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

  Toward the end of that period, in the late thirties, a bitter teen-ager named Kornbluth discovered there was cigarette money in story writing. Now, at the age of 34, after nearly twenty years of writing, the angry boy has become an angrier man, who wields the scalpel of social satire with a savagely entertaining skill.

  * * * *

  The Lackawanna was still running one cautious morning train a day into Scranton, though the city was said to be emptying fast Professor Leuten and I had a coach to ourselves, except for a scared, jittery trainman who hung around and talked at us.

  “The name’s Pech,” he said. “And let me tell you, the Peches have been around for a mighty long time in these parts. There’s a town twenty-three miles north of Scranton named Pechville. Full of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and I used to visit there and we used to send picture post cards and get them, too. But my God, mister, what’s happened to them?”

  His question was rhetorical. He didn’t realize that Professor Leuten and I happened to be the only two people outside the miscalled Plague Area who could probably answer it.

  “Mr. Pech,” I said, “if you don’t mind -- we’d like to talk some business.”

  “Sorry,” he said miserably, and went on to the next car.

  When we were alone Professor Leuten remarked: “An interesting reaction.” He was very smooth about it. Without the slightest warning he whipped a huge, writhing, hairy spider from his pocket and thrust it at my face.

  I was fast on the draw too. In one violent fling I was standing on my left foot in the aisle, thumbing my nose, my tongue stuck out. Goose flesh rippled down my neck and shoulders.

  “Very good,” he said, and put the spider away. It was damnably realistic. Even knowing that it was a gadget of twisted springs and plush, I cringed at the thought of its nestling in his pocket. With me it was spiders. With the professor it was rats and asphyxiation. Toward the end of our mutual training program it took only one part per million of sulfur dioxide gas in his vicinity to send him whirling into the posture of defense, cranelike on one leg, tongue out and thumb to nose, the sweat of terror on his brow.

  “I have something to tell you, Professor,” I said.

  “So?” he asked tolerantly. And that did it. The tolerance. I had been prepared to make my point with a dignified recital and apology, but there were two ways to tell the story and I suddenly chose the second.

  “You’re a phony,” I said with satisfaction.

  “What?” he gasped.

  “A phony. A fake. A hoaxer. A self-deluding crackpot. Your Functional Epistemology is a farce. Let’s not go into this thing kidding ourselves.”

  His accent thickened a little. “Let me remind you, Mr. Norris, that you are addressing a doctor of philosophy of the University of Gottingen and a member of the faculty of the University of Basle.”

  “You mean a Privatdozent who teaches freshman logic. And I seem to remember that Gottingen revoked your degree.”

  He said slowly: “I have known all along that you were a fool, Mr. Norris. Not until now did I realize that you are also an anti-Semite. It was the Nazis who went through an illegal ceremony of revocation.”

  “So that makes me an anti-Semite. From a teacher of logic that’s very funny.”

  “You are correct,” he said after a long pause. “I withdraw my remark. Now, would you be good enough to amplify yours?”

  “Gladly, Professor. In the first place--”

  I had been winding up the rubber rat in my pocket. I yanked it out and tossed it into his lap where it scrabbled and clawed. He yelled with terror, but the yell didn’t cost him a split second. Almost before it started from his throat he was standing one-legged, thumb to nose, tongue stuck out.

  He thanked me coldly, I congratulated him coldly, I pocketed the rat while he shuddered and we went on with the conversation.

  I told him how, eighteen months ago, Mr. Hopedale called me into his office. Nice office, oak panels, signed pictures of Hopedale Press writers from our glorious past: Kipling, Barrie, Theodore Roosevelt and the rest of the backlog boys.

  What about Eino Elekinen, Mr. Hopedale wanted to know. Eino was one of our novelists. His first, Vinland the Good, had been a critical success and a popular flop; Cubs of the Viking Breed, the sequel, made us all a little money. He was now a month past delivery date on the final volume of the trilogy and the end was not in sight.

  “I think he’s pulling a sit-down strike, Mr. Hopedale. He’s way overdrawn now and I had to refuse him a thousand-dollar advance. He wanted to send his wife to the Virgin Islands for a divorce.”

  “Give him the money,” Mr. Hopedale said impatiently. “How can you expect the man to write when he’s beset by personal difficulties?”

  “Mr. Hopedale,” I said politely, “she could divorce him right in New York State. He’s given her grounds in all five boroughs and the western townships of Long Island. But that’s not the point. He can’t write. And even if he could, the last thing American literature needs right now is another trilogy about a Scandinavian immigrant family.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know. He’s not very good yet But I think he’s going to be, and do you want him to starve while he’s getting the juvenilia out of his system?” His next remark had nothing to do with Elekinen. He looked at the signed photo of T. R. “To a bully publisher” and said: “Norris, we’re broke.”

  I said: “Ah?”

  “We owe everybody. Printer, paper mill, warehouse. Everybody. It’s the end of Hopedale Press. Unless -- I don’t want you to think people have been reporting on you, Morris, but I understand you came up with an interesting idea at lunch yesterday. Some Swiss professor.”

