The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 2 - [Anthology] Read online

  “Only one other,” said Ulbasar, shaking his head. “Lord Gteris. He’s on his way. None of the rest were close enough to contact.”

  “That’s better. So they sent Gteris, eh? It’s been a long time since Gteris and I hunted together, a very long time.” He looked up as the condor on the highest perch spread its wings and cocked its head toward the wire mesh roof of the cage.

  Words burbled from Ulbasar, who still looked shaken. “The Nobles demanded that Lord Gteris come. The Science Council insisted that only our men handle it, and they’re considerably agitated. There’s been open conflict between Nobles and Scientists at the Sessions, and the tribunal is worried. They want you returned, and they want you returned quickly.”

  “Politics, always politics,” said Kemper, letting loose his grip on Ulbasar’s arm.

  “The Scientists are putting a lot of pressure on the tribunal. They feel there’s danger to us each moment you spend here in the future. They’re worried about the time-pattern.”

  “That’s ridiculous. How can a man from the past affect the future? Besides, it isn’t our future; it belongs to the ape-people.”

  “I know, but that makes no difference.”

  “I’ve been to their libraries. There are no records of us, unless you count some foolish legends of continents sinking into the sea.” He looked at a man a few feet away who was throwing popcorn at a gull. A piece of popcorn bounced off the gull’s head, and the man laughed. People standing near by laughed too, and the man pitched more popcorn. Sighing, Kemper looked at his wrist watch. “When is he coming?”

  “I don’t know, precisely, and that’s the truth.”

  Kemper thought about it. It would take a while. After Gteris arrived there would be important details to occupy him, such as assimilating the manners and mores of this era and getting proper clothing. He said, “When he comes you’ll have no trouble finding me. I won’t leave the grounds; I give my word.”

  “The word of a renegade and a fugitive?” Ulbasar was himself again.

  “The word of a Noble,” said Kemper, turning away from him coldly.

  “One thing more, Lord Kjem,” Ulbasar said. “The time rift. We have orders to go back with you along the rift you used, making certain that you seal it behind us. Is it close by?”

  “That I will tell you when I have to,” said Kemper, turning completely around this time and walking away.

  Ulbasar would keep close watch on him, he knew, until Gteris came. That they intended to make him close his time rift made sense; the rift was dangerous to the over-all pattern. When he had left hastily he had forced his way through time with his mind-matrix, knowing that pursuit would have been swift if he had taken one of the normal time paths. The rift he had made was obvious, but would respond to no one but him. Others could accompany him through it, however, as he led the way. Gteris and Ulbasar could go with him and, controlling his mind, make him close the rift behind him.

  So he walked briskly, knowing he had much to do in an uncertain amount of time. The sun was higher, pale in the glazed sky. Disheveled, harassed-looking people passed him, sweat stains dark on their clothes, and with them were fretful children. Mr. Kemper walked, and the people went by him, on their way to laugh at the monkeys, throw stones at the bears, and call “Kitty, kitty, kitty” to the leopards.

  At a stand opposite the polar bears, near the north wing of the central building, he stopped to get a cup of coffee, but there was none for sale, so instead he bought a paper cup full of a green drink. He sipped it, watching a big white bear loafing in the pool. A little to one side of him a young man was arguing with a boy who wanted cotton candy. From below them, and to their right, came a low rumbling. “What’s that, Daddy?” said the boy. “It’s only the lions roaring,” his father answered.

  “They’re not roaring, actually,” said Mr. Kemper. “They’re grunting, and clearing their throats.”

  The boy looked at Mr. Kemper with interest, but his father frowned. “It sounds like roaring to me,” he said.

  Mr. Kemper smiled at the boy. “Oh, no. If the lions were roaring you could hear nothing else. It’s a sound you never forget, a sound that rips the wind and shakes the trees with thunder.”

  “I could forget it, Mac,” said the counterman, leaning on his elbows and winking at the boy’s father.

