concern with sexuality and reproduction in all its variety; the good and evil that he
seems to believe resides in all of us; an interest in religious beliefs and imagery, especially with matriarchal
religions; parasitology, frequently coupled with sexuality; and a deep love of American popular culture
and the books he read and adored as a child and as a young man, especially Burroughs, Baum, and
Twain but also including the characters and magazines of the pulp era. Indeed, he has reworked these
stories and characters in his own writing to the extent that he has produced a whole body of work about
parallel universes, parallel places, and parallel people, books where Samuel Clemens, Tarzan, Odysseus,
and Doc Savage all interact, and most are even related to one another.
His writing is characterized by rapid pacing, some weakness of plot, a wonderful use of puns,
protagonists who are deeply flawed—a quality especially true in his “heroic” figures—and a deep
cynicism that pervades even his humorous work.
But most of all, Farmer (like the late Philip K. Dick) writes of the real, the unreal, and the maybe real,
combining and integrating them into the same story in ways that have revolutionized one corner of modern
science fiction. Few writers have been as daring so early as Farmer, few so willing to shock, in his case
usually to good effect. One of his most important critics, Mary T. Brizzi, has commented that “He is
certainly among the brightest stars in the science fiction sky,” and that “His early works were beautifully
crafted, exploring unconventional themes in a sensitive way.” His work has also been called “nauseating.”
“filthy,” and “obscene.” John W. Campbell, Jr., said that one of his stories (which he didn’t buy) made
him “want to throw up.” He notes that other, more admiring critics have noted the powerful influence of
Freud and Jung in his work, but he rejects these references saying that “The term Farmerian should be
good enough.” Indeed it is.
This volume collects what I consider to be representative selections of his best work from the years 1952
to 1964, years that saw the publication of several important longer works and collections, including The
Green Odyssey (1957), Flesh (1960, revised 1968; a novel which gives new meaning to the term
father-figure), A Woman A Day (1960, also revised 1968), The Lovers (expanded and published in
1961 and revised again in 1979), Cache from Outer Space (1962), Inside Outside (1964, a major
work), and Tongues of the Moon (1964).
Outstanding examples of his best work since 1964 will be included in a future volume in this series. For
now, we offer you such stunning stories as “Sail On! Sail On!,” based on a recurring dream Farmer had
in which he says “I saw the tiny galleon of the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator (A.D.
1394-1460). It was sailing along in a heavy sea and on a dark night. A small building was on the
poopdeck; in it sat a very fat monk. He had earphones on and was tapping out a coded message, in
Latin, on a spark-gap transmitter…”
“Mother” contains many of the themes and obsessions mentioned earlier, including some of the
underground passages that are partially responsible for his reputation as a Freudian, and the family
relationships that were so important in all his early work. The story later became the centerpiece of his
collection Strange Relations (1960).
“My Sister’s Brother” (originally published as “Open to Me, My Sister”) is especially important to
Farmer, and he considers it one of his two favorites—the other is “Riders of the Purple Wage,” included
in the following volume in this series. Like “The Lovers,” this story had a difficult time finding a publisher,
being rejected by the major magazines because of its sexual content. Robert P. Mills took it for The
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction after having rejected it when first submitted to him—times
had changed, and Farmer had changed them, a rare example of a writer developing a market for his own
work. Farmer says that this powerful story is “a hardcore science-fiction tale. But it is also about an
Earthman’s hangups, extraterrestrial ecosystems, sexobiological structures, and religion.”
The remarkable “The Alley Man” is one of the best pre-historic-man-in-modern-times stories ever
written. It finished a close second to Daniel Keyes’ “Flowers for Algernon” in the voting for the Hugo
Award in 1960. One of the many amazing features of Farmers career is the incredible number of series
he has sustained—his ideas are simply too big for even very large novels.
“The King of Beasts” is a gem of a short-short, while “The God Business” is one of those stories that is
much better read than discussed.
If you have not encountered Farmer or these stories before you are in for a treat. In the words of Leslie
Fiedler, “Thanks for the feast.”