  I had to think hard. “You must mean Leuten, Mr. Hopedale. No, there’s nothing in it for us, sir. I was joking. My brother-he teaches philosophy at Columbia-- mentioned him to me. Leuten’s a crackpot. Every year or two Weintraub Verlag in Basle brings out another volume of his watchamacallit and they sell about a thousand. Functional Epistemology --my brother says it’s all nonsense, the kind of stuff vanity presses put out. It was just a gag about us turning him into a Schweitzer or a Toynbee and bringing out a one-volume condensation. People just buy his books, I suppose, because they got started and feel ashamed to stop.”

  Mr. Hopedale said: “Do it, Norris. Do it. We can scrape together enough cash for one big promotion and then the end. I’m going to see Brewster of Commercial Factors in the morning. I believe he will advance us sixty-five per cent on our accounts receivable.” He tried on a cynical smile. It didn’t become him. “Norris, you are what is technically called a Publisher’s Bright Young Man. We can get seven-fifty for a scholarly book. With luck and promotion we can sell in the hundred thousands. Get on it.” I nodded, feeling sick, and started out. Mr. Hopedale said in a tired voice: “And it might actually be work of some inspirational value.”

  Professor Leuten sat and listened, red-faced, breathing hard.

  “You betrayer,” he said at last. “You with the smiling face that came to Basle, that talked of lectures in America, that told me to sign your damnable contract. My face on the cover of the Time magazine that looks like a monkey, the idiotic interviews, the press releasements in my name that I never saw. America, I thought, and held my tongue. But from the beginning it was a lie!” He buried his face in his hands and muttered: “Ach! You stink!”

  That reminded me. I took a small stench-bomb from my pocket and crushed it.

  He leaped up, balanced on one leg and thumbed his nose. His tongue was out four inches and he was panting with the terror of asphyxiation.

  “Very good,” I said.

  “Thank you. I suchest we move to the other end of the car.”

  We and our luggage were settled before he began to breathe normally. I judged that the panic and most of his anger had passed. “Professor,” I said cautiously, “I’ve been thinking of what we do when and if we find Miss Phoebe.”

  “We shall complete her re-education,” he said. “We shal
l point out that her unleashed powers have been dysfunctionally applied--”

  “I can think of something better to do than completing her reeducation. It’s why I spoke a little harshly. Presumably Miss Phoebe considers you the greatest man in the world.”

  He smiled reminiscently and I knew what he was thinking.

  La Plume, Pa. Wednesday 4A.M. (!)

  Professor Konrad Leuten c/o The Hopedale Press New York City, New York

  My Dear Professor,

  Though you are a famous and busy man I do hope you will take time to read a few words of grateful tribute from an old lady (eighty-four). I have just finished your magnificent and inspirational book How to Live on the Cosmic Expense Account: an Introduction to Functional Epistemology.

  Professor, I believe. I know every splendid word in your book is true. If there is one chapter finer than the others it is No. 9, “How to be in Utter Harmony with Your Environment.” The Twelve Rules in that chapter shall from this minute be my guiding light, and I shall practice them faithfully forever.

  Your grateful friend,

  (Miss) Phoebe Bancroft

  That flattering letter reached us on Friday, one day after the papers reported with amusement or dismay the “blackout” of La Plume, Pennsylvania. The term “Plague Area” came later.

  “I suppose she might,” said the professor.

  “Well, think about it.”

  The train slowed for a turn. I noticed that the track was lined with men and women. And some of them, by God, were leaping for the moving train! Brakes went on with a squeal and jolt; my nose bashed against the seat in front of us.

  “Aggression,” the professor said, astonished. “But that is not in the pattern!”

  We saw the trainman in the vestibule opening the door to yell at the trackside people. He was trampled as they swarmed aboard, filling, jamming the car in a twinkling.

  “Got to Scranton,” we heard them saying. “Zombies “

  “I get it,” I shouted at the professor over their hubbub, “These are refugees from Scranton. They must have blocked the track. Right now they’re probably bullying the engineer into backing up all the way to Wilkes-Barre. We’ve got to get off!” he said. We were in an end seat. By elbowing, crowding, and a little slugging we got to the vestibule and dropped to the tracks. The professor lost all his luggage in the brief, fierce struggle. I saved only my briefcase. The powers of Hell itself were not going to separate me from that briefcase.

  Hundreds of yelling, milling people were trying to climb aboard. Some made it to the roofs of the cars after it was physically impossible for one more body to be fitted inside. The locomotive uttered a despairing toot and the train began to back up.

  “Well,” I said, “we head north.”

  We found U.S. 6 after a short overland hike and trudged along the concrete. There was no traffic. Everybody with a car had left Scranton days ago, and nobody was going into Scranton. Except us.

  We saw our first zombie where a signpost told us it was three miles to the city. She was a woman in a Mother Hubbard and sunbonnet. I couldn’t tell whether she was young or old, beautiful or a hag. She gave us a sweet, empty smile and asked if we had any food. I said no. She said she wasn’t complaining about her lot but she was hungry, and of course the vegetables and things were so much better now that they weren’t poisoning the soil with those dreadful chemical fertilizers. Then she said maybe there might be something to eat down the road, wished us a pleasant good day and went on.

