New Writings in SF 4 - [Anthology] Read online

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  New Writings in

  SF: 4

  Ed By John Carnell

  Proofed By MadMaxAU

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  CONTENTS

  Foreword by John Carnell

  High Eight by David Stringer

  Star Light by Isaac Asimov

  Hunger Over Sweet Waters by Colin Kapp

  The Country Of The Strong by Dennis Etchison

  Parking Problem by Dan Morgan

  Sub-Lim by Keith Roberts

  Bernie The Faust by William Tenn

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  FOREWORD

  by John Carnell

  Each successive volume of New Writings In S-F has developed a distinctive personality of its own, more by accident than design admitted, for, unlike the average anthology where the editor can select from a wide range of already published material, this series is compiled mainly from new material being written today. From the stories submitted, or commissioned, or selected from sources which would normally not be seen by the average reader, the pattern of each book is built up. Therefore, there can not be any preconceived plan in my mind that we shall have a volume devoted to, say, space stories, or interplanetary adventures, or following any particular pattern. In fact, the more varied the contents the greater the amount of enjoyment for a wider audience.

  This particular volume leans a little more towards the humorous than usual although it has its quota of tension and even pathos. On the serious side we have Isaac Asimov’s “Star Light”, and what a pleasure it is to be able to present this little-known gem from such a popular author! Although the plot does not have the scope of his “Foundation” series, it does pack a very considerable punch in its brief passage.

  At much greater length, David Stringer heads the volume with an intense story of a man-made (?) alien in our midst; an alien totally unfamiliar to our normal concepts yet a basic part of the one modern commodity our very existence depends upon—electricity! And for those readers who are constantly demanding more accuracy and authenticity in their s-f, Colin Kapp is represented with “Hunger Over Sweet Waters”, a science fiction story he assures me is basically accurate by existing techniques—the one added factor to the story is a piece of original research he has made but not considered patenting!

  In contrast to the accepted side of s-f as epitomized in the above stories, we have in lighter vein William Tenn’s brilliant satire, “Bernie The Faust”, which will surely go down as one of the best stories of 1963, the year it was originally published. Too few stories of this calibre come our way, but when they do the genre is that much richer. Two other stories compete for humorous honours: Dan Morgan’s pleasant spoof dealing with a time warp for parking vehicles, which produces in “Parking Problem” a solution for the congested city streets of the future but creates an even greater problem for the inhabitants, while in Keith Roberts’ “Sub-Lim” there is a lot of fun in the movie industry when a new system for making people like films is discovered. The plot, however, carries its own burden of punishment.

  By no means least on the list of contents is Dennis Etchison’s prize-winning little cameo, “The Country Of The Strong”, a rather bitter exposition of the aftermath of Man’s folly.

  All the stories, however, have been selected with a view to entertainment; the fact that science fiction has a penchant for making people think is an added bonus for which there is no extra charge.

  John Carnell

  February 1965

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  HIGH EIGHT

  David Stringer

  Although alien invasions have long been a popular conception in science fiction they do not necessarily have to come from outer space and the present-day trend favours more a “boring from within” as David Stringer brilliantly portrays in his first story in this series. The fact that it vitally affects the one commodity all humanity has come to rely upon makes it tremendously thought-provoking, too.

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  For Rick Cameron, the trouble started one bright morning in Stan Mainwaring’s office.

  Stan was Outside Works Controller to Saskeega Power, Rick was line maintenance boss for the company. They were great buddies; they’d been through school together, clocked nearly fifteen years together at Saskeega. Rick was sitting on his boss’s desk skinning through a copy of the company magazine when the phone blew. Stan picked up the handset. He said, “What? Yeah, you’d better put him through ...” The phone squawked a long time. Stan’s face changed; his fingers gripped the handset rhythmically, an unconscious reflex. Then, “Yeah, I’ll do that. Yeah, straight away.” He put the instrument down and sat for a moment staring at it, hands spread on the desk top. Rick glanced resignedly at the ceiling.

  They’d been using one of the penstocks as a laboratory to check corrosion characteristics on some new metal dressings, they were due to open her up that morning, have a look at what had been happening. Rick had gone over to Main Block to collect Stan, they’d been going to drive up together. Now he had a strong presentiment they wouldn’t be making the trip. He said, “What’s the matter, Stan? Trouble?”

  The other looked at him sombrely. “Had a suicide in the night. Old guy wrapped himself round a set of bus bars. They only just found him, Billy says it isn’t too nice. Sheriff’s on the way over, I got to go up and see.”

  “Where was it, Stan, where’d it happen?”

  The other man shrugged. “Of all the crazy places. High Eight.”

