The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 7 - [Anthology] Read online

  “Yes, but only if they could be convinced without being frightened. But that would take time—as it did with you, Paradee, and we have run out of time now. To maintain a fuel reserve for reconnaissance and a landing, we’ve had to jettison supply units. We are reduced to one craft. Provisions are severely low.”

  “Provisions?” Mr. Paradee anxiously hunched his shoulders. “What kind of provisions? How long can you hold out?”

  “Two days—possibly three.” There was a pause before the quiet voice continued. “Only days now, after all this time. But there was so much we couldn’t calculate. We knew only the course. We couldn’t know how long we would be out here listening and learning, trying to make ourselves understood. Now it’s the end, and all depends on one more calculation we cannot make.”

  Mr. Paradee’s palms were sweating. “What? What is it?”

  “Whether you will help us, Paradee. Whether you will allow us a place to live. We need little more than shelter— but immediately.”

  “But I don’t know—I don’t know—”

  “There are only seven of us, and three are children.”

  Mr. Paradee drew a deep breath to relieve a heaviness in his chest, the weight of his realization. This voice was no longer a marvelous curiosity, he had picked up months ago on the latter side of night, to which in his long hours of sleeplessness he had listened, musing and wondering—a voice belonging to a dream image lost among the stars; a voice that was sensible, humorous, gentle and yet, because of what it had told him, too incredible except to be confined in a private chamber of fancy. Well—it had broken from the chamber, and it had stepped out of the night. This was midday; this voice, for all its accustomed quietness, was human and tired.

  “Very well.” Mr. Paradee leaned close to the set and spoke rapidly, as if another thought were racing to overtake the one he was putting into words. “Very well. But let me think a minute. This house of mine is so small it wouldn’t even— Wait! I know. Now listen, can you determine my location exactly?”

  “Exactly.”

  “At the head of this cove I’m on, there’s a wooded area, very dense. But there’s a clearing in the woods and—” Mr. Paradee halted abruptly, astonished at himself. Why, what would Miss Pomeroy say? And anyway, what in heaven’s name was he doing?

  “Now see here!” he said tightly into the transmitter. “Just you hold on a minute! You people could land anywhere. All over the earth there are huge uninhabited areas where you’d never be discovered. There are mountain ranges and islands where you could live—”

  The voice interrupted gently, “Where we could live as fugitives? We might as well live as captives—it would be all the same. My dear Paradee, we are not looking for a hiding place. We only want a home among people. Is that hard for you to understand?”

  “No.”

  “Isolated, friendless, we had far rather remain out here.”

  “No!” Paradee said.

  “In this clearing in the woods is there a dwelling?”

  Mr. Paradee was unable to answer at once, for something cold and heavy battered at the walls of his mind. Presently, forcing himself to speak, he said, “Yes. An old stone cottage. No one is there now.”

  “You sound troubled, Paradee. Please believe we will not be conspicuous in any way. Now, to avoid disturbance, we will land at night and destroy the craft. But first we will have to see the area in the daylight—just before dark perhaps. I’ll contact you later tonight, at the usual time.”

  The thing that was heavy and cold broke through the wall of Mr. Paradee’s mind. It was fear. It rolled like a boulder crushing every thought, every sensibility which rose before it.

  He let out his breath and whispered harshly, “Now, see here, you people! You say you’re in a bad way out there; you’re at the end of your rope. And yet—and yet you’re asking to be allowed some kind of a home. What kind of game is this? Why, after what you’ve done, you could do anything you wanted here. You could—you could control the earth.”

  In the silence following his outburst, he heard waves lapping at the jetty, a gull crying over the cove, a child laughing down in the lane. He clasped his hands to keep from shaking, as if with cold.

  Presently from the receiver came a sigh and the voice spoke with weariness and regret. “We probably could.”

  At a sound from the porch Mr. Paradee snapped off the receiver and jumped to his feet. He opened the door to find Miss Pomeroy.

  “Ready?” she asked, looking quizzically at him.

  “Ready?” he repeated blankly.

  “The picnic, Mr. Paradee.” Her eyes searched his face.

  “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.”

  “Were you talking to yourself when I came up on the porch—or to a ghost? You look as if you’d seen one.”

  Her voice was dry, but her eyes held kindly concern. Mr. Paradee found that the effort to make a light reply was too much. He shook his head and turned away to pick up the picnic basket, forgetting the salt again.

  It took but twenty minutes to cross the cove and walk over the dunes to the sea. When they first arrived, they always stood a moment in silent detachment and gazed over the water to the edge of the world. As if, Mr. Paradee thought, they were trying to remind themselves that they knew what lay beyond the horizon, patiently trying to rid themselves of an ancient memory crouched in the dark of their minds: that the rim of the world is no less an awful mystery than the incredible reach of night. Presently someone would pick up a shell or point to a gull skimming the waves, and they would emerge from the spell and go down to the water.

