Again, Dangerous Visions Read online

  Most men fifty-seven years old whom I encounter, spend their time telling me what a sorry state the youth of today are in, how no one has any respect for law and order, how Dr. Spock has created generations of sniveling, self-indulgent, anarchistic snots. When I met Ross Rocklynne, at last, five years ago, I thought he was in his thirties and somehow had acquired the secret of mastery over aging. He is as young and forthright and forward-looking in his view of life as the most au courant campus intellectual.

  Is there a message in the life-style of Ross Rocklynne for the writers who said they couldn't write for A,DV because they were too old-time? Is that message clearly present for those of us who think we're with it today and forever "of our time"?

  In the event the reader misses the deep respect of the editor for Rocklynne in these words, let me hasten to add it goes far beyond the fact that the editor is 5'5" and Rocklynne is 6'2" the testament of constant growth to which Ross Rocklynne's life attests is solidly encapsulated in the story that follows, written with a talent and insight denied to many of the younger writers whom we laud regularly.

  I would say more about Rocklynne, but the biographical information he sent me for this introduction is so fine, so much of the man, that I think no one could introduce you to the creator of "Ching Witch!" better than the creator himself.

  Snotnoses of the world, I give you Ross Rocklynne the man . . .after which Ross Rocklynne the writer will speak his marvelous piece.

  "In 1953 L. Sprague de Camp wrote me for information for his book SCIENCE-FICTION HANDBOOK. I stalled. At the time I was studying under a black-bearded guru, and my vows precluded discussion of the ego. Besides, I thought it ridiculous that Sprague wanted to write about me, as I had stopped writing; I wished he wouldn't. Back came another request. Egomania leaked through, and I finally wrote a weak-kneed account of myself. Sprague returned a postcard which was a fire hazard, saying I had been one of eighteen writers on whom he'd intended to devote a chapter, but my contribution had arrived far too late, so that now he could only insert my name. I suppose it's too late to apologize, but looking back, I would have appreciated being a chapter in that book. At the time, however, the world was coming to an end. Being dramatic about it (mystery herewith injected) I died for more than ten years. The black-bearded guru became white-bearded and I had achieved neither death nor rebirth. Still, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and the eastern pantheon are the pivots of my Beliefs today; that and the Teaching of the black-bearded one who became white-bearded. But I departed with What I Knew, or Thought I Knew, and went to see what was Outside. Science fiction was.

  "I was conceived when Tarzan was. (Philip José Farmer overlooked this angle.) I was no Tarzan, being red-headed and freckled and starting out kind of plump. Nonetheless, at age seven I was swinging through the trees over the old canal which ran through Cincinnati and saw a canal boat being pulled by mules. This could make a person historical. I was the almost typical barefoot boy roaming a vast yard composed of woods, meadows, dairy, canal, and lands beyond.

  "At home, my father, a machinist, entered an occasional story contest. He also invented; and worked at the problem of perpetual motion. One invention, which was not developed or patented by him, was the hydroplane, which he thought might lift ships out of the water to escape World War I torpedoes. Another device was the half-gear, which though it revolved in one direction, caused a back-and-forth motion in the mechanism to which it was attached; I saw this one at work in a General Motors exhibit in New York City in 1939.

  "Later my father and I developed two inventions and sold the rights to Popular Mechanics for $3.00 apiece: the funnel-shaped keyhole, and the upside-down pocket.

  "My mother was a hard-working and conscientious woman who in the evenings played the piano, or the mandolin in duet with my father on the guitar. Holidays such as Christmas and Easter always had all the trimmings of candle-lighted trees and eggs, and always gifts. Today, she maintains the early traditions. When crossword puzzles came in, she worked the first one; still does them. This interest in words therefore cuts across three or four generations, for my two sons have no trouble beating almost anybody at Scrabble.