Sail On! Sail On!
1952
FRIAR SPARKS SAT wedged between the wall and the realizer. He was motionless except for his
forefinger and his eyes. From time to time his finger tapped rapidly on the key upon the desk, and now
and then his irises, gray-blue as his native Irish sky, swiveled to look through the open door of the
toldilla in which he crouched, the little shanty on the poop deck. Visibility was low.
Outside was dusk and a lantern by the railing. Two sailors leaned on it. Beyond them bobbed the bright
lights and dark shapes of the Nina and the Pinta. And beyond them was the smooth horizon-brow of the
Atlantic, edged in black and blood by the red dome of the rising moon.
The single carbon filament bulb above the monk’s tonsure showed a face lost in fat—and in
concentration.
The luminiferous ether crackled and hissed tonight, but the phones clamped over his ears carried, along
with them, the steady dots and dashes sent by the operator at the Las Palmas station on the Grand
Canary.
“Zzisss! So you are out of sherry already… Pop!… Too bad… Crackle… you hardened old
winebutt… Zzz… May God have mercy on your sins…
“Lots of gossip, news, et cetera… Hisses.‘… Bend your ear instead of your neck, impious one… The
turks are said to be gathering… crackle … an army to march on Austria. It is rumored that the flying
sausages, said by so many to have been seen over the capitals of the Christian world, are of Turkish
origin. The rumor goes they have been invented by a renegade Rogerian who was converted to the
Muslim religion… I say… zziss … to that. No one of us would do that. It is a falsity spread by our
enemies in the Church to discredit us. But many people believe that…
“How close does the Admiral calculate he is to Cipangu now?
“Flash! Savonarola today denounced the Pope, the wealthy of Florence, Greek art and literature, and the
experiments of the disciples of Saint Roger Bacon… Zzz/… The man is sincere but misguided and
dangerous… I predict he’ll end up at the stake he’s always prescribing for us…
“Pop… This will kill you… Two Irish mercenaries by the name of Pat and Mike were walking down the
street of Granada when a beautiful Saracen lady leaned out of a balcony and emptied a pot of… hiss!…
and Pat looked up and… Crackle… Good, hah? Brother Juan told that last night…
“PV… PV… Are you coming in?… PV… PV… Yes, I know it’s dangerous to bandy such jests about,
but nobody is monitoring us tonight… Zzz. … I think they’re not, anyway…”
And so the ether bent and warped with their messages. And presently Friar Sparks tapped out the PV
that ended their talk—the “Pax vobiscum.” Then he pulled the plug out that connected his earphones to
the set and, lifting them from his ears, clamped them down forward over his temples in the regulation
manner.
After sidling bent-kneed from the toldilla, punishing his belly against the desks hard edge as he did so, he
walked over to the railing. De Salcedo and de Torres were leaning there and talking in low tones. The big
bulb above gleamed on the page’s red-gold hair and on the interpreter’s full black beard. It also bounced
pinkishly off the priest’s smooth-shaven jowls and the light scarlet robe of the Rogerian order. His cowl,
thrown back, served as a bag for scratch paper, pens, an ink bottle, tiny wrenches and screwdrivers, a
book of cryptography, a slide rule, and a manual of angelic principles.
‘’Well, old rind,“ said young de Salcedo familiarly, ”what do you hear from Las Palmas?“
“Nothing now. Too much interference from that.” He pointed to the moon riding the horizon ahead of
them. “What an orb!” bellowed the priest. “It’s as big and red as my revered nose!”
The two sailors laughed, and de Salcedo said, “But it will get smaller and paler as the night grows,
Father. And your proboscis will, on the contrary, become larger and more sparkling in inverse proportion
according to the square of the ascent—”
He stopped and grinned, for the monk had suddenly dipped his nose, like a porpoise diving into the sea,
raised it again, like the same animal jumping from a wave, and then once more plunged it into the heavy
currents of their breath. Nose to nose, he faced them, his twinkling little eyes seeming to emit sparks like
the realizer in his toldilla.