  Half a dozen lines went out from Saskeega; Rick’s job was to service and maintain them over a radius of some twenty-five miles from the plant. The shortest run on the sector was the Indian Valley line. That went due west up into the mountains, through Black Horse Pass and down into Indian Valley the other side of the hump. It was the trickiest to service but far and away the most important; it fed the Sand Creek Pool where Sand Creek Atomic Research got their juice. And Sand Creek was about the most important thing in the country.... There was something else; the two installations inside the mountain, and the stepdown transformers that fed them. Rick had heard the rumours, he’d heard his boys mutter that they were parts of the Doomsday Brain, that they were bringing the current that ran the Doomsday Brain. He hadn’t let himself think too much about it and he certainly hadn’t worried. He wasn’t the man to worry. His job was to service the lines.

  The first transformer was at the bottom of the hill, the second one way up on the Black Horse at the head of the pass. Number two on the line, number eight on the sector; she sat up there in the clouds and that was the name they’d given her, among themselves. High Eight...

  Rick went along with his boss. Privately, he thought it was his baby as much as Stan’s. They drove through Freshet, the little township that had sprung up to house the staff of Saskeega and their families. Passing Rick’s place, his wife gave the car a wave. He shook his head slightly. It was just as well she didn’t know where they were headed and why, Judy was funny about the lines. They got through town and the road started to climb with the towers striding alongside. Standing room on the mountain was strictly limited, the line followed the road most of the way. When they got high enough Rick could see Saskeega below and miles off, the penstocks running down to it, the white threads of the outfalls.

  He turned round to Stan. “How in Hell did he manage to get hold of those bars? He must have been crazy...” He wasn’t feeling too great himself; once when he was in the army he’d seen a guy take a thousand cycles, hadn’t been a thing left but his shoes. And supertension was worse; you couldn’t fool with a hundred thousand volts, it played too rough. The bus bars were the big terminals where the contacts were made betwe
en the transformers and the cables, they were fenced with guard rails. Drop a spanner over those rails and there it stopped till a Routine Outage. Slide under to get it and the voltage waiting there would come crackling out to meet you, shake you by the hand. Rick ran his fingers through his cropped hair. He said again, “The old guy must’ve been crazy as a coot to crawl inside...”

  Stan didn’t answer, just put his foot down harder. They passed number seven; a few miles on and they could see High Eight perched over a cliff, its white walls shining in the sun. When they reached it Stan swung off the road and stopped. They got out. There were a couple of cars parked, one of the station service trucks and the Sheriff’s estate wagon. They walked towards the building and Sheriff Stanton came out the door. One of his deputies backed out after him, taking a bulb out of a flash camera. Stanton nodded to the Saskeega men, wagged his thumb at High Eight. He said, “Better take a look, fellers, your steak-frier’s sure done him proud.”

  They went in.

  It could have been worse. The body was lying curled up just inside the door, a little old man, grey-haired, clothes ragged. Just an old hobo. The flash had blown him clear instead of taking him in and cooking him, his hands were charred but that was all. He’d smashed the back of his skull on the guard-rail. Not that that mattered, he’d been dead when he hit it. A yard or so away was a tin box. The lid had come off, there were old papers scattered, a couple of photographs. And there were the bus bars shining in the half dark, the transformers singing all round.

  An ambulance had been called, they loaded him in as soon as it arrived. Stanton picked up the junk that was spread about, thumbed through it. He shrugged. “No names. Guess if we could trace next of kin they wouldn’t want to know. Maybe he’s better off, poor old guy. You boys known a thing like this before?”

  Rick shook his head slowly. Suicides happened, they just happened all the time, but there weren’t many people that chose the lines. It wasn’t a nice way to go...

  The door lock was smashed where the old man had broken in. Stan fingered it; he said slowly, “Maybe he was just lookin’ for shelter and a place to sleep awhile. He sure as Hell found that.” They told one of the maintenance men to get up there with a new lock, that was about all they could do. Rick drove back down with Stan, tried to put the whole thing out of his mind. He managed it till he got home that night. He saw Judy’s face and could tell she knew. He asked her how she’d found out. She said she saw the trouble wagon in town, asked one of the boys. Rick swore under his breath about guys who just had to shoot off their big mouths. It wasn’t the sort of thing it did Judy any good to know, not feeling the way she did about the lines. Rick blamed himself partly for that. He’d taken her up to High Eight one day, and it had scared the Hell out of her. The big housings singing like cats, the static over their tops making blue crackles in the dark. She’d lived with the fear for years, but she’d got no better.

  He could see the thing was on her back again. She said, “Why’d he do it, Rick, you find out why he did it? Maybe, you know, did he leave a note or something, say why ... ?”

  He said, “No note, honey, nothing. Just wasn’t a reason, I guess. Poor old guy was crazy, is all.” He stood squarely, facing her and frowning, worrying about something outside his experience and wondering how to quieten her.

  She shook her head violently. She said, “I know why he did it, Rick, I can see why, can’t you?” She gulped. Then, “Was he...much burned?”

  “Look, Judy ...”

  She said. “It was the lines. It’s always the lines. Like the rails in a ... station, in a subway, they pull, Rick, you never felt them pull? You stood there with the train coming and the noise and felt the rails pull harder and harder...”