  Miss Pomeroy and Mr. Paradee sat side by side beyond the reach of the breakers and watched the children race the whispering wash like sandpipers, nimbly dodging the big breaker which stretched up the sand, grabbed at them and fled back again, tumbling golden flecks of mica in its wake. Down in the surf the older children and their parents hurled themselves into the waves like javelins. Mr. Paradee’s sky was sapphire.

  “Aren’t we a collection!” Miss Pomeroy remarked. “From two”—she nodded toward a fat baby recklessly flinging sand in the air and shutting his eyes as it showered his bright hair —”from two to what? You’re older than I. Seventy?”

  Mr. Paradee squinted reflectively and shook his head.

  “Oh, not that old, not I. My life began here at the cove, you know, because here—and only recently—I’ve found out what really matters to me. I’ve found that all I have is worthless unless I can give it in some way, or share it. But—” He let out his breath in a sigh.

  “Something is troubling you, Mr. Paradee.”

  He shook his head and shrugged helplessly. “I’m trapped.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you remember the time we talked about things that matter? And you said your people, who settled here, knew what mattered, and they went all the way?”

  “I remember.”

  “What else could they do? What else? Once you know what matters, once you care, it’s too late to turn back. You must go all the way. You’ve no choice. It’s a terrible kind of trap.”

  “It’s a wonderful kind of trap,” she said.

  “But suppose,” he said softly, “you don’t dare go all the way?”

  “I wish,” she said, “that I knew what is troubling you. Because I’d help you if I could.”

  He turned toward her and with an effort he smiled. “I know you would.”

  * * * *

  Mr. Paradee poured the last of the wine and waited for dusk. The picnic fire was banked with sand, and everyone lay stretched out around it, comfortable and drowsy. Everyone, that is, except Mr. Paradee, who sat with his hands locked about his knees. Lulled by the murmur of talk, some of the children slept.

  Mr. Paradee watched the sky. It is possible, he thought, entirely possible: a world dies of old age, peacefully, slowly, and the few who survive it cannot bear to leave. Except a handful with children who set out, not on a mad race for food and shelter, not on a search for par
adise, but simply to find another home, among people. Possible. Of course, it’s possible.

  Turning to look at the east, where the rim of the sea was tinged with dark, he sent his imaginary vision over the edge and around and circled the earth, so that he knew it visually for what it was—a great globe turning slowly in space, as other great globes were turning slowly in space.

  How beautiful, he thought suddenly, must the earth be in approach! If you roamed the paths of satellites, you’d see it all, the whole round earth, immense—immense in haze. Oceans sprawling, rivers fingering, wandering continents, green and shadowy, clinging to the mother curve. And there, too small to see, infinitely small and tender-boned, were people. The little valiant, vulnerable people, ardent and self-aware. Strip them of their many surface differences, and you would find, he thought, a single likeness, a common majesty: their unfathomable capacity to care, to gain the point where life, as such, becomes a minor thing compared to that for which they live.

  And at that point, he thought, there is no turning back. But where does it take us? Where are we going?

  He sighed so deeply that everyone glanced at him and stirred. Miss Pomeroy got to her feet and brushed the sand from her clothes with a brisk motion.

  “Time to pack up,” she said cheerfully. “Be dark soon. Wake up, sleepyheads.” She bent down and ruffled the drowsy children.

  When they were ready to leave, baskets packed, children yawning, they all stood a moment, taking a last look out over the water. Then they saw it.

  It appeared above the horizon, oblong and silent, reflecting the geranium glow of the setting sun and bathing them in its light. Speechless, they watched it approach and slow its speed. Just overhead, it veered northward, slowly circled the cove, and then returned to its point of origin, where it shot upward with such incredible swiftness that their eyes lost it and, a split second later, searching the sky could not find it again.

  During the flurry of astonished exclamations which followed—pointing, comparing notes, questioning, surmising— Mr. Paradee turned his head and Miss Pomeroy caught his eye. Gazing at him, her expression slowly changed from amazement to startled inquiry. He quickly looked away.

  Presently someone found the words to release them from their incredulity.

  “You know what that thing was, don’t you? One of those big weather balloons.”

  “Yes, but the shape—”

  “Illusion. The way the light was reflecting, you see—”

  “Yes, undoubtedly.”

  “How about it, Mr. Paradee? It’s your sky.”

  “Well, I have my secrets, you know,” he said hollowly, and they laughed a little, all but Miss Pomeroy, whose inquiring eyes were still upon him, grave now, and steady.

  As they all began their way back over the dunes, Mr. Paradee walked slowly and fell behind. Miss Pomeroy glanced back at him and stopped to wait.

  “We’re getting old, you and I, poking along behind like this.” Her voice was light, but her glance was keenly watchful.