Again, porpoiselike, he sniffed and snuffed several times, quite loudly. Then satisfied with what he had
gleaned from their breaths, he winked at them. He did not, however, mention his findings at once,
preferring to sidle toward the subject.
He said, “This Father Sparks on the Grand Canary is so entertaining. He stimulates me with all sorts of
philosophical notions, both valid and fantastic. For instance, tonight, just before we were cut off by
that”—he gestured at the huge bloodshot eye in the sky—“he was discussing what he called worlds of
parallel time tracks, an idea originated by Dysphagius of Gotham. It’s his idea there may be other worlds
in coincident but not contacting universes, that God, being infinite and of unlimited creative talent and
ability, the Master Alchemist, in other words, has possibly— perhaps necessarily—created a plurality of
continua in which every probable event has happened.”
“Huh?” grunted de Salcedo.
“Exactly. Thus, Columbus was turned down by Queen Isabella, so this attempt to reach the Indies across
the Atlantic was never made. So we could not now be standing here plunging ever deeper into Oceanus
in our three cockle-shells, there would be no booster buoys strung out between us and the Canaries, and
Father Sparks at Las Palmas and I on the Santa Maria would not be carrying on our fascinating
conversations across the ether.
“Or, say, Roger Bacon was persecuted by the Church, instead of being encouraged and giving rise to the
order whose inventions have done so much to insure the monopoly of the Church on alchemy and its
divinely inspired guidance of that formerly pagan and hellish practice.”
De Torres opened his mouth, but the priest silenced him with a magnificient and imperious gesture and
continued.
“Or, even more ridiculous, but thought-provoking, he speculated just this evening on universes with
different physical laws. One, in particular, I thought very droll. As you probably don’t know, Angelo
Angelei has proved, by dropping objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, that different weights fall at
different speeds. My delightful colleague on the Grand Canary is writing a satire which takes place in a
universe where Aristotle is made out to be a liar, where all things drop with equal velocities, no matter
what their size. Silly stuff, but it helps to pass the time. We keep the ether busy with our little angels.”
De Salcedo said, “Uh, I don’t want to seem too curious about the secrets of your holy and cryptic order,
Friar Sparks. But these little angels your machine realizes intrigue me. Is it a sin to presume to ask about
them?”
The monk’s bull roar slid to a dove cooing. “Whether it’s a sin or not depends. Let me illustrate, young
fellows. If you were concealing a bottle of, say, very scarce sherry on you, and you did not offer to share
it with a very thirsty old gentleman, that would be a sin. A sin of omission. But if you were to give that
desert-dry, that pilgrim-weary, that devout, humble, and decrepit old soul a long, soothing, refreshing,
and stimulating draught of lifegiving fluid, daughter of the vine, I would find it in my heart to pray for you
for that deed of loving-kindness, of encompassing charity. And it would please me so much I might tell
you a little of our realizer.
“H
Not enough to hurt you, just enough so you might gain more respect for the intelligence and glory of my
order.“
De Salcedo grinned conspiratorially and passed the monk the bottle he’d hidden under his jacket. As the
friar tilted it, and the chug-chug-chug of vanishing sherry became louder, the two sailors glanced
meaningfully at each other. No wonder the priest, reputed to be so brilliant in his branch of the alchemical
mysteries, had yet been sent off on this halfbaked voyage to devil-knew-where. The Church had
calculated that if he survived, well and good. If he didn’t, then he would sin no more.
The monk wiped his lips on his sleeve, belched loudly as a horse, and said, “Gracias, boys. From my
heart, so deeply buried in this fat, I thank you. An old Irishman, dry as a camel’s hoof, choking to death
with the dust of abstinence, thanks you. You have saved my life.”
“Thank rather that magic nose of yours,” replied de Salcedo. “Now, old rind, now that you’re well
greased again, would you mind explaining as much as you are allowed about that machine of yours?”
Friar Sparks took fifteen minutes. At the end of that time, his listeners asked a few permitted questions.