  “Honey, please ...”

  She ignored him. “It’s that way with the lines, Rick. They drew him. Can’t you see him up there, that poor old man, lonely, nobody to go to, nobody around? That’s when they pull most, when there’s nobody around. He was hungry and cold and the night was coming and there were the lights on the wall inside High Eight, like sort of red and amber eyes watching and saying come on, it’s O.K., come on ... and the singing all round, and the shining things behind the rail pulling and pulling...”

  He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Judy, for God’s sake...”

  She wrenched away from him, ran into the kitchen. She snapped switches. She said, “Electricity, Rick. It scares me. Look at it all round, just think, if it was waiting. If it all wanted to pull...”

  His temper snapped. He yelled at her, “For Christ’s sake, shut up...” He said, “I was the one had to pick him up, get him in the bloodwagon. I didn’t like it honey, I don’t like that sort of thing. You think I’m a sort of ghoul likes going round picking people off the lines? You want it, you asked to know, yeah, his hands were burned. They were burned black, you could see the bones...Now are you happy, I been trying to forget it most of the day....”

  She screwed her eyes up, hand across her mouth as if she was in pain. A long wait; then, “Rick I’m ... I’m sorry, honey, I don’t know what gets me going like that. It’s a thing I got, about the lines ... I’m sorry...”

  He sighed, feeling the old trembling he always felt when he rowed with her. “O.K., so we both got it out of our systems. Now what say we forget it all. These things happen, honey, isn’t any cause to go wild...”

  “Rick, couldn’t we go off? You know, you get some other job, we could go some place miles from Saskeega where we didn’t have to see the lines...”

  They’d been through that fifty, a hundred times before. Rick would have done most things for her even if she wanted them for crazy reasons but he couldn’t take another job, the lines were all he knew. Or so he told himself. But there was something else, something he didn’t talk about with Judy because she wouldn’t understand. The lines did get you, after a time. Oh, not in the crazy way she said, but there was something about them, the towers and the lines soaring off across the country taking power to run peoples’ lives, run the world. There was something in that. He used to talk about it odd times with Stan; he never really knew how to get it into words but Stan knew what he meant.

  That night Rick kept having a recurring dream. It seemed the phone was ringing and he kept answering it and finding there was another body in High Eight. The fifth or sixth time it happened he sat up in bed, thinking blearily that the crazy talk Judy had given him had somehow gotten on his mind. He looked round. The room was dark, he could see his wristwatch dial on the side table. He picked the watch up. It read just after three. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, then the noise that had woken him started again.

  The phone was ringing.

  He got up and answered it. He listened to what it had to say, then he put the handset down and wondered if he was going to wake up again. But it was no good, this was for real. He went back to the bedroom and started to dress. His hands worked mechanically, almost of their own volition. There was another body in High Eight, the lines were out, he had to get up there quick as he could.

  Judy put the light on, and Rick turned round. She was shivering. “Rick, what is it, what goes on? Was it the phone ...?”

  He said, “Look honey, I gotta go out. They got some trouble, I’ll try and not be too long...”

  She got hold of his arm. “It’s another one. In that Godawful place...”

  “Honey, it isn’t, isn’t anything like that. They got some trouble down at the plant. Icing on the insulators.” He said the first thing that came into his head. It didn’t do any good, he could see the look in her eyes, he could tell she knew.

  Rick got the car out and drove for the pass. Soon as he left the shelter of town he started to feel the wind pulling and twitching at the steering. There was always a wind on the Black Horse, it blew like a bitch up there night and day. Something came into his mind. He remembered the wind in the poem, the wind that blew in the wasteland where nobody ever came. There was nothing on the mountain either except High Eight.r />
  He didn’t care for that idea too much. Essentially, Rick was a rational guy; but the morning had been bad, and with the wind yelling that way and everything black as Hell it was a whole lot worse. He tried to think about something else, started a sort of mental argument with Judy.

  “Look honey, there’s nothing wrong with electricity. You use it right, it’s fine. You fool about and you get in trouble, most things are like that. Look, the lines are good. They light your home, cook your meals, run your television, help you have fun. They keep you warm, they keep you happy. We couldn’t do without the lines...”

  Somehow he knew what she’d answer. It was almost like she was there with him in the car. She said, “The lines are waiting, Rick. Every place, all the time. Just waiting. And one day ...”

  He took a bend. The headlights shone silver off the foot of one of the towers. He wondered suddenly if the thing was a gag, somebody had decided to have a little fun sending him chasing up there in the middle of the night. Didn’t seem likely, but there was a chance. That meant he’d get to High Eight, wouldn’t be a soul around. Just the wind booming off the cliff and the coloured eyes up there in the housings singing in the dark...He tried to see up towards the pass, but as far as he could tell it was all black. He was suddenly sure the thing was a gag. He felt like turning the car and going straight back, but he knew he couldn’t do that.