  “I want to hear the lions roar,” the boy said.

  “For Pete’s sake, what do you want? Make up your mind; do you want lions or cotton candy?” The boy’s father looked exasperated.

  “If you go to the lion cage at three o’clock today you’ll hear them roar,” Mr. Kemper said.

  Shortly after that the young man dragged away his little boy, who was still insisting he wanted to hear the lions roar. Eventually, everyone who talked with Mr. Kemper went away rather suddenly. Mr. Kemper, unabashed, drank from his paper cup and thought about the ravages of time.

  A woman and a man came around the corner of the building that faced the polar bears. The woman was red-faced, her voice a thin rasping. “All you want to do is watch those damn chips. You’d watch those chips all day if I didn’t drag you away from there. Chips, chips, I’m sick of chips.”

  “Chimps,” said Mr. Kemper as they went by. “Chimps, not chips. Chimps, lady, with an’m’ in it.”

  The counterman, moving toward him, wiped the counter with a soggy rag and said, “Listen, Mac, what’s all this with the lions?”

  Mr. Kemper looked at him. “Oh, do you like lions?”

  “Well, it’s like this,” the counterman said. But he had no chance to finish. There was an animal shriek of pain from the other side of the building. The polar bears lifted their heads. Putting his unfinished drink on the counter, Mr. Kemper went toward the sound.

  In the high cage that housed the chimpanzees, at the corner of the wing, a chimp swung violently on a trapeze, scolding at another on the cage floor. Kemper saw that the one on the trapeze was a female, the other a bigger, older male. The male, his face grotesque with anger, climbed the bars and got as close as he could to the trapeze. He hung there, grabbing at the female as she swung past just out of reach. There were only a few people near the cage, but most of them were smiling. One of them, a gangling, tall man, ran about pointing a camera first at the female, then the male. A lean woman, possibly his wife, stood close to him. She put her hand on his arm. When Kemper saw her eyes he moved behind the others and went toward her and the man with the camera, taking a position a little to their right.

  “Do it again, Al,” the lank woman said. “Make them mad again.” Al was sweating. He laughed, looked at the people around him, then pushed black hair from his forehead and handed her the camera. “Okay, okay,” he said. “You get the shots now and don’t goof it.” He moved disjointedly, like a puppet, as close to the cage as he could, directly beneath the periphery of the trapeze’s swinging arc.

  He started to jiggle, then jumped up and down, making faces at the female. “Chee, chee!” he called. He danced, capering loosely, flapping long arms against his thighs. “Haaah, haaah, haaah,” he yelled. “Haaah! Aargh!”

  Angered, the female chattered at him. When the trapeze swung to the top of its arc she leaped and caught the cage bars, then dropped down them until she was only a few feet above the capering man. She screeched at him, pounding one hand against a bar, and the spectators laughed. On the opposite side of the cage the male chimp dropped to the floor and scuttled toward her. Stopping beneath her, he lifted his arms and growled low in his throat. She turned, snarling, and began to climb bars. With a last wild screech at the shouting, dancing man outside the cage she jumped, just as the male’s fingers brushed her foot. Far over his head she went, then thumped to the floor. He dropped, and ran after her. She was climbing toward the trapeze again when he caught her. He sidled in, cuffing at her, then they grappled. A scream split the air as his teeth sank into her shoulder. Added now to the smells of popcorn, sweat and cotton candy was the smell of blood.

  There was quiet in
the cage and out of it as the female backed away from the hunched male. Unmolested, she climbed the bars slowly and swung to the trapeze, where she sat with one hand held to her bleeding shoulder. On the floor of the cage the male lifted both arms to her.

  The spectators breathed again. “Did you get it?” said Al. “Did you? What a shot! Terrific, but terrific!”

  “I got it, Al, I got it!” his wife said, eyes shining.

  Mr. Kemper grinned at Al and shook his head admiringly. “Say, that was quite a performance.” Still breathing hard, Al shoved his hair out of his eyes and returned the grin.

