Orbit 15 - [Anthology] Read online

  ~ * ~

  Orbit 15

  Ed by Damon Knight

  No copyright 2011 by MadMaxAU eBooks

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  CONTENTS

  They Say

  Flaming Ducks and Giant Bread

  R. A. Lafferty

  Pale Hands

  Doris Piserchia

  Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

  Kate Wilhelm

  Melting

  Gene Wolfe

  In the Lilliputian Asylum

  Michael Bishop

  Ernie

  Lowell Kent Smith

  The Memory Machine

  Live? Our Computers Will Do That for Us

  Brian W. Aldiss

  Ace 167

  Eleanor Arnason

  Biting Down Hard on Truth

  George Alec Effinger

  Arcs & Secants

  ~ * ~

  They Say

  One day when Backster happened to cut his finger and dabbed it with iodine, the plant that was being monitored on the polygraph immediately reacted, apparently to the death of some cells in Backster’s finger. Though it might have been reacting to his emotional state at the sight of his own blood, or to the stinging of the iodine, Backster soon found a recognizable pattern in the graph whenever a plant was witnessing the death of some living tissue.

  Could the plant, Backster wondered, be sensitive on a cellular level all the way down to the death of individual cells in its environment?

  On another occasion the typical graph appeared as Backster was preparing to eat a cup of yogurt. This puzzled him until he realized there was a chemical preservative in the jam he was mixing into the yogurt that was terminating some of the live yogurt bacilli. Another inexplicable pattern on the chart was finally explained when it was realized the plants were reacting to hot water being poured down the drain, which was killing bacteria in the sink.

  —The Secret Life of Plants,

  by Peter Tompkins and Christopher

  Bird (Harper & Row, 1973)

  ~ * ~

  “Aha!” says our novice. “You have to use verbs with thee and thou.” So he does. But he doesn’t know how. There are very few Americans now alive who know how to use a verb in the second person singular. The general assumption is that you add -est and you’re there. I remember Debbie Reynolds telling Eddie Fisher —do you remember Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher?— “Whithersoever thou goest there also I goest.” Fake feeling: fake grammar.

  Then our novice tries to use the subjunctive. All the was’s turn into were’s, and leap out at the reader snarling. And the Quakers have got him all fouled up about which really is the nominative form of Thou. Is it Thee, or isn’t it? And then there’s the She-to-Whom Trap. “I shall give it to she to whom my love is given!” — “Him whom this sword smites shall surely die!” — Give it to she? Him shall die? It sounds like Tonto talking to the Lone Ranger. This is distancing with a vengeance. But we aren’t through yet, no, we haven’t had the fancy words. Eldritch. Tenebrous. Smaragds and chalcedony. Mayhap. It can’t be maybe, it can’t be perhaps; it has to be mayhap, unless it’s perchance. And then comes the final test, the infallible touchstone of the seventh-rate: Ichor. You know ichor. It oozes out of severed tentacles, and beslimes tesselated pavements, and bespatters bejewelled courtiers, and bores the bejesus out of everybody.

  —Ursula K. Le Guin, discussing

  the perils of fantasy, in the essay

  “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie”

  (Pendragon Press,

  Portland, Oregon, 1973)

  ~ * ~

  Elsewhere I have suggested the cul-de-sac resulting from the rise of literary realism and naturalism. In literary study the theories behind them reached a kind of climax in Vernon L. Parrington’s Main Currents in American Thought (1927). . . .

  Almost at once reaction set in. Drawing upon earlier aesthetic critics, such as James in fiction and the French Symbolists in poetry, many critics insisted that one should give all his attention to the work itself, not to “outside” or “non-literary” matters.

  (Do you recall that in More Issues at Hand, even as he wondered why sf was no longer a part of the mainstream, as it had been at the time of Wells, James Blish found “very little practical use for the historical critic—the man who detects trends and influences, and places individual works in the settings of their times—except to the reader” and called for “the technical critic [whose] work usually takes the form of explication du lexte, or what used to be called The New Criticism, twenty years ago.” At least in this passage, Blish has taken sides in this basic controversy.) The extreme advocates of a purely aesthetic criticism insisted that their students (many of them now teachers) examine a book in vacuo.

  Apply this to science fiction. It makes no difference whether Stanton Coblentz, Otis Adelbert Kline, Gene Wolfe, or Harry Harrison wrote the story. It makes no difference whether Hugo Gernsback published it in Wonder Stories or Damon Knight accepted it for the Orbit series. It makes no difference whether it was written in the 1890’s when the vision of a technological Utopia was bright or in the 1960’s when many authors, like John Brunner and Brian Aldiss, had perhaps become somewhat disillusioned by the failure of these earlier dreams.

  None of these matters, say the most ardent aesthetic critics, really contribute to our understanding of the story. And one never, never inquires into the intention of the author, for even he himself does not know what he intended.

