Dangerous Visions Read online

  They could hear no more. Now fresh police reinforcements were clearing the building of all unauthorised persons before the other terranauts were returned to the surface, although of their earth capsule there was as yet no sign. As the armed cordon approached, Fifi and Tracey made a dash for it. They could stand no more, they could understand no more. They pelted for the door, oblivious to the cries of the two masked Smiths. As they ran out into the darkness, high above them towered the great invisible plume of the time gusher, still blowing, blowing its doom about the world.

  For some while they lay gasping in the nearest hedge. Occasionally one of them would whimper like a tiny girl, or the other would groan like an old man. Between times, they breathed heavily.

  Dawn was near to breaking when they pulled themselves up and made along the track toward Rouseville, keeping close to the fields.

  They were not alone. The inhabitants of the village were on the move, heading away from the homes that were now alien to them and beyond their limited understanding. Staring at them from under his lowering brow, Tracey stopped and fashioned himself a crude cudgel from the hedgerow.

  Together, the man and his woman trudged over the hill, heading back for the wilds like most of the rest of humanity, their bent and uncouth forms silhouetted against the first ragged banners of light in the sky.

  "Ugh glumph hum herm morm glug humk," the woman muttered.

  Which means, roughly translated from the Old Stone, "Why the heck does this always have to happen to mankind just when he's on the goddam point of getting civilised again?"

  Afterword:

  If ever a dangerous vision was rooted in real life, "The Night That All Time Broke Out" is. I should explain that I am at present living in a remote corner of Oxfordshire, England, where I have purchased a marvellous old sixteenth-century house, all stone and timber and thatch, and considerably slumped in disrepair. I said to my friend Jim Ballard, the s-f writer, "It looks as if it's some strange vegetable form that has grown out of the ground," and he replied, "Yes, and it looks as if it's now growing back in again."

  In an effort to keep the house above ground, my wife and I decided to have it put on to main drainage and fill in the old cesspit. Our builders immediately surrounded the place with gigantic ditching systems and enormous pipes. In the thick of it all, I wondered how future generations would cope with similar problems. The result you see here.

  At a rough count, this is my one hundred and tenth published story. I gave up work ten years ago and took up writing instead. It was one of the best ideas I ever had. I believe my story presented here contains one of the whackiest ideas I ever had. (Let's hope there are a few more whacky ideas in my head—I'd hate to have to go back to work . . . .)

  Introduction to

  THE MAN WHO WENT TO THE MOON—TWICE:

  Originally, one of the lesser (but no less important) intents of this anthology was to commission and bring to the attention of the readers stories by writers well outside the field of speculative fiction. The names William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Alan Sillitoe, Terry Southern, Thomas Berger and Kingsley Amis were listed in my preliminary table of contents. The name Howard Rodman was also listed. Circumstances almost Machiavellian in nature prevented the appearance here of the former sextet. Howard Rodman is with us. I am honored.

  You are a fan of Rodman's work if you watch television at all. Because, if you watch TV in even the most peripheral way, you do it to catch the best programs, and if that is the case you have seen Rodman's work. (A comment: how odd it seems to me that science fiction fans, the ones who choose to exist in dream worlds of flying skyways, cities of wonder, marvelous inventions, dilating doors, tri-vid and "feelies," are the ones who most vocally despise modern television. The bulk of the fans I have met, when they discover I spend part of my time writing for the visual media, rather superciliously tell me they seldom watch, as though watching at all might be considered gauche. How sad it must be for them, to see television, space travel and all the other predictions of Gernsbackian "scientifiction" turned over to the Philistines. I suppose, in a way, it's a small tragedy, like having been so hip for years that you knew Tolkien was great, and now suddenly finding every shmendrick in the world reading paperback editions of Lord of the Rings on the IRT. But it is a far, far better thing, I submit, to have TV as the mass media it is, even as gawdawful as it is ninety-six per cent of the time, than to relegate it to the hideously antiseptic fate intended for it by the s-f of 1928.)

  Howard Rodman has been nominated for and won more awards for television drama than anyone currently working in the medium. His famous Naked City script, "Bringing Far Places Together," won Emmys and Writers' Guild awards not only for himself but for the series, the director and the stars. Students of exemplary teleplays will recall last season's Bob Hope-Chrysler Theater drama, "The Game with Glass Pieces." It was, in point of fact, Howard Rodman's style that set the tone for the best of both Naked City and Route 66 during their auspicious tenures on the channelways.