  “Oh, Al’s great,” his wife said. “You ought to see him sometime at a party.”

  Mr. Kemper said, “He certainly does have talent.”

  “Ah, it’s nothing,” Al said. “Nothing to it, fella. You sure you got those shots, Baby?”

  Moving closer, Mr. Kemper lowered his voice. “Listen, would you like to get some really terrific shots? Ones you’d remember all your life?”

  Al looked at him. “Yeah. Shots of what?”

  “Be at the lion cage at three o’clock. You’ll never have a chance like this again, believe me.”

  “Sure, sure, but shots of what, friend?”

  So Mr. Kemper bent his head and whispered to him, and as he did he saw the gleam start deep in Al’s eyes and swell to the pale surfaces. But Al’s eyes didn’t gleam the way his wife’s did. And after a while Mr. Kemper left them, and the cage that was silent except for the slow creaking of the trapeze.

  After looking at his watch, Mr. Kemper walked faster. The sun dropped in the sticky sky and there was only a faint wind. And for the next hour or so Mr. Kemper was here, there and everywhere. If there was a bunch of little boys shouting at the rhinoceros, then Mr. Kemper was there, smiling and nodding. When a party of college students stood making dirty jokes about the baboons, there too was Mr. Kemper, eventually saying something that made everyone stare at him.

  He was ubiquitous. He was with the people who craned their necks at the giraffes, and the ones who laughed at the sleek sea lions darting in their narrow troughs. He was with a family watching the anacondas drooping in green cubicles; he was at the bison corral; he saw the crocodile, the yak and the blesbok. And always, wherever he was, he had a few words to say about the lions. And time passed.

  It was exactly three o’clock when he stood again at the top of the stairway above the lion court. A lot of people were milling and shoving in front of the cages, a noisy crowd that made the lions nervous. They were awake now, pacing their cells, and the leopards were awake, and the jaguars. In the center cage the streak-maned lion put his head to the floor and coughed. Behind him the lioness waited, tense. The lion curved a paw around one of the bars and some of the people clapped their hands. Others whistled; several looked at their watches. Kemper, who was starting to smile again, watched the crowd. There was Al, his camera, and his wife, close to the center cage. The two teen-aged boys were near them. The little boy and his father were there, and many others that Mr. Kemper was glad to see. Hands clasped behind him, he stood looking down on them. Suddenly he felt powerful bonds clamp onto his mind.

  Turning slowly around, he saw Ulbasar walking down the hill toward him, a tall man at his side. They stopped in front of him, their faces dark in the sun. “Here he is,” said Ulbasar. The tall man at his left made the greeting sign of one Noble to another. “Lord Kjem,” he said. Returning the sign, Mr. Kemper said, “Lord Gteris.”

  Gteris said, “I hate to do this; you know that. We were friends once. I hope you won’t try to resist.”

  “I told Ulbasar I wouldn’t. Together you’re considerably stronger than I am. I’d be a fool to try anything.”

  “That’s smart of you,” said Gteris. “Now let’s get to business. Ulbasar says you wouldn’t tell him the location of your time rift. Is this true?”

  “Certainly. Does a Noble answer to a Scientist? But of course I’ll tell you, Gteris. The time rift is down there, behind the hedge opposite the lion cage.”

  All signs of friendliness left Gteris’s face. He spun and gave orders. “Ulbasar, you heard him. Go down there and see if he’s telling the truth. I’ll stand guard over him. And keep the mind-block tight.”

  Ulbasar nodded and went down the steps. Mr. Kemper tested the vise that pressed against his mind; it held much too well. Gteris was looking at him reproachfully. “Really, Kjem, yours is conduct unbecoming a Noble. If you had to murder somebody, why did it have to be a Scientist? And then all this forcing your own rift into the time-pattern. The Nobles are unhappy with you, Kjem.”