  "At age twelve, the product-sob-of-a-broken-home, I was placed into a boys' school called the Kappa Sigma Pi where I stayed five years. A Tarzan-like friend threw me about in an effort to develop my skinny self. He also introduced me to the Edgar Rice Burroughs books, which became a fixation. At night in bed we threw feathered darts at each other across the room until one lodged in my chest. We also crawled and leaped at night on the steep outside of the old building, an art which was called 'ramification.'

  "In that same school I inherited a subscription to Amazing Stories. The covers were by Frank R. Paul, who, unknown to our present culture, invented color and knee-pants. I entered, at this age level, a manuscript in the new Science Wonder Stories cover contest.

  "New York City, 1939. First World Science Fiction Convention. There are fans here who will become big names. People here I will know right up to the present, and others I will meet again for the first time in thirty years at the Baycon in '68. Now comes 1940 and the Chicon. Charles R. Tanner, Dale Tarr and I, who did not then realize we were one of the early fan groups ('The Hell Pavers'), made the Chicago scene. And then, for me, marriage. California. War work. There were interims of writing, these interims being productive in other fields beside science fiction.

  "But an old nervous ailment began recharging its batteries. There were two sons. Four years work in story analysis at Warner Bros. Then divorce. I worked for a literary agency. My brain grew peach fuzz. A variety of work was to follow, selling and repairing sewing machines, driving and dispatching for a taxi outfit, operating machines in a machine shop, salesman in an art shop, a brief stint lumbering.

  "Suddenly: 1950, and dear old Ron cleared the way for all of us in Astounding, and I was well into dianetics. From there it was only a step or two to the black-bearded guru who became white-bearded. Suddenly, again: it was 1964, and I was walking free in Westlake Park. By mid-1967 I started, slowly, to write again. It came about like this, a brilliant thought, 'I betcha I could write a story and have it published. I betcha!'

  "Writing is still slow. The story I like in the morning is hateful at night. The see-saw is time-consuming, and often I think I had better look for some other kind of fun, except that I've already been on the merry-go-round. So I don't know. I should mention one writing project having to do with my study of the somesthetic senses (using myself as the authentic and self-authorized laboratory). The somesthetic senses tell us about what goes on inside our bodies, and are pressure, pain, and warmth or cold. Our old ideas on the meaning of pain, for instance, will be reversed in this here now book I'm thinking about. It will be shown that the pain and the injury, or the pain and the illness, are opposite things. The pain is investigative and coordinating, not only a 'warning.' As such it could be used on purpose to reverse some changes in morphology. This set of ideas would be presented as a tool some people might find useful. I ride the see-saw on this one, too."

  Ellison again. There is an old Chinese curse that wishes on the recipient that he "live in interesting times." In these days and nights during which we find ourselves (as Rod McKuen would phrase it, God help us) "trapped in the angry," we live in the most interesting times of all. Wilson and Sarajevo seem, and are, far behind us in what was, even as hostile as it might have been, a much quieter time. We tend to accept as truth the proposition that if we aren't deeply committed to change and action, we have no soul.

  Ross Rocklynne grew up in that quieter time and has, by his own words, paid his dues. But he is not a shouter or an antagonist or even a jingoistic radical. He is merely, and with substantial glory, a fine writer who has come through all the years of his life with his talent intact, as now he unarguably proves.

  CHING WITCH!

  Ross Rocklynne

  The tintinabula was very ching that night, just before old Earth blew.

  The dance approp
riately enough was the ching-maya.

  Captain Ratch Chug pin-wheeled, somewhere up there in the misty blue-green of the dance-globe. He threw his hip up in the crawfish modification of the dance which he himself had invented just last week in Rangoon, right in the middle of the war. To his own distaste, he heard his purr-engine wind up when the bundle of groomed pink flesh hanging onto his fingertips glowed her delight.

  "You are ching," she squealed rather noisily into his pointy ear, "ching," but this was merely part of the dance and may not have been admiration at all. There is no question but that the slitted glitter of his eyes was a fascination to her, though, no less than the fabulous whiskery waxed mustache he wore in defiance of all the customs. "How ching," she hooted dreamily, free-falling against him from five feet up at the convulsive reechoing conclusion of the tintinabular construction. She would give him thirty seconds of her life lying here, and during this time he could say pretty much what he pleased.