  Howard Rodman was born in the Bronx, and decided at the age of ten to be a writer. He took that decision seriously at age fifteen and from fifteen to sixteen read a minimum of one volume of short stories daily; from sixteen to seventeen read only plays, five or six a day; and from seventeen to twenty-one he wrote 3000 words a day: short stories, scenes from plays, poems, narrative sequences, etc. He graduated from Brooklyn College and later did his graduate work at Iowa University. At twenty-one he went into the army (where among his assignments he was required to inspect the brothels of Lille as a sergeant in counterintelligence). He has had over a hundred and fifty short stories published, several hundred poems, forty one-act plays, four three-act plays (and has been included in volumes of best plays of the year). For the past ten years he has been active in radio, television and motion pictures. At forty-seven, Howard Rodman—big, hearty, incredibly witty and erudite Howard Rodman—the film buff, has been married, divorced and remarried to the lovely and talented actress Norma Connolly. They have four children, several of whom can be ranked as geniuses by the most stringent criteria.

  I am particularly pleased that Howard is able to appear in this anthology, not merely because his story is something very different and very special from the others in this book, but for a number of secondary reasons, herewith noted: Long before I came to Hollywood, I was an admirer of Rodman's scripts. They seemed to me to embody the ideals a scenarist should strive for in a medium dedicated to drumming stench-deterrents for the hair, mouth, underarms and spaces between the toes. I made it a point to meet Rodman, within the first few months in Clown Town, and from him I learned an important lesson. A lesson any writer can use. Don't be afraid. That simple; don't let them scare you. There's nothing they can do to you. If they kick you out of films, do TV. If they kick you out of TV, write novels. If they won't buy your novels, sell short stories. Can't do that, then take a job as a bricklayer. A writer always writes. That's what he's for. And if they won't let you write one kind of thing, if they chop you off at the pockets in the market place, then go to another market place. And if they close off all the bazaars, then by God go and work with your hands till you can write, because the talent is always there. But the first time you say, "Oh, Christ, they'll kill me!" then you're done. Because the chief commodity a writer has to sell is his courage. And if he has none, he is more than a coward. He is a sellout and a fink and a heretic, because writing is a holy chore. That is what I learned from Howard Rodman.

  Another reason for my delight at Rodman's inclusion among these pages is the tenor of the story he has told. It is a gentle story, seemingly commonplace and not very "dangerous." Yet when I first read it, and these thoughts occurred to me, I paused with the warning read it again signaling me from inside. Rodman is devious. So I read it again, and aside from the understatement of the handling, the pain of the concept struck me. He has attempted something very difficult, and in its own way unsettling. He has made a sage comment on the same subject which I commented
upon, in the second paragraph of this introduction. (The part in parentheses.) It is the kind of story Heinlein used to write, and which Vonnegut has done several times, but which most speculative writers would not even consider. They are too far away in space. Rodman still has substantial ties with the here and now. And it is this concern (and affection) for the tragedy of the here and now that has prompted the story of the man who went to the moon—twice.

  One final reason why Rodman's appearance here is a delight. He is a fighter, not merely a parlor liberal. His admonition to me never to be afraid was capped with an order to fight for what I had written. I've tried to do it, sometimes successfully. It's difficult in Hollywood. But my mentor, Howard Rodman, is the man who once threw a heavy ashtray at a man who had aborted one of his scripts, and had to be restrained from tearing the man's head from his shoulders. On another occasion he sent a very powerful producer, who had butchered one of his shows, a large package wrapped in black crêpe. Inside was a pair of scissors with a note that said Requiescat in Pace, and the name of the teleplay. There is a legend around the studios: if you aren't getting enough of a headache from Ellison writing for you, call in Rodman and work with the original item.

  It is visible testimony to the quality of his work that Howard Rodman is one of the busiest writers in Hollywood.

  THE MAN WHO WENT TO THE MOON—TWICE

  by Howard Rodman

  The first time Marshall Kiss went to the moon, he was nine years old, and the trip was accidental. A captive balloon broke loose at the county fair, and away it went, with Marshall in it.

  It never came down till twelve hours later.

  "Where've you been?" Marshall's pa asked.

  "Up to the moon," Marshall answered.

  "You don't say," Pa said, with his mouth slightly open and hanging. And off he went to tell the neighbors.

  Marshall's ma, being of a more practical turn of mind, just put a heaping bowl of good hot cereal on the table in front of Marshall. "You must be good and hungry after a trip like that. You better have some supper before you go to bed."

  "I guess I will," said Marshall, setting to work to clear out the bowl. He was hard at work when the reporters came—a big man with a little mustache, and a dry young man working on the newspaper for his tuition at the Undertakers' College.

  "Well," said the mustache, "so you've been to the moon."

  Marshall got timid and nodded without speaking.

  The undertaker smirked, but he stopped that when Marshall's ma threw him a hot glare.

  "What was it like?" the mustache asked.

  "Very nice," Marshall answered politely. "Cold and fresh and lots of singing."

  "What sort of singing?"

  "Just singing. Nice tunes."

  The undertaker leered, but he stopped that when Marshall's ma set the glass of milk down on the table with a bang and a scowl.

  "Nice tunes," Marshall repeated. "Just like church hymns."

  Three neighbors came by to take a look at Marshall. They stood back from the table a ways, gaping a little at the boy who'd been to the moon. "Who'd believe it?" one of them whispered. "He looks so young."