  “You know, I don’t regret any of it,” said Mr. Kemper, watching Ulbasar moving close to the crowd by the cages. “Tell me, how’s the hunting back home?”

  “Not too bad; I got some fine hawks a while back. I still wish I could handle cats the way you do, instead of— What’s wrong with that crowd in front of the cage down there?”

  Mr. Kemper said, “It’s past three o’clock.”

  Below them a big man pushed through the crowd toward Ulbasar, shouting, “There’s the guy told me to be here! There’s the faker!” Ulbasar hesitated, looked around, and stopped. The big man caught Ulbasar’s shoulder, and jabbed a finger against his chest. The crowd moved toward them.

  Gteris said, “He’s in trouble.”

  “He’s as good as dead right now,” Kemper said.

  Gteris stared down at the crowd, then at Kemper. Swiftly he shot a warning thought to Ulbasar, who caught it. As he did the pressure eased slightly from Kemper’s mind. It was enough. Kemper lashed out against Gteris’s block. They stood there, minds twisting in combat. Then as Ulbasar was hemmed in by the crowd his support weakened, and Gteris fought alone. Slowly but inexorably he was forced back and out, and Kemper’s mind was free. Gteris’s face was haggard. “Good gods, Kjem!” he said. “Look at Ulbasar!”

  “You can still help him. I’m not holding you.”

  Gteris looked wildly at him, then ran, bounding down the steps two at a time. He ran toward the crowd and began shouting at Ulbasar. Kemper saw the concentration on his face and knew he was trying to control the crowd. It was then that Mr. Kemper closed his eyes.

  First he shut out the world around him: The dim sun on his ears, the smells of dusty summer and popcorn, the sounds of the small wind and the people. In the blackness of his mind he saw the lion court; each bar of the cage and the yellow lions inside it; the crowd and the two dark men. Then he made a picture of the bars loosening at the top of the cage and the bottom, and the entire section of the cage front sliding ponderously sideways.

  There was no sound anywhere. Then below him rang a gonging of steel on cement and after that the screaming, and over all of it, dwarfing the yells and the echoing clangs, came a roar that ripped the wind and shook the trees with thunder.

  His eyes still closed, Kemper loosened the fronts of all the cages, one by one. After that he put all his mind to directing the lions. To Ulbasar he gave a quick death. Gteris he singled out for a special favor; he sent the streak-maned lion at him. As the lion crouched, Gteris stood unmoving, covering his face with his hands. “Stand and fight!” Kemper shouted. “At least die like a Noble!” But Gteris did not move, and the lion sprang. Kemper laughed, the old excitement of the hunt surging in him as he sent the cats leaping and clawing. He made sure that a special few of the ape-people died very slowly. In the distance a siren wailed.

  Kemper did not hear the rushing sounds behind and above him. When he did, he called the lions to him, desperately. He looked up at the condors, hurtling like javelins, and behind them the eagles. And he knew why Gteris, the hunter of condors and eagles, had not tried to hold off the lions. Then the condors smashed down.

  The streak-maned lion came to him, but it was too late. Mr. Kemper lay dying in the cold sun with the smell of lions like dust in his throat.

  <>

  * * * *

  THE COSMIC EXPENSE ACCOUNT

  by C. M. Kornblut
h

  The basic forms of science-fantasy—the imaginary voyage, the extrapolative novel of the future, and the satire ad ab-surdum—all originated as vehicles for social criticism, literary devices employed by the more effective of God’s angry men to flavor with adventure, or lubricate with humor, the bitter pill of reason.

  Even in the heyday of Technocratic Utopianism, when the intellectual elite among the Boosters of Blind Progress were blandly assured that all the ills of man would one day be cured by beating our picks and shovels into pushbuttons, and our church chimes into Pavlovian dinner-bells—when most “scientifiction” was a hash and rehash of behaviorist doctrine and mechanist dogma for the worshipers of the fatted machine—there were still people like Kapek, Forster, and Benet, using the same medium to question the accepted credos.