  —Thomas D. Clareson

  (SFWA Forum, No. 31)

  <>

  ~ * ~

  FLAMING DUCKS AND GIANT BREAD

  R. A. Lafferty

  Yes, in fact, it has been a long time since the year began in April.

  ~ * ~

  1

  This is the year of clod and clown.

  This is the year when the sky falls down.

  A huge bloody glob fell in front of Valery Mok with a smash and a splash. It was no small thing. It was at least a thousand pounds of flesh: raw, red, bloody flesh.

  “And human,” Valery said. “One can always tell human flesh.” She tasted a bit of the blood on her finger. “Type AB,” she said. (Yet there were those who never believed that Valery could identify blood groups by taste.) “All right,” Valery said then, “who’s the joker?”

  There was no sound or vapor trail overhead. There was no high building near enough to be the source of the big bloody glob, not if it had fallen normally. And there was no near person who was powerful enough to have hurled such a thing. There were people of a sort there, that’s true. These people were calling “Happy New Year!” to each other, but they weren’t people capable of heaving thousand-pound hunks of flesh about.

  It was early morning of the first day of April. And the year was one that was coincident in several numerations.

  “It’s been many a time since the year began in April,” Valery told the town. “April, the opening, the beginning. But the beginning was tampered with long ago. How could these people know that this was really New Year’s? Most of them weren’t even born in those old centuries.

  “Do any of you know of any giant who has disappeared or been slaughtered?” she asked in a louder voice.

  “Not us,” the people said. “We’d slaughter no giants ever. We like them.”

  The people formed a mad-eyed crowd of mixed types. They seemed under the influence of something, probably the chorea, for they danced along instead of walking. They were good people. One of them was dressed as St. Vitus, and several of them were holy.

  “If no giants, then what is new, kids?” Valery asked them.

  “There’s a lady at the lying-in shop who has just given birth to thirteen children,”
one of the mad-eyed young women said, “and she’s not near finished with it. They say that it looks as though she could go on all day without stopping. They’re not very big children yet.”

  “That’s nice,” Valery said.

  “The oldest ones of the children are already walking and talking,” another of the young women said.

  “That seems very early,” Valery mumbled. “Even after a full day it would seem a little early.” Valery didn’t know much about children.

  She left the dancing people. She left the bloody hunk of flesh, though she was still puzzled by it. She continued on her way toward the Institute for Impure Science. She was a member of the Institute, and there was an early morning meeting called by the director, Gregory Smirnov.

  Valery’s unoutstanding husband Charles Cogsworth was likewise approaching the Institute, but on a street parallel to that taken by Valery. Charles would not walk with his wife Valery in the mornings. There were always early morning kids abroad, and kids are often kidders.

  “Hey, mister, walk your dog for you!” they’d offer. Well, Valery was just unkempt enough in the mornings to be referred to as a dog. Such offers amused Valery, but they embarrassed Charles, so they always walked separately. This morning there was a variant, however.

  “Hey, mister, walk your cow?” one of the morning kids offered.

  “Holy cow!” another kid whistled with amazement.

  “Clank, clank,” went a sound somewhere behind Charles.

  “Now that is unfair,” Charles protested. “My wife has not put on that much weight. Besides, she isn’t even walking on this street.”

  “I wasn’t talking about your wife,” the kid said. “I was talking about the cow.”

  “Clank, clank,” went the cowbell. “Can you tell me the way to the Cow Palace?” the cow asked, or else she didn’t: this point remains in dispute. She was a big black-and-white cow, a Holstein or Dutch Belted or some such, and she had been following Charles.

  “Veer off to the left,” Charles said in common politeness, “till you come to a street called Drovers’ Road. Follow Drovers’ Road to the right till you come to the Cow Palace. It’s about a mile and a half.”

  “Clank, clank,” went the cowbell as the cow took the side street to the left. Cogsworth was not absolutely certain that the cow had spoken to him in words, but he had understood her meaning, and she had understood his. She must have been a simple-minded creature, in any case. The Cow Palace was a slaughterhouse, and no good could come to her there.

  ~ * ~

  Glasser also was going to the Institute. He had to go several blocks out of his way. There was a steamship in the middle of

  Fourteenth Street; it had the whole thoroughfare blocked. And there was not near enough water to float it, though it had rained a bit during the night.

  ~ * ~

  And Aloysius Shiplap was going to the Institute for Impure Science. He was probably the most impure of all the scientists who belonged to the Institute. Aloysius looked back over his shoulder as he walked. “I wonder what’s keeping that fellow?” he asked. He went another two blocks. “He’s late,” Aloysius declared, “but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  Aloysius was almost to the front door of the ramshackle Institute when a flaming duck plunged out of the smoking sky and smashed itself dead on the stones at his feet.

  “He was more than a minute late,” Aloysius said.

  ~ * ~

  And then they were met in formal meeting and were in the middle of words. Gregory Smirnov, the director of the Institute, was outlining a study, or a notion, or a subject to be investigated. It really didn’t seem important enough for the calling of an early morning meeting, but most of their studies at the Institute had had such very small and notional beginnings.