  Mr. Paradee’s steps became slower, and finally he stopped altogether, as if he couldn’t go on. After a moment she put her hand on his arm.

  “Well?” she said.

  “You told me back there on the beach that you’d help me if you could.” He looked at her directly, searching her face.

  “I will.”

  “How far,” he asked slowly and deliberately, “are you willing to go?”

  “All the way, Mr. Paradee.”

  He considered her for a long moment. “You’d better listen first.”

  Up ahead the others turned and called to them. Miss Pomeroy waved them on. She and Mr. Paradee sat down on the dune. Before he began to speak, he drew a deep uneven breath.

  * * * *

  Pomeroy’s Cove went to bed early that night. Doors closed, lights blinked out and a night of stars held forth.

  As he had done so many times in the past months, during long sleepless nights, Mr. Paradee sat in a rocking chair beside his short-wave. With the receiver turned on and the volume low, he waited and rocked, listening to the tick of the clock on the mantel and the creak of the rocker. He wondered musingly if any sound on earth lulled so gently. The curving motion of rocker and pendulum—the creak-creak, tick-tock—called forth a singing of words, a scrap of poetry. “Great wide, beautiful, wonderful world, with the wonderful waters round you curled...”

  “No, no,” he said, to himself; “no,” and he shook his head as the cold hard fear, like a boulder, rolled suddenly into his mind. “No, no!” But it persisted, rolling out of control. “They could take it away from us. They could. They admitted that much. They said they could.”

  The radio receiver issued a sharp crackle of static, and the high-pitched musical tone beeped and ceased. The voice came through, quiet as always. “Paradee?”

  He snapped on the transmitter and leaned forward.

  “Listen,” he said, whispering fiercely. “You listen to me. If you think you’re going to take our world away from us, you out there, you’d better guess again! What do you think you’re doing, cutting down here in that glorified tin can of yours? Do you think for one minute that we—”

  “Paradee, Paradee,” the voice interrupted, “my dear man! No one wants to take your world away from you. What an unthinkable notion! You can’t really believe that, can you?”

  Mr. Paradee slumped as he let out his breath, the surprising rush of fright and anger receding as quickly as it had risen. He shook his head and said tiredly, “You said you could.”

  “We probably could—we haven’t thought about it. But does it not occur to you that those who are capable of taking worlds are far, far beyond that sort of behavior? Taking is a practice for brutes and naughty children.”

  It seemed to Mr. Paradee, as he sighed, that he had sighed a thousand times that day.

  “I know, I know. Forgive me. But for a moment I was afraid again. You know how it is. Once you find out what matters to you, you’re willing to go all the way, and then suddenly you’re afraid of where it’s going to take you.”

  Just at that moment it occurred to Mr. Paradee that he would not be afraid again. All at once he knew beyond doubt, as surely as if he had always known it.

  When you know what matters, you have already arrived. That thought held him in peaceful contemplation, and he wondered absently if it had come from the quiet voice or from the quiet of his own heart.

  Presently then, “You have come a long way, Paradee.”

  He roused and smiled, and then he chuckled. “You’ve come a pretty long way yourselves.” He turned on a light and looked at the clock on the mantel. “Well, Miss Pomeroy is waiting for you up there at the Settler’s Cottage. She has the key.”

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  * * * *

  AMONG THE DANGS

  by George P. Elliott

  But that’s not science fiction... !

  Even my best friends (to invert a paraphrase) keep telling me: That’s not science fiction!?

  Sometimes they mean it couldn’t be s-f, because it’s good. Sometimes it couldn’t be because it’s not about spaceships or time machines. (Religion or politics or psychology isn’t science fiction—is it?) Sometimes (because some of my best friends are s-f fans) they mean it’s not really science fiction—just fantasy or satire or something like that.

  On the whole, I think I am very patient. I generally manage to explain, again, just a little wearily, what the “S-F” In the title of this book means, and what science fiction is, and why the one contains the other, without being constrained by it. But it does strain my patience when the exclamation is compounded to mean: “Surely you don’t mean to use that in ‘S-F’? That’s not science fiction!”—about a first-rate piece of the honest thing.

  For some reason, this comes most often from other editors—and most irritatingly from the editor who first bought and published the story in question, and does not want to think that he printed that kind of story. But the ultimate in frust
ration is to hear the same thing from the editor who is publishing me. . . .

  “Among the Dangs” first appeared in Esquire in 1958; in 1959 it was reprinted in Fantasy and Science Fiction, and in the O. Henry Awards. And in both years, my editors said with dismay (you guessed it!)—”That’s not science fiction!” Last year, it became eligible for inclusion in this volume once more by appearing as the title story in a collection of Mr. Elliott’s short stories. It is a multiple pleasure to be able to reprint it at last—partly because I too am a real-science-fiction fan and, in a year when there was precious little of the pure product published anywhere, “Among the Dangs” remains a first-rate sample of what science fiction really is.