“… and you say you broadcast on a frequency of eighteen hundred k.c.?” the page asked. “What does
‘k.c.’ mean?”
“K stands for the French kilo, from a Greek word meaning thousand. And c stands for the Hebrew
cherubim, the ‘little angels.’ Angel comes from the Greek angelos, meaning messenger. It is our concept
that the ether is crammed with these cherubim, these little messengers. Thus, when we Friar Sparkses
depress the key of our machine, we are able to realize some of the infinity of’messengers’ waiting for just
such a demand for service.
“So, eighteen hundred k.c. means that in a given unit of time one million, eight hundred thousand
cherubim line up and hurl themselves across the ether, the nose of one being brushed by the feathertips of
the cherubs wings ahead. The height of the wing crests of each little creature is even, so that if you were
to draw an outline of the whole train, there would be nothing to distinguish one cherub from the next, the
whole column forming that grade of little angels known as C.W.”
“C.W.?”
“Continuous wingheight. My machine is a C.W. realizer.”
Young de Salcedo said, “My mind reels. Such a concept! Such a revelation! It almost passes
comprehension. Imagine, the aerial of your realizer is cut just so long, so that the evil cherubim surging
back and forth on it demand a predetermined and equal number of good angels to combat them. And this
seduction coil on the realizer crowds ‘bad’ angels into the left-hand, the sinister, side. And when the bad
little cherubim are crowded so closely and numerously that they can’t bear each other’s evil company,
they jump the spark gap and speed around the wire to the ‘good’ plate. And in this racing back and forth
they call themselves to the attention of the ‘little messengers,’ the yea-saying cherubim. And you, Friar
Sparks, by manipulating your machine thus and so, and by lifting and lowering your key, you bring these
invisible and friendly lines of carriers, your etheric and winged postmen, into reality. And you are able,
thus, to communicate at great distances with your brothers of the order.”
“Great God!” said de Torres.
It was not a vain oath but a pious exclamation of wonder. His eyes bulged; it was evident that he
suddenly saw that man was not alone, that on every side, piled on top of each other, flanked on every
angle, stood a host. Black and white, they presented a solid chessboard of the seemingly empty cosmos,
black for the nay-sayers, white for the yea-sayers, maintained by a Hand in delicate balance and subject
as the fowls of the air and the fish of the sea to exploitation by man.
Yet de Torres, having seen such a vision as has made a saint of many a man, could only ask, “Perhaps
you could tell me how many angels may stand on the point of a pin?”
Obviously, de Torres would never wear a halo. He was destined, if he lived, to cover his bony head with
the mortar-board of a university teacher.
De Salcedo snorted. “I’ll tell you. Philosophically speaking, you may put as many angels on a pinhead as
you want to. Actually speaking, you may put only as many as there is room for. Enough of that. I’m
interested in facts, not fancies. Tell me, how could the moons rising interrupt your reception of the
cherubim sent by the Sparks at Las Palmas?”
“Great Caesar, how would I know? Am I a repository of universal knowledge? No, not I! A humble and
ignorant friar, I! All I can tell you is that last night it rose like a bloody tumor on the horizon, and that
when it was up I had to quit marshaling my little messengers in their short and long columns. The Canary
station was quite overpowered, so that both of us gave up. And the same thing happened tonight.”
“The moon sends messages?” asked de Torres.
“Not in a code I can decipher. But it sends, yes.”
“Santa Maria!”
“Perhaps,” suggested de Salcedo, “there are people on that moon, and they are sending.”
Friar Sparks blew derision through his nose. Enormous as were his nostrils, his derision was not
smallbore. Artillery of contempt laid down a barrage that would have silenced any but the strongest of
souls.
“Maybe”—de Torres spoke in a low tone— “maybe, if the stars are windows in heaven, as I’ve heard
said, the angels of the higher hierarchy, the big ones, are realizing—uh—the smaller? And they only do it
when the moon is up so we may know it is a celestial phenomenon?”
He crossed himself and looked around the vessel.
“You need not fear,” said the monk gently. “There is no Inquisitor leaning over your shoulder.