  "How's 'bout going off this planet with me?" was what Chug said, the air around him warbling and humming the last notes of that ching wappo.

  "How far off this planet with you?" she pouted, calculating, using the final echoes of uranium-borrowed music to ride the question in. "Just how far would you say, old man of space? How far?" That was ten seconds right there!

  "Ten light years, no less."

  Chug was startled. Something had started screaming at him, inside him.

  "To Zephyrus!" he cried.

  Then he caught himself. He crooned, enticing, "Voyage with me to the god of the south!"

  His runty thick brown fingers, curved of claw, tightened around her naked pink shoulders so that her eyes smiled and her pouty sweet lips writhed.

  "What's the tear drops for, man of space? What are they, tears for me, 'cause you know I ain't going with you? You got the face of a crazy. This dance is over. You used your thirty. I go find another man."

  "You ain't got time to find another man," he moaned, letting the tears squeeze out. "They pulled that lever! The war's gonna be over! Earth's gonna blow! I'm getting off!

  "You got to go with me, young pink thing. I ain't no human, you know, one-fifth of me ain't, and there ain't nobody like me on Earth, and that's the reason I know! Coming with me? How's about it, you gonna keep that pink skin? You won't regret it. I'm nice, you'll like me, and there ain't no time for me to find another squud. Give up!"

  But no approach would work. She slid away still pink, and he watched her float in the reduced field toward a group of watching couples, who smiled at what seemed a familiar scene. Chug pulled his shiny black and green 2nd Repellor Corps uniform jacket down around his trim hips, and kicked himself smartly by habit toward the floating bar.

  Lights glinted in racing rippling patterns off glasses and goblets as the bar whirled around him in an improvised dance-step which enticed the numb Captain Ratch Chug into an allemande left. He stopped that, and ordered two drinks. The tomatoed bartender paid him, but Chug left the cards hanging, and drank fast. Then he began to cry in earnest, his thin pocked brown face worked, and his teeth began chattering; and his nose twitched as the ends of his whiskery mustache vibrated. He left the great room, and went toward the spaceport about three miles up.

  "I'm gonna be dancing and watching Earth in the mirror when she blows," vowed Chug, staring at his swollen eyes and vexed lips. "When the first alphas and gammas hit, I'm gonna be doing a Hopi rain jig. Or the Lambeth Walk. Maybe the Bunny Hop! That's what I think of you, ol' Earth. So give me another drink."

  He had reduced his speed to just below a light. His fast track from Earth was a dotted line as the ship sewed itself in and out of space. Earthlight soon would catch up with him. He drank the drinks the tomatoed equipment dutifully prepared. Wowie, he thought, dreaming. That ching-maya was a wappo! But how about the Irish Lilt? Particularly when you got a tomato knows how to manufacture good Irish whipskey—let's try again, ol' man of space, Irich whiskey. About that time, he saw old Earth blow. Captain Ratch Chug, late of the late 2nd Repellor Corps, saw it blow in the pick-up mirror. He cried horribly, in spite of the fact he didn't give a damn. Also, he didn't dance. And he told the tomato to quit making those stupid drinks. And he turned off the mirror, thinking of the young pink thing.

  She wasn't very pink.

  Her fault.

  Captain Ratch Chug made a correction in his flight to Zephyrus, setting his effective speed at one and one-half times the speed of light, this being commensurate with his fuel supply.

  Chug would arrive on Zephyrus how many years before the wave-front of fractured light arrived from Earth? Interesting question.

  Just before he went into his long sleep, Chug lay weeping alcoholically on his pallet. Suddenly he shouted at the winding tubes of freezing gel advancing toward him, "What the hell! There's other planets, and other women to play with! And that's what I'm gonna be doing a good long time before I break the news to them Zephrans. I tell you, this is a sad business. I feel like hell!"