  “Dreadful chemical fertilizers?” I asked.

  The professor said: “I believe that is a contribution by the Duchess of Carbondale to Miss Phoebe’s reign. Several interviews mention it.” We walked on. I could read his mind like a book. He hasn’t even read the interviews. He is a foolish, an impossible young man. And yet he is here, he has undergone a rigorous course of training, he is after all risking a sort of death. Why? I let him go on wondering. The answer was in my briefcase.

  “When do you think we’ll be in range?” I asked.

  “Heaven knows,” he said testily. “Too many variables. Maybe it’s different when she sleeps, maybe it grows at different rates varying as the number of people affected. I feel nothing yet.”

  “Neither do I.”

  And when we felt something specifically, when we felt Miss Phoebe Bancroft practicing the Twelve Rules of “How to be in Utter Harmony with Your Environment” we would do something completely idiotic, something that had got us thrown --literally thrown-- out of the office of the Secretary of Defense.

  He had thundered at us: “Are you two trying to make a fool of me? Are you proposing that soldiers of the United States Army undergo a three-month training course in sticking out their tongues and thumbing their noses?” He was quivering with elevated blood pressure. Two M.P. lieutenants collared us under his personal orders and tossed us down the Pentagon steps when we were unable to deny that he had stated our proposal more or less correctly.

  And so squads, platoons, companies, battalions and regiments marched into the Plague Area and never marched out again.

  Some soldiers stumbled out as zombies. After a few days spent at a sufficient distance from the Plague Area their minds cleared and they told their confused stories. Something came over them, they said. A mental fuzziness almost impossible to describe. They liked it where they were, for instance; they left the Plague Area only by accident. They were wrapped in a vague, silly contentment even when they were hungry, which was usually. What was life like in the Plague Area? Well, not much happened. You wandered around looking for food. A lot of people looked sick but seemed to be contented. Farmers in the area gave you food with the universal silly smile, but their crops were very poor. Animal pests got most of them. Nobody seemed to eat meat. Nobody quarreled or fought or ever said a harsh word in the Plague Area. Add it was hell on earth. Nothing conceivable could induce any of them to return.

  The Duchess of Carbondale? Yes, sometimes she came driving by in her chariot, wearing fluttery robes and a golden crown. Everybody bowed down to her. She was a big, fat middle-aged woman with rimless glasses and a pinched look of righteous triumph on her face.

  The recovered zombies at first were quarantined and doctors made their wills before going to examine them. This proved to be unnecessary and the examinations proved to be fruitless. No bacteria, no Rickettsia, no viruses. Nothing. Which didn’t stop them from continuing in the assumption embodied in the official name of the affected counties.

  Professor Leuten and I knew better, of course. For knowing better we were thrown out of offices, declined interviews and once almost locked up as lunatics. That was when we tried to get through to the President direct. The Secret Service, I am able to testify, guards our Chief Executive with a zeal that borders on ferocity.

  “How goes the book?” Professor Leuten asked abruptly.

  “Third hundred thousand. Why? Want an advance?”

  I don’t understand German, but I can recognize deep, heartfelt profanity in any language. He spluttered and crackled for almost a full minute before he snarled in English: “Idiots! Dolts! Out of almost one third of a million readers, exactly one had read the book!”

  I wanted to defer comment on that, “There’s a car,” I said.

  “Obviously it stalled and was abandoned by a refugee from Scranton.”

  “Let’s have a look anyway.” It was a battered old Ford sedan halfway off the pavement. The rear was full of canned goods and liquor. Somebody had been looting. I pushed the starter and cranked for a while; the motor didn’t catch.

  “Useless,” said the professor. I ignored him, yanked the dashboard hood button and got out to inspect the guts. There was air showing on top of the gas in the sediment cup.

  “We ride, professor,” I told him. “I know these babies and their fuel pumps. The car quit on the upgrade there and he let it roll back.” I unscrewed the clamp of the carburetor air filter, twisted the filter off and heaved it into the roadside bushes. The professor, of
course was a “mere-machinery” boy with the true European intellectual’s contempt for greasy hands. He stood by haughtily while I poured a bottle of gin empty, found a wrench in the toolbox that fit the gas-tank drain plug and refilled the gin bottle with gasoline. He condescended to sit behind the wheel and crank the motor from time to time while I sprinkled gas into the carburetor. Each time the motor coughed there was less air showing in the sediment cup; finally the motor caught for good. I moved him over, tucked my briefcase in beside me, U-turned on the broad, empty highway and we chugged north into Scranton.

  It was only natural that he edged away from me, I suppose. I was grimy from working under the gas tank. This plus the discreditable ability I had shown in starting the stalled car reminded him that he was, after all, a Herr Doktor from a real university while I was, after all, a publisher’s employee with nebulous qualifications from some place called Cornell. The atmosphere was wrong for it, but sooner or later he had to be told.