Remember, I am the only priest on this expedition. Moreover, your conjecture has nothing to do with
dogma. However, that’s unimportant. Here’s what I don’t understand: how can a heavenly body
broadcast? Why does it have the same frequency as the one I’m restricted to? Why—”
“I could explain,” interrupted de Salcedo with all the brash-ness and impatience of youth. “I could say
that the Admiral and the Rogerians are wrong about the earth’s shape. I could say the earth is not round
but is flat. I could say the horizon exists, not because we live upon a globe, but because the earth is
curved only a little ways, like a greatly flattened-out hemisphere. I could also say that the cherubim are
coming, not from Luna, but from a ship such as ours, a vessel which is hanging in the void off the edge of
the earth.”
“What?” gasped the other two.
“Haven’t you heard,” said de Salcedo, “that the King of Portugal secretly sent out a ship after he turned
down Columbus’ proposal? How do we know he did not, that the messages are from our predecessor,
that he sailed off the world’s rim and is now suspended in the air and becomes exposed at night because
it follows the moon around Terra—is, in fact, a much smaller and unseen satellite?”
The monk’s laughter woke many men on the ship. “I’ll have to tell the Las Palmas operator your tale. He
can put it in that novel of his. Next you’ll be telling me those messages are from one of those fire-shooting
sausages so many credulous laymen have been seeing flying around. No, my dear de Salcedo, let’s not
be ridiculous. Even the ancient Greeks knew the earth was round. Every university in Europe teaches
that. And we Rogerians have measured the circumference. We know for sure that the Indies lie just
across the Atlantic. Just as we know for sure, through mathematics, that heavier-than-air machines are
impossible. Our Friar Ripskulls, our mind doctors, have assured us these flying creations are mass
hallucinations or else the tricks of heretics or Turks who want to panic the populace.
“That moon radio is no delusion, I’ll grant you. What it is, I don’t know. But it’s not a Spanish or
Portuguese ship. What about its different code? Even if it came from Lisbon, that ship would still have a
Rogerian operator. And he would, according to our policy, be of a different nationality from the crew so
he might the easier stay out of political embroilments. He wouldn’t break our laws by using a different
code in order to communicate with Lisbon. We disciples of Saint Roger do not stoop to petty boundary
intrigues. Moreover, that realizer would not be powerful enough to reach Europe, and must, therefore, be
directed at us.”
“How can you be sure?” said de Salcedo. “Distressing though the thought may be to you, a priest could
be subverted. Or a layman could learn your secrets and invent a code. I think that a Portuguese ship is
sending to another, a ship perhaps not too distant from us.”
De Torres shivered and crossed himself again. “Perhaps the angels are warning us of approaching death?
Perhaps?”
“Perhaps? Then why don’t they use our code? Angels would know it as well as I. No, there is no
perhaps. The order does not permit perhaps. It experiments and finds out; nor does it pass judgment until
it knows.”
“I doubt we’ll ever know,” said de Salcedo gloomily. “Columbus has promised the crew that if we come
across no sign of land by evening tomorrow, we shall turn back. Otherwise”—he drew a finger across his
throat— “kkk! Another day, and we’ll be pointed east and getting away from that evil and
bloody-looking moon and its incomprehensible messages.”
“It would be a great loss to the order and to the Church,” sighed the friar. “But I leave such things in the
hands of God and inspect only what He hands me to look at.”
With which pious statement Friar Sparks lifted the bottle to ascertain the liquid level. Having determined
in a scientific manner its existence, he next measured its quantity and tested its quality by putting all of it in
that best of all chemistry tubes, his enormous belly.
Afterward, smacking his lips and ignoring the pained and disappointed looks on the faces of the sailors,
he went on to speak enthusiastically of the water screw and the engine which turned it, both of which had
been built recently at the St. Jonas College at Genoa. If Isabellas three ships had been equipped with
those, he declared, they would not have to depend upon the wind. However, so far, the fathers had
forbidden its extended use because it was feared the engines fumes might poison the air and the terrible
speeds it made possible might be fatal to the human body. After which he plunged into a tedious
description of the life of his patron saint, the inventor of the first cherubim realizer and receiver, Jonas of
Carcassonne, who had been martyred when he grabbed a wire he thought was insulated.