  “Clock-keeping is a murderous business,” Director Smirnov was saying. “However it is arranged and corrected, the annalist will find that he has burned some of his years behind him.”

  “And the annalist’s analyst may find that his ears are burning, as well as his years,” Valery gibed as she shuffled her cards. “Really, do you believe there is as much insanity among any tradesmen as historians?” Valery and Aloysius Shiplap and two of Epikt’s extensions were playing Pape Jaune, the old French card game (the game was named Scrat in fourteenth-century Scotland).

  Those extensions of Epikt: one of them looked like Johnny Greeneyes the cosmic gambler to a pip; the other was got up as the Ancient Scribe with black skullcap, flowing white beard, and goose-quill pen behind one ear.

  “Have you been losing some years, Gregory?” Aloysius asked the director. “I believe that I have lost one or two myself along the way.”

  “Someone has been careless with the years,” Gregory said. “We know that either four or six years have been lost out of the count since the beginning of what common people call the Common Era. Thus, the birth of Our Lord was probably in 4 b.c., possibly in 6 b.c. Yet it was not just a mistake in the calculations. These missing years were not missing at all. Astronomical backtracking tells us that they really happened, even if they were somehow left out of the numbering, even if the annalists have left them blank of any happenings, even if we are not sure just which years they were, not sure just where their location was in time or space.”

  “Can’t Epikt discover these things?” Charles Cogsworth asked. “Why do we keep the scatterbrained machine if he can’t find out things like that?”

  “Or play cards either,” Valery said. The Johnny Greeneyes extension of Epikt looked pained at this gibe. After all, he had created himself to look like a gambler and a card shark, and he was plugged into the most brainy and most rational calculator in the universe. But he wasn’t doing very good at the Pape Jaune game: there are unbrainy and unrational elements to Pape Jaune; it is one of the few games at which humans can beat intelligent machines.

  “Yes, I trust that Epikt will be able to find the answers,” Gregory said, “with the help of all of us. Our project, though, will be research on one year that is included in the numbering, and yet we must record it rationally as the Year That Did Not Happen. We will call it the Year of the Double Bogie or the Year of the Double Fool; or the Year of the Double Joker. I also find the name the Year of the Yellow Joker pushing itself into my mind; likewise, the Year of the Yellow Dwarf. There is superstition involved in contemporary attempts to leave it out of the counting, and I believe that it was left out for several decades. For a parallel, you will recall that this great Institute Building does not have a thirteenth floor.”

  “No. It has a cellar, then two stories, then an attic,” Valery said. “It doesn’t have any thirteenth floor, and I am sure that superstition is the cause of its not having one.”

  “Let’s consider a taller building then,” Director Gregory said, “one that possibly has twenty floors, but with the thirteenth floor left out of the numbering. Now then, a curious thing happens, hypothetically of course, since this is a hypothetical building. It is discovered one day that it does have a thirteenth story after all, one not built by the builders, one that is only entered by accident, one that is a crazy jumble of insane things and happenings, one that isn’t measurable in normal space. And yet this thirteenth level is discovered again and again. It is occupied by odd tenants who pay rent irregularly and in most odd specie. It is used. And finally this story is restored to the numbering by the building owners, even though it cannot always be found. Such is the year which we will now make the subject of our study.”

  Valery drew the Queen of Wands card. It winked at her. The face of that queen looked somehow familiar.

  “Who does she look like?” Valery asked, showing the card to Aloysius Shiplap.

  “She looks like you,” Aloysius said. “I hadn’t noticed that before.” Knowing that Valery held the Queen of Wands, Aloysius played the Judgment card. This, of course, is not the same as the Final Judgment card (many persons do not play much Pape Jaune and so may not be clear on this subject). “Scrat,” Aloy
sius called. He had won that merlon and so was ahead in the game.

  “What is the number of the doubtful year, Gregory?” Glasser asked, “and what are some of the insane things and happenings that clutter the rooms of it?”

  “It’s hard to give a direct answer to anything about it,” Gregory said. “It has to be slipped up on. Epikt has been receiving a few hints accidentally. There is great subliminal folk interest in this doubtful year and considerable folk memory of it. There are many references to it now that are appearing in selected copies of old books, references that were not to be found in them when the old books were first printed. Thus, there is preternatural tampering. Well, we can do preternatural tampering ourselves. Here is a communication from a certain Polydore Smith:

  “ ‘Epikt, are you aware that in the year 1313 something happened to the Devil? He was compelled, by St. Michael and St. George and for a joke, to wear motley or clown suit for one entire year. This was frustration and humiliation to him. He found the propagation of all conventional evil impossible to him when he was dressed in that thing. He did, however, effect one year full of the most outrageous pseudo-evil ever. That whole year is absolutely incredible and is best forgotten: that is why I thought you might want to remember it and reconstruct it. The year was a lustrum year, not a calendar year. Well, down the hatch, kid! Oh, I forgot; you haven’t any hatch.’ “