  Marshall blushed with pride and ducked his head down toward his bowl of cereal.

  Just then four schoolmates sneaked through the kitchen door and pushed their faces into the spaces between the neighbors. "Ask him!" the smallest schoolmate demanded.

  "Hey, Marsh," the bravest one called out, "you gonna play ball tomorrow?"

  "Sure," Marshall answered.

  "He's all right," the bravest one told the others. "It ain't changed him at all."

  Marshall's pa came back with two more neighbors, and a woman brought her husband and eight children from two and a half miles down the road. A horse poked his head through the kitchen window, and a chicken hopped in and hid under the stove.

  Marshall's teacher rang the front doorbell, marched through the house into the kitchen by herself, when no one answered her ring.

  Everybody looked at Marshall in a joyful and prideful sort of way, but nobody seemed to be able to think of anything to say. Even when the mayor arrived, freshly shaven and bursting to make a speech, something happened to him, and he closed his mouth without a word.

  The kitchen got warm with so many people pressing in together, but it was a pleasant sort of warmth—cheerful and happy, and nobody jostled anybody else. Marshall's ma just grinned and glowed, and his pa puffed up on a corncob pipe, setting himself on an upturned crate beside the stove.

  The reporter who was studying for the profession of undertaking started to ask Marshall, "How do you know you been to the moon?" But that was as far as he got, and somehow he found himself at the back of the crowd, looking out over everybody's head by standing on tiptoe.

  Finally the chicken cut-cutted, and everybody thought that was funny, so they all laughed out loud, and clear.

  Marshall finished his cereal and his milk, and looked up to see, through the window, that the yard outside was packed with people too: from miles around, by horse and buckboard, on foot and otherwise. He could see that they were waiting for word from him, so he stood up and made a speech.

  "I never intended deliberately to go to the moon," Marshall started. "It just happened that way. The balloon kept going up and I kept going up with it. Pretty soon I was looking down on the tops of mountains, and that was something. But I just kept on going up and up anyway. On the way I got an eagle mad. He was trying to fly as high as me, but he just couldn't do it. He was hopping mad, that eagle. Screamed his head off."

  All the people in the kitchen, and outside in the yard too, nodded approval.

  "In the end," Marshall went on, "I got to the moon. Like I said, it was pretty nice." He stopped speeching, because he'd said everything he had to.

  "Was you scared?" somebody asked.

  "Somewhat," Marshall answered. "But the air was bracing, and I got over it."

  "Well," said the mayor, bound to say something, "we're glad to have you back." And he stuck out his hand to shake with Marshall.

  After that, Marshall shook hands all around and everybody went back to his own home. The horse took his head out the window and went back to cropping grass in the yard. The hen hopped out the door again, leaving an egg behind under the stove. The house was empty but still cheerful. It was as if everybody had come and brought their happiness and left it behind as a present, the way the chicken left the egg.

  "Been a big day for you," Marshall's pa said.

  "I guess you'd better go to bed now," Marshall's ma said.

  "Might be," Marshall's pa went on, talking his thinking out loud, "might be you'll turn out to be a big explorer, time to come."

  Marshall looked at his ma, saw her fear that the boy would turn out to be a gadabout. He answered for his mother's benefit. "I'll tell you, Pa. Seems more likely I'd just settle down now and stay put." Of course he winked at his father to show him that maybe he was right at that.

  "Good night, Pa. Good night, Ma."

  "Good night, son."

  His ma kissed him good night.

  Then Marshall went into his room, closed the door, and undressed, and put on his pajamas. He knelt by the side of his bed and folded his fingers for prayer.

  "Been a happy day, O Lord. Happy as I can remember. Thanks."

  He climbed into bed and went to sleep.

  Well, you know the way time goes on. Marshall came to be a man, married and settled. He had children, and his children had children. His children grew up and just naturally went off their own ways, and his wife died a natural death. And there was Marshall Kiss left alone in the world, living on his farm and doing as much or as little work as he felt like.

  Sometimes he went into town and sat by the stove in the general store and talked, and sometimes he stayed home and listened to the rain talking to the windowpanes. There came to be a time when Marshall was pushing ninety pretty hard. Most everybody who'd been alive when he was a boy had passed on.

  The peo
ple in town were a new generation, and while they weren't unkind, they weren't very friendly, either. That's the way it is with a new generation—it doesn't look back—it keeps looking forward.

  The time came when Marshall could walk through the town from one end to the other and not see a face he knew or that knew him. He'd nod and get nodded back at, but it wasn't a real, close, human thing—it was just a polite thing to do. And you know what the end is, when a man has to live like that—he gets lonely.

  That's just what Marshall did—he got lonely.

  First he thought he could forget his loneliness by staying off by himself. And there was a whole month when Marshall never showed his face around at all, expecting that somebody might show some curiosity and maybe come by to see how he was. But nobody ever did. So Marshall went back into town.