The two sailors found excuses to walk off. The monk was a good fellow, but hagiography bored them.
Besides, they wanted to talk of women…
If Columbus had not succeeded in persuading his crews to sail one more day, events would have been
different.
At dawn the sailors were very much cheered by the sight of several large birds circling their ships. Land
could not be far off; perhaps these winged creatures came from the coast of fabled Cipangu itself, the
country whose houses were roofed with gold.
The birds swooped down. Closer, they were enormous and very strange. Their bodies were flattish and
almost saucer-shaped and small in proportion to the wings, which had a spread of at least thirty feet. Nor
did they have legs. Only a few sailors saw the significance of that fact. These birds dwelt in the air and
never rested upon land or sea.
While they were meditating upon that, they heard a slight sound as of a man clearing his throat. So gentle
and far off was the noise that nobody paid any attention to it, for each thought his neighbor had made it.
A few minutes later, the sound had become louder and deeper, like a lute string being twanged.
Everybody looked up. Heads were turned west.
Even yet they did not understand that the noise like a finger plucking a wire came from the line that held
the earth together, and that the line was stretched to its utmost, and that the violent finger of the sea was
what had plucked the line.
It was some time before they understood. They had run out of horizon.
When they saw that, they were too late.
The dawn had not only come up like thunder, it was thunder. And though the three ships heeled over at
once and tried to sail close-hauled on the port tack, the suddenly speeded-up and relentless current
made beating hopeless.
Then it was the Rogerian wished for the Genoese screw and the wood-burning engine that would have
made them able to resist the terrible muscles of the charging and bull-like sea. Then it was that some men
prayed, some raved, some tried to attack the Admiral, some jumped overboard, and some sank into a
stupor.
Only the fearless Columbus and the courageous Friar Sparks stuck to their duties. All that day the fat
monk crouched wedged in his little shanty, dot-dashing to his fellow on the Grand Canary. He ceased
only when the moon rose like a huge red bubble from the throat of a dying giant. Then he listened intently
all night and worked desperately, scribbling and swearing impiously and checking cipher books.
When the dawn came up again in a roar and a rush, he ran from the toldilla, a piece of paper clutched in
his hand. His eyes were wild, and his lips were moving fast, but nobody could understand that he had
cracked the code. They could not hear him shouting, “It is the Portuguese! It is the Portuguese!”
Their ears were too overwhelmed to hear a mere human voice. The throat clearing and the twanging of a
string had been the noises preliminary to the concert itself. Now came the mighty overture; as compelling
as the blast of Gabriel’s horn was the topple of Oceanus into space.
Mother
1953
1
LOOK, MOTHER. THE clock is running backwards.“
Eddie Fetts pointed to the hands on the pilot room dial.
Dr. Paula Fetts said, “The crash must have reversed it.”
“How could it do that?”
“I can’t tell you. I don’t know everything, son.”
“Oh!”
“Well, don’t look at me so disappointedly. I’m a pathologist, not an electronician.”
“Don’t be so cross, mother. I can’t stand it. Not now.”
He walked out of the pilot room. Anxiously, she followed him. The burial of the crew and her fellow
scientists had been very trying for him. Spilled blood had always made him dizzy and sick; he could
scarcely control his hands enough to help her sack the scattered bones and entrails.
摘要：

TheClassicPhilipJoseFarmer1952-1964EditedandIntroductionbyMartinH.GreenbergForewordbyIsaacAsimovSeriesEditor:GeorgeZebrowskiCROWNPUBLISHERS,INC.NEWYORKContentsRetrievingtheLostbyIsaacAsimovIntroductionbyMartinH.GreenbergSailOn!SailOn!MotherTheGodBusinessTheAlleyManMySistersBrotherTheKingofBeastsRetr...

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