  Zephyrus was named after the gentle and lovable god of the south wind, because it was the only human-populated planet south of the ecliptic plane.

  Earth was on the outs with Zephyrus—had been for one hundred and three years. No Earth ship climbing the thready beams of space had pulled itself to Zephyrus in all that time. Furthermore, Earth had disrupted its communicator systems, making it a radio-hole in the sky so far as Zephyrus was concerned, and had departed with all its high-speed ships and the secrets of manufacturing same. Zephyrus was isolated!

  Why was this? Simple. Make up all the fancy political and socio-economic reasons you want to, it all boils down to the prime fact that Earth people, every man, woman, and child of them, were mean, sneaky, commercial, undernourished and puny, and pleasure-loving. Not fun-loving—pleasure-loving. The Zephrans were noble, generous, tall, godly, and worshipful of the Mother Planet. Naturally they were an affront to the worthless, degraded Earthlings, so the Earthlings snubbed them out of practical existence. This was not a kind thing to do, but that was old Earth for you.

  The sight of an Earth ship coming to the Zephran skies woke up the whole planet. It was as if every person on that planet bloomed, turning his petals toward the vast surprise. Not that they were flower-people, don't get me wrong; they were as human as you or I—or as human as we used to be; (but that's another story.)

  "Hail Zephrans," said Chug weakly as the last remnants of the preserving gel slid away. "I bring you greetings from the home planet. As the solely constituted representative of Earth—" But he hadn't meant to say that. He was still drunk, his alcoholic state having been preserved intact by the process. He arose staggering.

  A pleasant voice now said: "We hear you, Earthman. We'll get your ship docked in—oh, say an hour; so why not lie down again and sleep it off?"

  "What?"

  Chug felt his back arching.

  He felt curling sensations in his fingernails.

  "Look," he said. "Whoever you—"

  "You're drunk, son," interrupted the pleasant voice. "But that's all right. That's just between you and me. And we aren't going to tell anybody, are we? Of course not, old chap, old buddy."

  "Whyn't you talk English!" Chug spat. "You got a hell of a accent." He weaved under the bright lights in his cabin filled with a ghastly surprise. First, there was that arching of his spine, and the feeling of claws on the ends of his fingers. He'd overcome that! He had, had! But now it was back, the first time somebody caught him at a disadvantage. Second, here was this supposedly worshipful Zephran, who wasn't worshipful at all, but was blowing a distinct north wind.

  "You ain't no Zephran!"

  "But also I ain't no Earthling," the other said. "Please listen, my dear man. I'm entrusted with the task of bringing your ship in. It is not my purpose to spoil your little game."

  "WHAT GAME? What the hell game you talking about?" There it was again—and Chug almost wept—the feeling of long eye-teeth, of lips drawn back; damn damn damn.

  "Oh m
y." The other sighed and rolled his eyes; it was a gesture that had to be there. "Look, son. Do it my way. Get yourself sobered up and cleaned up. Look smart! Back straight! Shoes shined! Hup!"

  "Oh-h-h-h-h," groaned Chug, sagging to a seat droop-shouldered.

  "Be not alarmed, dear boy. Zephran society is eagerly awaiting you. My, what a treasure you will be to the worshipful elders and teeming teenagers of Zephyrus who even now are assembling to welcome you!

  "One hour."

  The blankness following this gave ample indication that communication had been cut off.

  One hundred top-ranking Zephrans variously stood or sat in the great auditorium of the floating winged palace of the mayor of the city of Matchley. Chug, having been transported in style from his ship on, naturally, a winged green horse, stood facing them. Thin television screens, also equipped with wings, dipped and dived by the hundreds through the air and each screen was packed with intent teenage faces.

  Captain Ratch Chug, late of the 2nd Repellor Corps, was a triumph! He looked splendid. Where else in the universe could you find anybody wearing a uniform these days, and particularly a uniform edged and pinked in gold and red, and with moppish epaulets that as they swung seemed to beat out a martial air? Nowhere but on someone from Earth, because that was the only place anybody had wars.